What it takes

By Tom Dennis

When Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, wrote in Prairie Business about the region’s labor shortage, he had plain English advice for employers: Raise wages. Increase benefits, too.

And if he’d wanted to, Kashkari could have pointed to Stoneridge Software of Barnesville, Minn., and Minneapolis as Exhibit A.

In August, Inc. magazine ranked Stoneridge the 12th-fastest-growing private company in Minnesota. The company was founded in 2012 with only three employees. Now it has 80, and 20 of those 80 were hired just this year.

If you set the bar at competence, how do you reach excellence?

What’s the secret to the successful draw?

Lots of factors. But here are a few:

Benefits

“We have been fortunate to keep our benefits at a very low or no cost to employees,” said Briana Scearcy, Stoneridge Software’s chief people officer, in an interview with Prairie Business.

For example, “Stoneridge pays 100 percent of the premium for single as well as family health insurance.

“The company also covers single and family dental insurance.”

More benefits

Stoneridge also provides “very generous” contributions to employees’ health savings accounts each year, Scearcy said.

Still more benefits

“And next year, we are moving from a traditional PTO or Paid Time Off policy to what we are calling unlimited time off.”

The policy will be just that, Scearcy said: as long as the employee’s work is being done and team is on track, that worker can determine for himself or herself the amount of time off.

“The focus for the manager and the team members will be on quality of work versus quantity of hours,” Scearcy said.

“That just speaks, I think, to the level of trust and flexibility that we have with our team.”

Workplace culture with the worker in mind

As important to the label of “great place to work” is the workplace environment. Stoneridge takes pains to keep that environment upbeat. The methods include Beer and Pizza, a Thursday-at-noon tradition in which workers can walk down the street to enjoy lunch in a local pool hall; Officevibe, a weekly five-question survey that employees answer anonymously, and that Stoneridge uses to make improvements; weekly all-staff meetings to keep everyone informed; and a company-wide commitment to frequent – not just annual – employee and manager evaluation sessions.

“It’s refreshing when you hear about companies that are willing to take pretty radical risks for the benefit of their people,” Scearcy said.

“We’re not successful because of what we do. It’s who we have on our team to do it. We want to do anything and everything that we can to take care of those people and make sure they want to stick with us for the long haul.” PB

Tom Dennis EDITOR, PRAIRIE BUSINESS 701-780-1276

Congratulations, Karl!