"Getting away from the everyday".

For employees at Persona Communications, employee benefits means more than the free cable, although no one is complaining.

Although getting a premium on high-speed Internet is always a bonus, says Andrea Zizman, the director of sales, marketing and customer service at the multimedia company. Part of the good thing about working at Persona, she says, is the emphasis on "getting away from the everyday."

Employees at Persona face stress continually as frontline workers, whether at the call centre or as technical staff, she says. The staff is encouraged to organize departmental activities, such as a "bad hair day" on certain Fridays and departmental pizza parties and involvement in regular draws for prizes.

Employees are shown appreciation, she says, through management-organized "hug fests" where the staff is taken out of the office and thanked for a great year by management, and the group plans for the next year.

Keeping the group social, however, is not the only way Persona provides benefits to its workers. The company also takes the time to provide training for its employees. It is not uncommon for an accountant to be fully versatile and knowledgeable about a personal video recorder, she states, because the company puts a high value on product knowledge for its employees. Being current on the most cutting-edge technology also helps make Persona workers more employable within the company.

"The goal is to keep everyone in line with the technology," Zizman says. The company hosts a technical open house every couple of years and Zizman says that she has no problem getting employees to volunteer for the event. All of the employees are made to feel a degree of ownership of what the company produces. This, she says, maintains loyalty among workers at Persona.

"We had an open house a couple of years ago where 500 people attended. I asked for volunteers and 27 employees were willing to stand in front of displays for six hours. I was so blown away by this. It was a call to arms and our people were there. It's very inspiring," she recalls.

Working at Persona is not just about perks, Zizman says. The intangibles also include a style of leadership that is very open and non-adversarial.

"There is a hierarchy here, obviously. But, anyone can enter the manager's office and start a conversation," she adds.

The greatest benefit Persona employees have, Zizman says, is the sense of family that employees say they feel at the company. Zizman believes this is nurtured by the fact that worker retention at Persona is high, given that there are employees working who have been there since the company's founding, or about 25 years. She says employees who have been at the company for a long time act as "elders" to the younger employees, she says, and provide them with valuable mentoring. She relates how the company recently went through a new management restructuring and there was fear among some of the newer employees. The older workers, she remembers, helped to reassure them.

The "elder staff" had seen the company go through past restructuring and taught the newer workers how to cope with the change.

"There is a certain type of tradition or culture or a sense of family here. I can't even describe it," she says.

www.personainc.ca

BY JOSEPH QUESNEL 

Northern Ontario Business