Oc Tanner Quotes

Recognition of hard work matters, especially when it comes to retaining talent. A decades-long study of two hundred thousand managers and employees conducted by OC Tanner found that 79 percent of people who leave their jobs cite “lack of appreciation” as a primary reason.

It was in this crucible that Murdock and his team reshaped the culture of O.C. Tanner. “We tweaked it,” he said. “We didn’t want to touch the core values—the integrity, the commitment to continuous improvement, the customer intimacy. Obert believed in truth, goodness, and beauty, and so did the rest of us. But we had to add some new values, like humility and learning. Those came from me because I didn’t know what to do.” Murdock also encouraged a level of debate that hadn’t gone on previously. “We got into a Hegelian dialectic. I wanted forces to clash so that synergy could emerge. Before, bad news would stay down, out of sight. I wanted a war of ideas, and no silos. Anyone could speak to anyone else.

One of his first moves was to open the books to the managers. Up to that point, only a handful of them had known the company’s actual profitability. When the others looked at the numbers, they were shocked. They had thought the business was making a lot more money than it was. Murdock pressed them to ask basic questions about where O.C. Tanner was going. He brought fifty-three people together from all over the company and challenged them to define what business they were really in, what value they should be offering customers, and what changes they would have to make for the company to be the best at what it did. Out of the discussions came a consensus that O.C. Tanner had to transform itself from a service-award manufacturer into a company that helped customers set up and operate employee recognition programs. It was a major change in perspective, and it required the company to make a series of seven “strategic bets,” as Murdock called them: (1) embrace reality; (2) define the strategy; (3) get the right people in place; (4) get marketing into the company; (5) harness technology first; (6) change the culture; and (7) improve operations.