Fostering an environment of Growth, Innovation and Opportunity.
Like many modern businesses, we challenge our employees to continue personal and professional development. We offer tuition reimbursement, a generous PTO plan, professional development reimbursement, and other learning opportunities. We also facilitate quarterly challenges and semi-annual goal setting. After 24 years in business, and with many of our employees having 10+ year tenures, we are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to help our team accomplish self-betterment and development.
As a new approach to group learning and team building, we recently started a Business Hours Book Club. The idea was simple. There are a lot of obstacles to carving out time for personal and professional development with our busy lives and, time demands. The idea of reading business related materials certainly may not get everyone excited, even though many of these books contain creative ways to approach challenges that arise in work AND our daily lives both.
Enter the Benelogic Business Hours Book Club. We invited employees to join to allow them to volunteer for the opportunity. The book is selected by the member of the prior book club group. Its title is shared with the new group of prospective book club members. The company pays for the book to be delivered. Selected chapters are “assigned” and collectively the club decides the best meeting cadence. Meetings do not exceed one hour but may happen weekly or monthly as scheduling permits.
Employees can use work time to read, and then meet and discuss, the contents of the assigned chapters. The club always includes members of senior management. This affords a new way of interacting between management and staff – to break down barriers, humanize one another, share ideas and perspectives, regardless of job title or position.
One of the unexpected but delightful side effects are the conversations sparked by the books. One recent session resulted in the creation of a sabbatical program which has greatly benefited our employee and strengthened our organization. Definitely a Win-Win!
Not every book’s content is an overwhelming success, but the Benelogic Business Hours Book Club always gives us the opportunity to mature in how we learn and grow interpersonally and as a company. That is important to us. Growth, innovation, and always seeing the newest challenge as an opportunity to work as a team to become better.
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