Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to employee perks, the startup Boxed is clearly thinking outside of the cardboard containers for which it’s named.

Boxed CEO Chieh Huang announced last week that the company will pay for employees’ weddings, up to $20,000.

Last year the company, an online Costco-like retailer, said it would pay for employees’ kids to attend college. As of this September, Boxed is footing tuition bills for five students, including one who’s headed to Brown University in September.

“Free snacks get old,” Huang told The Huffington Post, explaining that college and weddings are more important than the happy hours, snacks and ping-pong tables you’d find at other startups. “I just want to do the stuff that really matters.”

The wedding perk wasn’t just some lavish benefit dreamed up inside Huang’s office. It happened because one of the startup’s workers needed help.

Marcel Graham, a 26-year-old packer making $13 an hour in the company’s Edison, New Jersey, fulfillment center had been working 7 days a week, two shifts a day to save for his wedding. But he wound up spending his savings to help pay his mother’s medical bills. With his wedding coming up, he felt desperate. He recently cried at work on the warehouse floor.

Huang called him that night to find out what was going on. “We had to step in and do the right thing,” Huang told HuffPost.

He pointed out that at most companies, if the boss needs you — to pull an all-nighter, work extra shifts, etc. — most workers will step up. If you reverse the scenario, though, most employers aren’t there for their workers. “If someone is in a life-altering situation, most companies will not help them,” Huang said.

Huang arranged to bring Graham’s fiancee, Tara Aucoin, to the fulfillment center and announced the new wedding perk to everyone there.

“It was overwhelming, that Boxed would pay for my wedding,” Graham said in a press release. “I was in tears, and so was my fiancee. It just makes me feel that they appreciate my work here.”

HuffPost asked Huang why he wouldn’t just give workers like Graham a raise, erasing the need to get help with weddings or school tuition. He said a raise wouldn’t be enough.

“Even if we doubled wages, they wouldn’t be able to pay” for college tuition or weddings, he said.

The 34-year-old Huang, who spent roughly $14,000 on his own wedding about six years ago, said he is aware of about four more weddings coming up, three involving workers in the company’s fulfillment centers.

Boxed, which Fortune dubbed the “millennial Costco,” recently raised $100 million and this week announced an investment from American Express. Ultimately, Huang said he’d like to take the company public.

When it comes to treating employees well, Boxed seems to have taken a cue from the very company it seeks to “disrupt.” Costco is known for paying its hourly workers well and treating them with respect.

Boxed employees have more in common with Costco workers than they do with the highly paid and perked up employees of Silicon Valley companies who pull in six figures and likely don’t need much help with weddings or anything else. Many of Boxed’s approximately 125 employees work in fulfillment centers, making an average of $14 an hour.

Boxed gives these hourly workers the same benefits as salaried ones. They are very good benefits, including health insurance and — notably — unlimited sick time and vacation time.

Parental leave is unlimited, as well. And unlike Netflix, which calls its 12-month leave policy “unlimited,” there’s no maximum, Huang said. He leaves it up to workers to decide how much time is right.

“I remind everyone that this is a system of trust. You don’t want to be the person that messes it up for everyone. You can’t, like, fuck off to Nepal for six weeks without telling anyone.”

The longest parental leave taken so far was a little over seven months, he said. And “she’s gonna be pregnant again soon,” Huang said this woman told him. “If she needs another seven or eight months, then so be it.”

Only two people have ever left the company, Huang added.

I mean, yeah.

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Photo: Shutterstock

I am a 46-year-old woman. Like many middle aged women of my generation – the first to be raised with a nearly unlimited buffet of life options – I’m not ashamed of being 46.  I don’t lie about my age.  I don’t pretend I’m younger.  And I don’t try to hide it.

One of the ways I don’t hide is by not coloring my hair. I never have, and neither did my mother. She was an excellent hair role model in more ways than one, since her black hair was only partially grey when she died at 55.  To be fair, I inherited excellent DNA from her and my dad who, at age 71, has only a small bald spot nestled among his thick head of hair that’s not yet entirely grey.  While I do take good care of my tresses, I enjoy hair privilege by having been bestowed by genetics with thick, naturally auburn waves.  Such hair privilege enables me to get away more easily with sporting a growing thatch of “wisdom highlights” sprouting from my top of my scalp, but this unearned privilege only takes the edge off my subversive attitude.

My attitude is this: age is nothing to be ashamed of, and therefore grey hair is nothing to be ashamed of.  Covering my greys with toxic chemicals would not only be hazardous to my precious health, it would be voting with my dollars for an industry that profits mightily from making women feel insecure and ashamed of our bodies starting in childhood.  Covering my greys would be saying “yes” to the notion that I, as a woman, am only valuable or attractive if I look “young.”  It would be saying yes to the idea that age, and its physical signs, are something to be feared, denied and hidden – that I need to pretend to be something other than I am to be deemed worthy.  It would mean I agree with the belief that a woman’s only power stems from her being “sexy” in public.

I didn’t come to my no-color decision lightly. I used to pluck out my greys, but stopped on my 35^th birthday since baldness isn’t one of my goals.  My intent has long been to age gracefully, but the recent accelerated pace of that process (thanks, perimenopause!) has created doubt.  Not only am I single and looking, I have a profession that puts my face in media, on stage, and in front of well-paying clients.  I never realized how much my physical appearance has likely contributed to my professional appeal.  I never realized until I suddenly found myself in the middle of my lifespan that the second half of my career will happen amidst a steady loss of physical attractiveness – a quality I’ve taken for granted and unknowingly leveraged to offset the harmful impact of sexism.

Another challenge is the rarely-stated belief that to be a woman and look “professional” is to not look “old,” meaning grey.  I encountered this belief when I got professional headshots done last fall.  I have them redone every 5 years for the same reasons I rock my greys, and because I believe in truth in advertising.  Like some female celebrities, I told the photographer to not make me look 30, and I told the studio to not eliminate wrinkles and greys in the finishing.  The fact that they took them out anyway – and I found myself in the weird position of telling a service provider twice to not artificially “enhance” my image – was more humiliating than if I’d had to request retouching.  Their actions communicated that not only is my natural state inherently flawed, so was my expressed wish to remain in that natural state.

It’s time to build on the past and redefine aging and womanhood again. Baby Boomer women were the first to shatter social barriers, achievement expectations, sports records and glass ceilings.  Today, they defy the “old” label and are redefining what it means to be older (some are even rocking long grey hair) – but while eschewing the label.  It’s time for Generation X women to take the next step and flaunt not only the signs of aging but wear the label of “old” and “older” with shameless pride.  

Some say the best way to change society is to infiltrate existing social structures by complying with their norms, then bust them open from the inside. I say that tactic invites complacency and assimilation more often than evolution.  Change comes perhaps more quickly by conforming just enough to avoid triggering shock and revulsion, while pushing boundaries just enough to shift what’s viewed as normal and acceptable.  I got my first tattoo in 1992 when no young college-educated, middle class woman who wasn’t part of a biker gang or illicit drug culture was getting inked.  I got my nose pierced when I was 42 and it was against dress code.  Meanwhile I was wearing business suits, delivering results at work, paying my bills and otherwise acting like a “respectable” adult.  I don’t take credit for singlehandedly shifting U.S. culture (around body modification), but it’s thousands of small acts like mine that do.

The same goes for grey hair. Women won’t shift shaming, toxic, oppressive notions about how we’re supposed to look and act by playing along.  We must stop participating and voting with our dollars for practices that promote the idea that our natural state – at any life phase – is wrong.

I don’t know what my next phase holds. Things change and so do we.  My own hair-role-model mother admitted that if she got pregnant late in life she’d dye her hair in a second.  But for now, I’m a 46-year-old woman, I’m going grey, and I will not apologize for either.  Neither is shameful, and therefore I will not hide.

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It seems that the world is abuzz with thoughts of creating the next big tech startups, with the prospects of such innovations touted on both individual and societal levels.

For instance, a soon to be published paper from Rotman academic Laura Doering highlights the entrepreneurial potential of poor communities in Panama. Such communities have just as much potential as richer communities, they say, but they struggle to sustain those businesses into profitability compared to their richer peers.

“Poorer entrepreneurs often don’t get the chance to profit from the creativity that they’re bringing to market,” the authors say. “It helps us understand why entrepreneurship generally doesn’t serve as an avenue for economic mobility for the poor.”

The start-up bubble

The study was pertinent because this week I attended the launch of a new co-working facility in the London borough of Croydon. The facility, called TMRW, is part of a multi-billion pound effort to regenerate a part of London that is perhaps typified by the 2011 images of rioting and looting in the area.

The facility was literally drowning in kool aid, and Francois Mazoudier, CEO of the facility, told us about the unique lighting in the facility, the Swedish wood that went into the furniture and the Brazilian coffee beans served in the cafe. Heck, they even had beer on site called Cronx in reference to the Bronx part of New York and of course the ubiquitous ping-pong table.

Undoubtedly it will make a nice place to come and perch your laptop and work, but will it do much to help improve the start-up success ratio? After all, it’s well known that 90% of start-ups fail, and of those that do stagger on, 76% of them only employ the founder.

I think this context matters, because there’s an impression that start-ups are cool and trendy and the engines of creation for our economy. Official statistics suggest that self-employment has reached record levels, but this is only likely to boost the economy if those start-ups grow, both in revenue and employment terms.

What it takes to scale

It’s this that’s behind the renewed push by the government away from start-ups and into scale-ups, with this culminating in the Scale Up Report by Sherry Coutu that reinforces the need to focus on growing businesses rather than merely creating them.

A glimpse into just what that requires are provided by a couple of reports produced by INSEAD and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which look at the supporting factors for innovation.

The reports highlight three main things that are crucial to successful growth:

1. High levels of support for innovation – this covers things such as tax incentives for R&D and support in exporting or licensing your inventions
2. Top notch institutions – including high quality universities with strong links between academia and business, a supportive tax environment and political stability
3. Promotion of risk – with a robust framework to mitigate risk and give investors confidence

Which brings me back to Tmrw, as they don’t really provide any of that, instead following the almost identikit formula perfected by the We Work’s of the world in providing somewhere hip and cool for young people to work on businesses that in all likelihood will fail.

It isn’t an official stat, but the Co-Working London website lists 135 such facilities in the capital, all I suspect run along similar lines, and all with very flimsy evidence that they have generated the kind of ‘scale-ups’ that are so valuable.

Less coffee, more support

It’s hard to say if there’s a bubble created here, but if we look at accelerator funds that have a track record of supporting the growth of companies, they appear much less focused on the hip veneer that drips from the walls of most co-working spaces.

For instance, a recent joint report from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge into scale-ups revealed the crucial role managerial support plays.

“Most SMEs experience zero or little growth,” the report says. “Although ‘gazelles’, the companies that grow turnover by 20 per cent for three consecutive years, are much talked about they are in fact a rare species: they are responsible for most of SME growth but they amount to only two per cent to four per cent of SMEs.”

The report goes onto provide a number of key factors that support growth, including having an excellent management team, a strong partnership network and an ability to expand overseas.

With such intense competition in the market, it is perhaps only a matter of time before this bubble bursts and those that go beyond the superficial and who provide their members with these networks and support will survive, and those that focus instead on ping-pong and coffee go to the wall.

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Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility. Peter F. Drucker

In my role, I often meet with employee focus groups and leaders of organizations. While on one side I am privy to what employees think of their manager’s effectiveness, I also see first-hand some of the key mistakes that block managers’ ability to be their best. Below are the top five mistakes I see managers make in their role as manager.

1. I have to focus on getting work done.

I do live in the real world where organizations exist to make money and profits. To this extent, I understand that managers have to meet their own deadlines. They have to get work done.

Having said that, most managers focus too much of their effort on tasks and not on the people who help perform the tasks. These are the same people who can make or break the customer experience and the bottom line.

I challenge managers to schedule in a sliver of time every week to sit with each team member. Having meaningful conversations with team members will actually drive improved performance.

We believe in this so much that we created a Meaningful Conversations tip sheet for managers.Click Here if you need direction.

2. I see what you are doing, but don’t have time to recognize you.

This is a big one!

I don’t think I need to be academic about this concept, because we all crave more consistent recognition. It is such an important driver of employee engagement that Gallup research still lists it as one of the top reasons employees remain with or leave an organization.

If you are a manager, how often do you recognize your team members? Remember, know how your team member likes to receive recognition. Some just don’t like big parties and balloons. Many just prefer a “thank you.”

Be sure to use their name and be as specific as possible about the reason for the recognition. This way, they know what types of behaviors drive positive praise from you.

In order to have long-lasting effects, you want to recognize team members every seven days. I don’t mean you have to give them a party or even give them a ribbon. Keep it simple. If you go too long before praising them, they will forget that positive feeling and that affects performance.

How did you feel the last time your manager recognized you?

Give that same feeling to your team members often!

3. I need to tell you what you are doing wrong and don’t have time to care about how that sounds.

Ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it?”

Managers are in a unique position to be able to use their authority for the betterment of others, or to use it to make others feel awful for their shortcomings or mistakes.

I would caution managers from jumping too quickly to find their team members’ mistakes. If you notice that any one team member’s performance, behavior or attitude is below your standards, sit with them to find out what might be going on to cause such a change.

Let them know that you are concerned about this decline. Offer to provide clear guidance to help them get back on track. They need to know that you are not always judging them. Choose your words carefully in order to avoid creating this perception.

They need to know that you are on their side and will fight for them if they put in the hard work.

The good news?

Managers can control whether or not they make these mistakes and how often they choose to do so. While the power and authority rests on the manager to drive their team forward, the more important thing to remember is to use that power for the good of the team. I know that these mistakes can create a lot of frustration. What other mistakes do you think many managers make? Ideas on how to stop them?
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Thank you for reading this post. I understand the challenges managers experience. Writing from experience, I hope these points drive those reading this in a positive direction for their team members. Please do give it a Like and a Share if you found it valuable. We also really enjoy the back and forth with our readers and would be delighted if you commented.

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What if we’re not an island? What if we weren’t meant to ‘go it alone’?

It’s funny, the way we’re conditioned to rely on community … but at the same time we’re also expected to ‘make it’ on our own.

Today’s way of life sees us funnelled into the drive to success at an early age — albeit disguised under the banner of wanting us to have every advantage. While I have no doubt that this intention is well meaning, it’s created a life of competition, judgement, exhaustion and overwhelm that sees us push ourselves beyond our limits in our quest for success. We justify it to ourselves by claiming that we’ll be set up for our future.

From the second we leave formal schooling — whether that be high school, college or university — we feel the pressure to rise in our career … and quickly! Often after a couple of years out of school we start to fear that we might never amount to much if we haven’t made it already.

We find ourselves constantly busy; there are never enough hours in the day and we often panic about trying to fit everything in and keeping everyone happy. On top of this, we feel the pressure of trying to excel at the requirements of our job so that one day we might be promoted to a better job with more money.

Then there’s the pressure of trying — and feeling like we’re constantly failing — at meeting the same level of commitment that others around us are giving to charitable organizations. Of course you’d love to donate to charitable causes, but you feel pressured to meet high standards and it causes you to feel stressed about earning more money.

Where do you turn?

Most of us start trying to work harder – giving everything we have to everyone else in the hope that someone influential will recognize our efforts. We end up exhausted and secretly terrified that our life will be like this forever.

We can find ourselves turning in every direction looking for answers. We attend every motivational and inspirational event we can find, believing that it will give us the golden nugget we need to accelerate our success. We’re left feeling like our head is constantly spinning, looking for the way to success … but we don’t really know what success looks like.

We end up resigned to the fact that it will most likely be a slog until we retire.

Googling holidays or planning an escape to live on a remote island where we can be carefree forever starts to appear in our day. We don’t want to be totally honest with ourselves because if we were, we’d be completely overwhelmed and have no idea where or how to change things.

What if it doesn’t have to be this way?

What if there’s another way to live … and it doesn’t involve anything more complex than learning to think about things a bit differently?

The first thing to understand is that you’re not alone! A high percentage of the Western population live their lives in exactly the same way that we are currently living. We’ve all jumped on the drive and migration to success – just like everyone around us.

For all of the above reasons we should bother with a mentor.

A mentor can help navigate the minefield of life. You get the benefit of learning from their wisdom, experience and knowledge without having to go through all the pitfalls of their journey. A mentor can help you move out of the cycle you’re currently in and onto a different trajectory in life.

BUT – not all mentors are the same and it’s really important that you work with the right people so you can connect with the wisdom and knowledge that is right for you.

How do you find the right mentor for you?

You can start with these four key steps.

1. Find someone whose values match with yours.

It’s vitally important to find someone who values the same things you do; there’s no point learning from someone who doesn’t place the same importance on things that you do, because it won’t get you anywhere.

2. Find someone who is prepared to share openly with you.

The best way for you to learn is from someone who is prepared to share openly with you. You want to make sure that you’re learning from people who are willing to guide you.

3. Find someone who encourages you to be yourself.

The fastest track to success is always through authenticity. The person you work with should always encourage you to find your own path. If you try to walk someone else’s path in life you’re likely to take a lot of detours until you find your own.

4. Find someone who is going to challenge you to grow.

Make sure you work with someone who is going to encourage you to try new things, think in new ways, develop yourself and grow your knowledge. Anything else is just a nice chat and potentially a nice time … but probably won’t help you break out of the cycle you’re in.

Want to chat about this? Email me on info@sheiqlife.com or call me on +61 438 624 868 and we’ll set up a time!

If you want to access other tools on living and thinking differently, there are loads of tips and tricks in my book ‘Keep It Super Simple‘ – you can buy a copy from my website – www.sheiqlife.com.

Bronwen Sciortino is a global thought leader who empowers simple connection, and is the author of Keep It Super Simple – Tips from a Recovering Perfectionist. Join the conversation by subscribing to the tribe at: www.sheiqlife.com, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

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