How the Motley Fool cultivates loyal employees

Laura Garnett of Inc. magazine recently spoke to Lee Burbage, chief people officer at The Motley Fool, to learn more about how the personal finance news company fosters an environment that creates a loyal workforce.

Here is an excerpt:

What are some of the fun perks that you provide at The Motley Fool and how have they impacted the employees lives and added to the culture of trust?

We have very low turnover. We believe strongly that this is the last job anyone is going to want to have. It’s freeing when you think in terms of a long term. One area that we are huge on is wellness. When you work here and think of working here for your entire career, we want you to be healthy. We have a full-time wellness coach to help choose healthy foods. We have healthy snacks. Fruit and vegetables are available at all times. Autonomy is also huge for us. We have no vacation policy — we have done that for 20 years. We let people decide when they come to work and how much time they take off. It’s kind of ridiculous that companies trust people with millions of dollars but not their vacation. We also offer manicures and haircuts. And when you join the company, you get $1,000 to invest and you are taught by experts in house.

So how much vacation time do people end up taking?

We get asked this a lot. We don’t have any idea, because we don’ttrack it. We have lost the ability to track it. I don’t think it’s realistic to track. We are transparent and we have a monthly meeting where we go through all our financials. Our goal is for you to know everything all the time. One of the fun things we do is at the end of the meeting is draw a name out of the hat. The number of years you have been in the company determines the number of times your name is in the hat. If chosen, you have to take two weeks off in the next month. This is our way of making people know we are serious about people taking time off.

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