Improving Reviews

It has been a while since Improving has received feedback of this nature. While it could be convenient to dismiss criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic, I personally believe it is important that our leadership team takes input of all types very seriously regardless of the circumstances. In addition, I strive to make myself available for direct feedback, and I invite the author (or others who may read this) to reach out to me directly if they feel it is more beneficial. Your feedback on the EIP (Employee Involvement Program) is appreciated. Our intended purpose is to encourage engagement, camaraderie, and growth within Improving. With more than a hundred self selected activities, we hope to provide a wide variety of activities in which employees can find fulfillment while being involved at Improving. Lack of participation in a particular program does not reflect negatively on an employee. Based on your feedback, I will reiterate this at our town hall meeting next week. Admittedly, the next portion of this feedback was a little harder to hear. Whether we agree or not is not as important as objectively listening to the input. As the author suggests, we are in some obviously unprecedented times; and, like most companies, we are looking for ways to successfully navigate the hardships and uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, Improving has not qualified for the small business economic stimulus packages and is moving forward without some of these safety nets. More than a month ago, when our leadership team began our business continuity planning, the very first slides presented were our guiding principles. Everyone has been encouraged to regularly review them as a reminder of who we aspire to be, especially in the presence of adversity. Again, it is difficult to hear that from your perspective we have failed to live into those principles. All of the things you have mentioned - trust, conscious capitalism, stakeholder models, and actually much more remain at the heart of our intent. We have tried to be transparent with our employees, treat everyone with respect, and strongly consider our stakeholders even when our own customers may not be in a position to do the same. Obviously, we have missed our intent in this case. A few of the trust behaviors we aspire to are listening first and getting better. In that light, I want to extend the invitation for us take the time to listen to your perspective in more detail (please contact me or any of our leadership teams). While we can not change history, we can certainly Improve our decisions and actions in the future.

We understand this response is lengthy, however we wanted to provide a response for each of the points. In reading this, it seems there is some confusion about our involvement program and it’s intent. Typically, it is difficult to measure the effort of employees or to show our appreciation when they go above and beyond. Since one of our values is involvement, we developed The Employee Involvement Program (which I believe is what you are referring to) This program has specified over a hundred ways in which employees individually contribute beyond their normal job. While a modest bonus results from this, the primary objective is to provide visibility to the executives so that none of the employees efforts go unnoticed. Secondly, in order to “share in the success” of the company, we wait until the end of the year for the 401k match to be based on a minimum profitability for that year. This approach has resulted in Improving maxing the benefit 16 out of the 17 years it’s been in business, with the only year that it was paid out but not maxed was 2020 (COVID). Lastly, this is a common misunderstanding of a conscious business. The end goals of these businesses are to do good in the world by balancing purpose and profitability in a sustainable way. This is something Improving is very passionate about and for anyone that wants to understand more about this way of doing business, we welcome a conversation.