Incentive - January 2008 - (Page 39)

I magine that you’re the owner of a small home construction company in a small town in Alaska. You run it with two of your sons and a few employees, and is as much an extended family as a business. You get an unexpected phone call one afternoon from a producer for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He tells you they’d like your company to build a house for the show. You get the details. Not only would this be for no pay and you’d need to put much of your other business on hold for weeks while working on the project, you will also need to gather the subcontractors, suppliers and volunteers to make this happen. You will need to get them to do this for no pay—or very little pay—as well. You would also need to have the house built, to the last shingle and welcome mat, in six weeks from now; so if you say yes, you need to start immediately. This is essentially the phone call that Dave Miller, owner and president of Landmark Inc., a company specializing in creating cozy homes in the often freezing town of Fairbanks, Alaska, received earlier this year. “I had never seen the show, and I was very skeptical about the whole possibility,” says Miller. “We’re a really small company. It’s me and my boys and three or four other employees.” But after considering what the producers told him about the project, and the incentives he saw in taking part, Miller signed on to build a home for the 13-member Rogers family who lived nearby in a tiny two-bedroom home. Landmark, Inc. had to help wrangle hundreds of “blue shirt” volunteers for the project Jodie Guthrie and Carol Helms look at plans for the Legend Homes build While the program generally focuses on the work of the stylish designers who host the show and devise the bells and whistles to get the “oh my gosh!” reactions from the families, it is Landmark and the other often “We realized we were going to get a lot more out of it than helping this one particular family.” –Garo Hovnanian, J.S. Hovnanian & Sons Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which has recently entered its fifth season on ABC, is an unabashed tearjerker. It finds families in the midst of serious challenges, often due to the disability, or sometimes loss, of a family member, and gives them a fresh start with a brand-new home and an outpouring of kind gifts and gestures. small, home-building companies, that actually gather most of the resources, hammer the nails and lay the pipes. That these companies not only agree to put forward this much effort, but actually pull it off in spite of the difficulties involved, demonstrates motivation on a grand scale. A look at several of these companies and what inspired Photos: Landmark, Inc their significant level of effort in the EM:HE projects offers insight for other companies seeking to motivate employees, if on a more modest scale. “Everybody just dove in. The story of the family, and especially the little daughter, was pretty compelling,” says Jim Chapman, president of Portland, Ore.–based Legend Homes, speaking about the Byers family and their eight-year-old daughter Boey, who is fighting a rare form of childhood cancer. Legend oversaw the rebuilding of the family’s home, making major renovations and improvements, including the eradication of the mold and toxins that were raising concerns for the children’s health. Certainly the publicity of being on a major network show, and the exciting circus of producers and cameras that descended on the small towns, stoked the enthusiasm of participants. But the home builders emphasized that there were more significant motivators at play. “We realized we were going to get a lot more out of it than just being able to help this one particular family,” says Garo Hovnanian, director of marketing for Mt. Laurel, N.J.–based home builder J.S. Hovnanian & Sons. “I think the promise of how much it’s going to bring us all together to accomplish this one very extreme goal incentivemag.com | January 2008 | Incentive | 39 http://incentivemag.com

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Incentive - January 2008 Contents Editor’s Note: Out of SITE In The News Cover Story: Include a Meeting, Improve Morale Case Study: DHL Delivers Recognition Incentive Primer: How To Use Promo Products How Bob Nardelli Rallied Chrysler’s Dealers Incentive Interview: Ken Blanchard Says Be Nice TV’s Extreme Makeover Motivates Giving Pre-Employment Motivation The Daycare Dilemma Happy Employees Shouldn’t Mix with Sick Employees Incentive Research: Consumer Promotions Report In Her Shoes: Winning Approval Of Flextime Travel News Field Report: Barcelona Field Report: Bermuda Golf: Follow The Pros potentials Here and Now Watches As Jewelry Awards: Online Gift Cards Tech Gadgets for 2008 Last Word: Stanley Bing Bashes Bully Bosses

Incentive - January 2008

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