UPDATE 29TH JUNE 2015 – STYLIGHT IS ONE OF THE TOP 10 COMPANIES IN BAVARIA
… A drunk florist, standing whilst ordering crazy fashion items with his laptop? Not exactly!
OK, I will help you with this one. All these things are part of our feel good culture at STYLIGHT. Have you heard of a Feel Good Manager before? This is a job not limited to filling up the coffee beans and organizing jogging groups after work. To understand how complex FGM is, I do not only want to list all our amazing benefits we have at STYLIGHT, rather, I want to point out how difficult on the one hand, but how extremely beneficial on the other, FGM can be for a company as a whole. Feel Good Management is therefore an important part of our Human Resources department. You often hear HR departments complaining about budget problems, about their management refusing to listen to HR topics and that kind of stuff. At STYLIGHT it is mostly the management itself that asks for further Feel Good Management through events or other measures. And it certainly pays back, because our team is really highly motivated, enjoys their work and thus produces great results for our company.
So, what exactly is Feel Good Management? Why do you need other people to manage your wellbeing, and how?
Long before the term “Feel Good Management” was officially recognized, our founders Anselm, Benni, Basti and Max understood that happy colleagues in return make them, and other colleagues, happy, and are – of course – more productive. When they founded STYLIGHT in 2008 they were good friends working together. As the company grew bigger and bigger, and as business got more serious, maintaining the good spirit got more and more challenging. It reinforced the mantra every business economist preaches: company culture is not made, it just exists. Luckily our founder team stuck to their original philosophy and continued putting a lot of effort into recruiting awesome people who carry the STYLIGHT team spirit deep inside them, which lay the groundwork for our STYLIGHT company culture ever since. Nevertheless our team – currently consisting of 160 employees – is 100% curious, eager for knowledge and highly motivated.
Now, what are the things that lead to employees feeling good and transporting this feeling into their work ethic?
We think the values and beliefs that lead to happiness in your private life, also make your work life more enjoyable as well. Such as trust, independence, helpfulness, friendship, health, personal development & appreciation. Thus, feeling good is much more than not having to pay for your daily cup of coffee at the office. It also addresses questions like “How can I work as efficiently as possible and not sit around in useless meetings or losing time whilst filling in complicated time off request forms?”, “How can I improve myself and how can I implement my ideas?” We try to support our employees in their everyday needs and to make their lives as easy as possible right from the beginning. This is done in a variety of ways such as:
- Onboarding
- To make our newbies look forward to joining STYLIGHT, we send all employees welcome flowers
- We also give them as much info as we can before they start at STYLIGHT. With the help of our Awesomenet Homepage, every Newbie can find all the information he/she needs to get started at STYLIGHT (e.g. bureaucratic stuff, work life, Munich survival guides, etc.)
- What goes along with a proper onboarding is of course to have the whole working equipment set up and ready for their 1st working day
- With the possibility to stay in our 3 bedroom STYLIGHT flatshare: we’re happy to be able to support them even more in settling down in Munich
- All in all we try to make our Newbies fall in love with STYLIGHT even before they start working here!
- Everyday worklife
- We help receive and send packages, order office supplies or support with organizing meetup events at our office
- We support the modern and creative ideas of our colleagues, e.g. we introduced SCRUM, retrospectives and other agile working traditions in all of our departments
- We give maximum transparency of our strategy or goals with the help of weekly and monthly strategy meetings
- We organize team events, like skiing trips, huge picnics, Oktoberfest visits. There are also TGIFs or lunch/dinner roulettes on a weekly basis where you can easily chat with your colleagues, supervisors and even our founders.
- Focus on the health of our employees by organizing fitness lessons & health days, also we get fresh fruit delivered to our office daily and offer standing desks to ensure the working environment meets our employees needs.
- Invite family and friends to public viewing or other events in the office
- Surprises: we send flowers when employees are on sick leave, baby gifts after birth, or arrange for food trucks to come by in our courtyard during lunchtimes. We also make sure our employees’ cars are ready for winter & summer by offering tire changes.
- Offboarding
- Even when it comes to goodbyes at STYLIGHT (mainly when internships end) we still try to stay in contact with all former STYLIGHTers. One way was the creation of our talent pool, to reach out to our high performers for potential future positions.
- We also have a Facebook group with all alumni and current employees. That way they can stay on track with what’s going on at STYLIGHT on a daily basis.
Feeling good, loving your job, your company and your colleagues, feeling at ease and enjoying the day (even those manic Mondays) is important for everyone from top to bottom, and from bottom to top.
Employees are more productive when they are happy within their work environment and understand the reason behind specific goals and tasks (hello there, Generation Y!). What we and science already know is what millennials expect nowadays : not only a high salary and challenging positions. They want to be involved – which means making their own decisions, being asked about their opinion and/or informed at the right time about decisions and changes. Above all, they want to know their contribution to the company’s success whilst having fun and being appreciated. If this is given, Feel Good Management measures have proven to create a win-win situation for both management and the team. There are a bunch of great examples of companies that understood that wellbeing, appreciation and fun are decisive for their economic success (e.g. Google and Facebook). However, it is still important to concentrate on your own employees and colleagues. Feel Good Management isn’t a concept you decide on and then keep for the next years. You need to understand the needs of your team every day anew – keep asking, improving and implementing, because they know best what makes them feel good. And in return they know, what’s best for your company :).
STYLIGHT’s rapidly growing success and high employee retention rate proves us right – Feel Good Management has supported STYLIGHT in fostering and maintaining our company culture, a decisive factor leading us to where we are now; an internationally successful company!
TGIF (Thank God it’s Friday!) in our office
Welcoming another kind of STYLIGHT family member 😉
Public viewing of the Soccer World Cup Finale in our office – of course with a bavarian music, food & beer.
STYLIGHT goes Wiesn
Sometimes you just need slots where you can hang out, relax, meet your colleagues or just work in a different environment than your working desk.
Yummy pizza from the food truck “Nappo amo” that treats us every second Tuesday.
And even STYLIGHT babies!
|By Carina Meyer|
STYLIGHT is One of the Top 10 Companies in Bavaria!
… maybe due to our awesome HR Team? We think so! That’s why Carina Meyer, Feel Good Manager at STYLIGHT, got interviewed by Antenne Bayern about what she actually does. What do you have in mind when thinking about a manager? Probably not a young, ambitious woman organizing team events, motivating all employees, and creating a healthier workplace for everyone. Want to know how Carina helps everyone at STYLIGHT to enjoy their work? Listen to the full interview here! (German)
| By Nina Kricke|
