Reputation is everything
to A. Steven Raab.
And as chairman and
CEO of The InSource Group,
he relies on the reputation of
his $30 million IT staffing company to draw in not just
prospective clients but also
prospective employees.
“Being in the business we’re
in, people, in reality, are just
about everything,” Raab says.
“It’s always been about bringing the right people, attracting
people and, more importantly,
keeping them here once you
get them in here.”
Smart Business spoke with
Raab about how to build a
great reputation for your business and how to use that to
attract the best people.
Q. How do you create a solid
business reputation?
You want to have the kind of
culture that people are proud
to work for. That starts with
company values. When we
started this business, my colleagues and I wanted to make
sure that, if nothing else, our
business always had a reputation of doing the right thing.
Have a strong set of company
values and an ethical basis for
how you do things — the way
you make decisions, the way
you treat people, the way you
treat customers. All of us want
to be proud of who we work
for — hopefully on the worst
and really crappy day, they go
home and say, ‘Truth be
known, I’m really glad I work
for those guys.’
Q. How do you communicate
those values to employees?
They’re published, they’re on
their desk, and they understand
that we’re serious about those
values. It’s being clear as to
what criteria you expect them
to use in making decisions.
We talk about [how] a basis
for making a decision has to
be on doing the right thing. We
won’t be critical of anybody
who makes a decision based
on what they thought was
right. When people start making decisions on how much it’s
going to cost or how much it’s
going to hurt — they know
that’s not an acceptable reason
to make a decision.
The other thing that’s
important is that they
see you making your
decisions based on
those same values and
criteria. It’s trite to say,
‘Walk the walk instead
of talk the talk,’ but
people are about, ‘Do as
I do, not as I say.’ They
have to see you behaving in the way you
expect them to behave,
and it becomes clearer
what kind of company
you represent and how
you want them to represent you and make
decisions.
