I’m always interested in how big corporations look after their employees, and how they foster loyalty and relationships with them. At a small business, it’s relatively easy to build strong ties between employer and employee, just from the size factor.

Yet larger businesses can be guilty of missing the personal touch that family businesses or smaller-sized ones can focus on. I know this only too well from my time at British Telecom back in the UK, where it was a very numbers-driven game.

One of the larger companies excelling at getting the people factor right is Airmiles.

A Canadian loyalty-incentive company, Airmiles lets you shop at various outlets either offline or on and collect rewards, or air miles. A percentage of your purchase is then converted to these air miles, which allows you to fly free of charge (or at a greatly reduced rate) anywhere in the world on a supported airline.

While consumers love Airmiles for these incentives, many of the Airmiles employees seem to love the company as well. A lot of this can be found in the people culture that Airmiles fosters throughout its workforce.

The company is currently in the process of relocating its customer service call centre. This involves around 400 people, as well as all the relevant hardware and other office equipment.

While the move might be relatively easy distance-wise, it’s still a big operation and can obviously impact on the employees. To help them feel at home, however, Airmiles opened up suggestions to the employees as to what the new call centre hallways and sections should be called.

This led to a whole bunch of cool ideas and names, with wildlife, nature, the environment and others all coming to the table. It might not sound a lot, but ask yourself the last time your boss asked you what you wanted to call your new home.

It’s not just the naming of the zones that sees Airmiles as a company that gets the people factor right – it’s the ongoing comfort and human side that also sets them apart from many others.

For instance, their current set-up in Toronto includes an oasis at the heart of each floor. This allows employees to gather in a friendly community setting, enjoy refreshments, and interconnecting stairs between the call centre and the admin areas.

Again, nothing major, but keeping that open and friendly approach that people naturally love. It’s an approach that helped Airmiles lose just 1% of its staff to that move, as opposed to the standard 10%.

One of the clear signals that is continously coming through from business-to-consumer surveys is that people are wanting to deal with other people. Not numbers; not a phone tree; but honest-to-goodness human beings.

By making their company such a people-driven culture, Airmiles are enjoying both low employee turnover and loyal customers. You really can’t ask for anything more, can you?

photo credit: lovely lemur