Page 203 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

190B RE-ENGAGE

Many of them care because their leaders care. We see evidence that lead-
ers at the Best Places to Work make sure managers care in several ways:

: By emphasizing the importance of employee development
from the top down
: By making it clear that they expect managers to mentor and
rewarding those who do
: By selecting and promoting managers who are naturally in-
clined to be people developers
: By making sure every manager knows that they do not “own”
the employee and that there will be no hoarding of talent or
blocking of lateral moves and reassignments if they serve the
organization’s needs and allow the employee to grow
: By stressing to managers the importance of anticipating em-
ployee restlessness and knowing which kinds of assignments
will motivate which employees
: By knowing that training makes employees stay and keep
learning more often than it makes them want to take what
they’ve learned and go elsewhere 1

: THE RACKERMOBILE, SUGAR BEAR, AND FANATICAL
ENGAGEMENT: THE RACKSPACE HOSTING STORY

You may think that all the above practices are just common sense,
but as we know, they are certainly not common practice. Our part-
ners at Quantum Workplace informed us that Rackspace Hosting,
a global provider of tailored hosting based in San Antonio, Texas,
was the highest-scoring Best-Places employer on this driver. As we
conducted our in-depth interviews for each of the six Universal En-
gagement Drivers, we contacted Rackspace leaders and employees to
gain insight into how the company was getting such high marks from
their employees in general and on this driver in particular. Here’s
the story: