Oxygen is a breath of fresh air

By ADAM GIFFORD

The fresh fruit in the lunch rooms at Oxygen, which staff can snack on after their lunchtime yoga class, isn't there as some random act of management benevolence.

It is part of the investment the IT services firm is making in becoming a values-based organisation, an investment chief executive Mike Smith says is showing up in the bottom line of Oxygen and parent company Carter Holt Harvey.

Oxygen's earnings before interest and tax is running at 128 per cent of target this year, after quadrupling between 2002 and last year.

Since Smith joined the company two years ago, staff numbers have grown from 220 to 350. "We are growing so fast, it is important to create a culture to arrive at," Smith says.

"There is also the cliche that your people are your best assets. We don't really have any other assets. The quality of our team is the quality of what we can do."

Smith started the values process by pinning a few value statements to the wall, such as "act smart" and "think to win", but it became more formal a year ago when new human resources manager Natasha Whiting brought in consultants the Zone.

Whiting says as Oxygen moved from being Carter Holt's in-house IT organisation to being a standalone company with a range of customers across New Zealand and Australia, it had to find new ways to work.

"The Carter Holt culture was not as customer-oriented as it could be. We were also trying to bring in new people with fresh ideas," Whiting says.

"We ran focus groups with staff, did an e-survey and got feedback on the values they thought would be important if they owned the business," she says.

"The staff came up with seven new values: real, grow, support, fun, zest, imagine and shine."

To get the new values and vision across, groups of staff were sent off site for a day to identify their personal values and see how they aligned with the company values.

"That was an eye-opener for people. It is too easy to get caught up in day-to-day things and not see what is important in your own life," Whiting says.

The results came quickly. As part of Carter Holt, Oxygen participates in an international Gallup survey on employee engagement.

Whiting says at the end of 2002, before the values project kicked off, about a quarter of staff members described themselves as passionate and committed to their jobs. By the end of last year, that figure jumped to 40 per cent.

During the same period turnover dropped from 12 per cent to 10 per cent and has stayed at that level, lowering recruitment and training costs.

It has also boosted Oxygen's ability to attract staff, most of whom need to have highly sought-after SAP skills.

"We are getting feedback from people that they want to come to work for us because they like the values focus," Whiting says.

The exercise cost about $340,000, and is not expected to be expensive to maintain. As well as articulating values, the programme involves cosmetic changes to support the culture, such as painting offices, encouraging people to keep cleaner desks and workspaces, running seminars on stress management and healthy living, and offering yoga lessons

"We are also encouraging managers to be better people-managers, which can be challenging in a technology business, where people are often promoted for their technical or functional skills," Whiting says.

"Some people have emotional intelligence and some don't."

Whiting, who started her career as a lawyer, has worked in several large organisations, including Ford and Clear Communications.

"I have seen good and bad cultures and realise culture underpins everything.

"We are making our values overt, but over time they will become subconscious and inherent in the organisation. I see this as a journey. It is not something where we put a big tick in a column and say it is done."

John Dawson from the Zone said his 12-person firm has dropped its recruitment and psychological assessment work and now focuses solely on values-based change.

He says a values-based programme is about how people work together and learn along the way.

"Organisations that do it generally have some vision about being different, being stand-out, being successful, and they want to be here for the long term.

"Also, they need some feeling that there is a purpose for the organisation which is not just about money," Dawson says.

He says Oxygen staff see themselves as being adventurous and "out there" in their area of expertise.

"Their core purpose is to live the Oxygen adventure by being courageous, being creative and making choices."

He says the return on investment from values programmes can be substantially lower staff turnover, an increase in unsolicited job applications, and fewer sick days and absences.

The Zone