How Sun Microsystems Fans the Flames of Employee Passion

How does an organization like Sun Microsystems create a workplace where employees love to come to work?  Bill MacGowan Chief Human Resource Officer for Sun Microsystems, was gracious enough to share some of their best practices.

He told me that they value and appreciate good, smart people who enjoy change, innovation, and other people.  “ Leadership at Sun has been successful at creating a real meritocracy. We allow people to speak their minds, and not be afraid to learn from failure.”  One of the key elements in creating workplaces where employees love to do their best work is to listen to their ideas and give them freedom to act.

 I was impressed by that statement as I’d just worked with an executive of another organization who was particularly harsh on employees any time an idea failed, and he wondered why employees seemed less willing to participate and make new suggestions. 

I asked Bill how Sun developed so much of the loyalty that I had heard their employees express. He spoke about Sun’s flexibility. “ We appreciate that people do their best work in different ways, so we allow our employees to work from home when possible. If an employee doesn’t need to make the commute but they prefer not to work at home, we have satellite centers where they can work that are closer to their homes.”

That made sense to me since so much time spent on the road is wasted and interferes with either personal time or productivity time. 

Their flexibility, plus their fitness center, childcare, and the way they use technology encourages life balance. I asked him how he set the example for everyone else. He told me that he works hard during the week so he can enjoy weekends. His collects rare books, is a sports fan, loves movies, opera, travel and enjoys his role on non-profit boards.

 MacGowan went on to tell me that executive leadership supports diversity and inclusion and both are integrated into their business culture, from the Board of Directors to employee orientation where a message is delivered from the CEO.  I’ve found that too many organizations speak about diversity and inclusion but their succession strategy does not reflect it. At Sun, they find and nurture high potential candidates at every level who may not be visible, rather than restrict development to certain levels of management. 

Like other organizations Sun has Employee Resource Groups that represent different employee population segments, but unlike some other organizations they view these resources groups as crucial to their business success so they fund them and include them in their overall business strategy.

One-way to gage how employees feel about their workplace is by how they treat people when lay-offs are unavoidable, and what ex-employees say after they leave.

At Sun they encourage remaining employees to keep in contact with people who have left as opposed to employers that discourage any contact and treat laid-off employees like pariahs. Bill informed me that there were even networks of ex-employees who support each other.  Eighty percent of people that leave want to come back and many have been hired back when there were new openings.

I know that these are stressful times for Sun employees as the merger process continues with Oracle. Time tables change, no one knows exactly what will happen to their jobs, or where they’ll be a year from now, but they have a strong culture, believe in treating employees like adults and providing them with information, and there are leaders like Bill MacGowan who take the time to listen to concerns, appreciate employee brilliance and support them as they continue in their work.

Simma Lieberman