Enemy Territory

The Salesforce Story

In 1994 Kevin Panozza, with a team of 14 employees, established Salesforce in partnership with a New York advertising agency DDB. The concept of a call centre was relatively new in Australia and Panozza's first client was his former employer, Ansett Airlines. He says: "The Australia-based DDB sales director, Tom Dery, approached me to set up a call centre for Flybuys; we still have that business today."

Salesforce now has an annual turnover of more than $250 million but its head office is far from corporate in appearance. Senior management are all casually dressed, office spaces are colourful and highly personalised, and the sneaker-clad chief executive officer refuses to have a computer in his office. Panozza says: "I'm not burdened by email; I prefer to talk to people."

Salesforce now employs more than 5000 people and its clients include Telstra, Transurban, Medibank Private and Jetstar. Panozza says: "Our clients are typically the dominant company in their field. I can't think of  a major client we've lost in 14 years."

The Challenge

Fostering employee engagement.

The Solution

The structured and regimented environment of a large call centre seems an unlikely place to find an engaged workforce but Kevin Panozza really does believe in ensuring that his team are content at work. He says: "Our logic is that conversations are the centrepiece of commerce - we say markets are conversations. We understand that to hold a successful conversation you need to be in a good environment."

In 2007, Salesforce was awarded the Hewitt Best Employer of the Year award. Participating companies undertake a comprehensive survey that measures employee engagement using three scales: say (speak positively about the workplace), stay (choose to remain at the workplace) and strive (exert effort to achieve business success). Panozza says: "We decided to become a best employer and we've done what had to be done to create a best employer environment."

Panozza has identified what he calls the ‘eight enemies of engagement', which he believes create low staff engagement and bad corporate culture. He says: "I was constantly being asked to speak to people who wanted to know what we did as a company to create this culture. These eight enemies are the result."

The Eight Enemies are:

1. Uniformity
   
2. Rule-driven behaviour
   
3. The colour grey
   
4. Isolation
   
5. Being taken for granted
   
6. Being thrown in the deep end
   
7. Lack of career opportunity
   
8. Boredom

In Panozza's view, isolation is one of the key attributes of an unhealthy corporate culture. He says: "It is incredibly common for senior executives to come to work on a Monday, slip into their office, send emails and their PA's entire role is to isolate them."

This sense of isolation is commonly found in call centres where staff members wear headsets and spend their days staring at a computer screen. To counter this, Salesforce encourages one-on-one dialogue between employees and their supervisors. Panozza says: "Every employee has the right to ten minutes honest feedback with their supervisor every fortnight. In fact the only solution for isolation is communication - genuine two-way communication between colleagues, between supervisors and agents, and between any manager and anyone else. My door is always open to anyone."

In 2005 an official employee recognition program was established to foster a sense of group achievement. Panozza says: "Another enemy of engagement is taking people for granted. We awarded more than 36,000 certificates last year in various areas: sales, attendance, on-time performance, personal development and training. All of these are awarded by a senior manager in a group environment, daily, all around the country."

The Salesforce team have a casual dress code and office areas are brightly coloured. This fits in with Panozza's theory that drab work spaces do nothing to motivate staff. He says: "Grey is another enemy of engagement; every floor here is colourful and clearly Salesforce. We don't have a dress code; as long as staff are presentable they are welcome at work."

The buoyant local employment market has made the search for new employees tougher. Panozza says: "I'm not a Generation Y expert but many of them have very strong convictions about who they will work for. In a company like ours, they will be choosing it for the social and cultural environment. We have to make the most of our best employer status."

The Result

Salesforce has been awarded the Australian Hewitt Best Employer of the year in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Since 2005 the Salesforce workforce has tripled in size, yet the measures of employee engagement remain high. Panozza says: "A highly engaged workforce translates into a high-performance workplace."

Panozza is aware that all senior managers have been approached to work for other organisations for higher salaries but all remain with Salesforce. He says: "If you discount the weekend and sleeping, you spend half your life at work, our people understand that sometimes getting an extra $30,000 a year may not equate to a better lifestyle."

Call centres are notorious for their high attrition rate, typically over 30% annually. Panozza says: "Attrition is always high in this field and as the team grows it becomes more difficult to maintain. We estimate our attrition rate to be about 10% less than other similar businesses."

In 2005 Salesforce was sold to Salmat for $64 million; Panozza remains as CEO.

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