Employee Care

Brian Forth was another great speaker that we had in class that talked about how he runs his business. Brian Forth is the founder of SiteCrafting which is based in Tacoma and has expanded with offices in Seattle and Spokane. SiteCrafting started in 1998,  consequently the company was able to survive the dot com bubble. Something that grabbed my attentions is how much Brian cares about his employees. He has an open book policy where any employee can see all the financial stats of the company. I found that to be a very interesting thing to do. He encourages his employees to take decisions without his approval when dealing with customers. For example he said that he would prefer that his employees give a month free of hosting to his customers, if it meant that it would make the customer happy and save the customer time of having to explain himself again if it was transferred to someone else within SiteCrafting.  I guess that for a company of 30 or so employees that is something that works fine for him. I definitely don't see that approach working for a company of  100 or more employees. Another thing that stuck with me is that as much as Brian cares about his employees, he also has a close relationship with his customers.  SiteCrafting does not advertise itself and almost all of his customers are recommendations from other customers. Which says a lot of the customer service he provides for his clients.