Staff do daily squats, eat plant-based lunches, and get a paid week off to “live their best life” – and it pays off for the company
A plant-based diet might not be the entire reason staff at Vega are so happy, but it certainly helps.
At the BC-based health food company, renowned as one of Canada’s best employers, culture and wellbeing are all important.
Employees are daily encouraged to life well – through free, chef-prepared lunches, “squat-o’clock” (where all employees do two minutes of squats each day), and the cherry on top: a paid week off and a bonus for every staff member to “live their best life” if the company overdelivers on sales targets.
“Our culture really looks at the whole person, and helping employees thrive both inside and outside of work,” explains Vega’s people and culture leader Shiah Bazeley.
“We really wanted to find something that would be motivating to everybody as an individual and give them the opportunity to do what was most important to them. It also fit perfectly with our core values of ‘play as a team’ – because it wasn’t about individual performance, it was about that total company performance, and either we achieved it all together or we didn’t, so it was all really about everybody coming together for that one common goal.”
While Vega toyed with the idea of a big company trip as a staff incentive, it realized that time away from family might be hard for some – so instead, it decided to offer all employees a $1000 to $2000 payment, depending on results, and a paid week off to do anything their heart desires.
“Some employees went on epic travel adventures, some spent time with family, some time just took the week off to relax and disconnect,” Bazeley says.
This year, one staffer volunteered in Guatemala, five employees went together to Japan, and another surprised her young son with his first trip to Disneyland, while a working mom took a week to explore England by herself.
To make it work, Vega chooses two weeks, divides the company in half, and those still at work cover those who are off living it up.
“At the end of the day, this is an incentive program, so it is designed to motivate and reward overdelivery and performance, so it’s not just fluff, it’s a strategic initiative to drive performance. And we just designed something that we thought would be motivating to our employees – it was incentive enough and meaningful enough to drive that. Most companies already do have an incentive program, but we decided to do something a little bit different.”
To Vega’s staff, Bazeley says, it’s more meaningful than simply offering a cash bonus.
“[That’s] like ‘great, you can go and pay off some credit card [debt] or put some money on this’, but what we really wanted to have employees gain was an experience and a memory, and give them permission to do something they wouldn’t normally do.”
Related stories:
The real reasons your workers are leaving
Does work-life balance matter more than pay?
At the BC-based health food company, renowned as one of Canada’s best employers, culture and wellbeing are all important.
Employees are daily encouraged to life well – through free, chef-prepared lunches, “squat-o’clock” (where all employees do two minutes of squats each day), and the cherry on top: a paid week off and a bonus for every staff member to “live their best life” if the company overdelivers on sales targets.
“Our culture really looks at the whole person, and helping employees thrive both inside and outside of work,” explains Vega’s people and culture leader Shiah Bazeley.
“We really wanted to find something that would be motivating to everybody as an individual and give them the opportunity to do what was most important to them. It also fit perfectly with our core values of ‘play as a team’ – because it wasn’t about individual performance, it was about that total company performance, and either we achieved it all together or we didn’t, so it was all really about everybody coming together for that one common goal.”
While Vega toyed with the idea of a big company trip as a staff incentive, it realized that time away from family might be hard for some – so instead, it decided to offer all employees a $1000 to $2000 payment, depending on results, and a paid week off to do anything their heart desires.
“Some employees went on epic travel adventures, some spent time with family, some time just took the week off to relax and disconnect,” Bazeley says.
This year, one staffer volunteered in Guatemala, five employees went together to Japan, and another surprised her young son with his first trip to Disneyland, while a working mom took a week to explore England by herself.
To make it work, Vega chooses two weeks, divides the company in half, and those still at work cover those who are off living it up.
“At the end of the day, this is an incentive program, so it is designed to motivate and reward overdelivery and performance, so it’s not just fluff, it’s a strategic initiative to drive performance. And we just designed something that we thought would be motivating to our employees – it was incentive enough and meaningful enough to drive that. Most companies already do have an incentive program, but we decided to do something a little bit different.”
To Vega’s staff, Bazeley says, it’s more meaningful than simply offering a cash bonus.
“[That’s] like ‘great, you can go and pay off some credit card [debt] or put some money on this’, but what we really wanted to have employees gain was an experience and a memory, and give them permission to do something they wouldn’t normally do.”
Related stories:
The real reasons your workers are leaving
Does work-life balance matter more than pay?