Smart Leaders
Accounting for fun
How to create a great company culture
By Kristy J. O’Hara
Smart Business Atlanta | October 2009
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Paul Paris, managing principal, Aarons Grant & Habif LLC
Paul Paris may be the managing principal at Aarons Grant & Habif LLC, but you may also catch him at the office in his Jewish rapper persona, “Paulie P,” complete with baggy T-shirt, personalized baseball cap, dreads and sunglasses. Rapping for employees is one way that Paris likes having fun and showing his 62 employees that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
“If you can make fun of yourself, then people can lighten up,” he says. “You open the door. … Most people can make fun of themselves — they just do it in a different way. The question is are they willing to step in front of other people and show other people, ‘I’m human; I’m vulnerable. I’m not just the president or head of this division.’”
Doing this creates a fun atmosphere at the accounting and business advisory firm and also shows that he cares.
Smart Business spoke with Paris about how to create a caring work environment.
Approach hiring differently. Anyone who comes in, they interview with my partner and myself to see if there’s a cultural fit. Then they go to the heads of departments to see if there’s a technical fit. So it’s kind of reversed. We want people to meet the management and owners and understand who we are and how we feel about the company, and then see if that fits.
If it was a 3,000 or 10,000-person company, it doesn’t have to be the person who manages the company, but it needs to be a really important person that the person says, ‘Wow, I had no idea on the first day I was going to meet with so-and-so, who gave me the vision and gave me the direction and gave me an idea of the people and everything else.’
Pay people to keep them. The second aspect is compensation. Don’t let people struggle and stress over their compensation because it takes them emotionally and physically away from what they should be doing for the company. Pay people more than they’re asking because you don’t want them to think about their compensation. You want them to think about the office, other people in the office, clients, customers, whoever it might be. If they say, ‘I’d like between $60 and $65,’ you always give them $65 or higher than that — $67.5. Level the playing field so it creates a little bit of a, ‘Wow, so I don’t have to worry about the compensation?’ It’s interesting how that balances. Our rates aren’t necessarily the highest, but the way it balances is … people become more efficient and willing to help each other, and that’s just an intangible that creates profitability.
