Blog Post 3 - Employee Environment

Employee Environment

Welcome back to my blog section.  Thank you for following this blog series and supporting my Kickstarter project.  I plan to discuss the employee environment that will be created within US Designs to include standard benefit packages, training, and reward systems. 

The standard employee benefit package that US Designs plans to offer will be health, vision, and dental insurance.  The goal is to offer these benefits within the first quarter.  While this might be difficult to do, within a small company with less than 50 employees, I plan to overcome this obstacle by hiring a payroll service company.  By using this service to oversee my payroll, I will be able to offer group insurance plans to all of my workers.  Additional insurance coverage like life insurance will follow.

Training and furthering one’s knowledge has always been important to me and I want to offer this opportunity to my staff.  Starting with one-on-one training programs that will allow unskilled workers to enter the shop and begin adding important skills to their toolbox.  Time will be invested every week allowing these unskilled workers to fine tune their skill set under the supervision of other workers.  Mentoring and journeyman training programs will be implemented within the first six to twelve months.  During that time, I plan to implement a tuition reimbursement program that will allow employees the opportunity to further their education.

I came up with a rough idea with a point reward system many years ago.  It is a system I plan to implement within the first year of operation.  The idea came from the acknowledgement that companies only awarded negative points to an individual for negative actions such as tardiness, absenteeism, or other mistakes the employee might have made.  While this will be half of the system I plan to implement, the other half will be a reward system for employees. 

Positive points will be earned by my employees for positive contributions to the company.  Such as, working overtime, contributing ideas, cost-saving measures, and any other positive actions to help benefit US Designs as a whole.  A quarterly review will be done of an individual’s points at which time bonuses and pay raises will be based on these actions.  This program while still in an early state will allow an individual to correct negative actions with positive points as well will allow ambitious individuals the opportunity to shine within the company. 

While some of these programs might seem far-reaching, these are the obstacles I plan to devote time to for my employees.  While my customers are valuable to US Designs, my employees are the backbone to the success of US Designs.  These programs and more are what I plan to offer my employees.  This is the work environment you are supporting through Kickstarter.  It is important to me that you know that you are supporting a great overall company with your pledge to my Kickstarter project.  As always, click this link to support the Kickstarter project and to all of those who have already pledged I thank you for your contribution.  I hope you will continue to follow my future blogs.