In(c)ights | How One Nonprofit Keeps Its Employees Happy, Year After Year
MITRE’s inclusion on Fortune’s 2008 list of the 100 best companies to work for marked the seventh consecutive year the nonprofit R&D organization has been so honored. The secret to its success? Keeping its ears open.
“We listen to our employees,” Bill Albright, MITRE’s director of quality of work life and benefits, tells the 501(c) Files. “We ask them questions about some things they think they need by way of surveys, and we also administer a biennial employee engagement survey. We take those results very seriously and try to respond to them to the extent we can.”
Albright notes that the aspects cited by Fortune — MITRE’s learning environment, policies regarding work-life balance, and flexible work arrangements — are embedded in the company’s corporate culture.
“The company has three major values that w try to tie all of our work and programs to, and one of those is ‘People in Partnership,’” he says. “We try to help employees to achieve work-life balance to the extent that we can. We put a number of programs and policies in place to facilitate that and make that a reality.”
MITRE must be doing something right with respect to its employees; seven years in a row is no accident. Albright believes the organization’s success lies in its commitment to asking those who work for it what they want and need — and then following up as much as it possibly can.
“Listening to them and responding to the feedback they’re providing you is essential to any organization, nonprofit or for-profit,” he says.
In(c)ights, an interview with a nonprofit professional, will appear regularly in the 501(c) Files. | 501(c)
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