1. What makes a great workplace?
Being a great workplace has to start with leadership.
There is a philosophical acknowledgement in our
company that we know that every employee has a
choice about where he or she works. Therefore we
need to work hard to be that choice. We need to
understand what we need to do to create a great
environment. We want the best people to come
work for us and we want the best people to do
the best work they can. And that fundamentally
requires leadership from the top down.
We try and create an environment where we hire
great people, who want to do great work, who have
a really high aspiration, and then we get in the boat
with them and basically try and empower them.
I see that as my role, to create this environment.
One of the key themes of our business is
helping people and businesses realize their full
potential—that applies equally to our own internal
employees. There are five key pillars to the way
we drive our way around people. These include
performance management (clarity on what’s
expected), rewards (compensation, but more than
money), career development (each employee
has a structured career path), management
excellence (people don’t leave companies, they
leave managers) and an enhanced workplace
(paying attention to the environment).
All of these things are underpinned by a
huge focus on management excellence. I get to
Microsoft Canada was recently ranked number one for large organizations with 1000+ employees
by Great Place to Work® Institute. At our annual conference entitled“Secrets of aThriving Workplace”,
Microsoft Canada’s President Eric Gales expressed his joy in making it to the number one ranking, and
shared his approach on how to create a great workplace for employees.
Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, (more than 50% of their workforce is inToronto), Microsoft
Canada has eight other sites across the country and more than 1,000 full-time people in sales, marketing,
services and support. Leadership, gender diversity and an investment in people have been the focus of
Microsoft Canada, and it clearly works in terms of creating a“Best Workplace”.
INTERVIEW BY
KAREN
RICHARDSON
•
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
GARY ROORK
•
ERICGALES
YW INTERVIEW
What Makes Microsoft Canada a #1 Place to Work?
President Eric Gales reveals the keys to their success
18 MAY/JUNE 2011 | YOUR WORKPLACE

2. see directly what the impacts of good
managers and poor managers are.
Poor managers can really slow down a
great individual, and great managers
can lift a mediocre individual. We have
a big focus on continuing to improve
our managers — benchmarking them,
helping them to get better, equipping
them with tools, both training and
in terms of evaluating people.
Working from home is also common.
We have nine offices across the country
and every employee is equipped to
work from home. We try to create an
environment where our employees are
empowered to balance their own work.
Other communication tools include
taking employees out on the road to
different offices, as well as a“concierge”
that was developed for staff — an
internal support system to answer
questions on anything, including how
to do a presentation. That helped
us to identify systemic issues.
What makes a good leader
an excellent leader?
Two components: One is you have to be
able to inspire your people and have an
aspiration that allows them something
to strive for. The second dimension is
really empowering people to deliver.
And that empowerment focus requires a
huge amount of listening. So, what I try
to do is combine a very high aspiration
for our organization with a real focus on
making sure we create an organization
in which people are empowered.
Can you talk about the
importance of risk-taking?
Recently we’ve been spending time talking
about product and innovation in Canada,
which led us to this topic of willingness
to take risks. Our conservative culture
is sometimes slowing us down when
we could be extending ourselves. But it
doesn’t seem to be a lack of ideas. This is
a big theme around the globe right now,
how to advance the Canadian culture.
Why is it important for you to focus
on diversity and hiring women?
IT is not a very attractive destination
historically for women. As a consequence
there is an opportunity because we don’t
get to have the value of having better
diversity. So what we’re doing as an
industry, which Microsoft is contributing to,
is to try to make it a more attractive place
for women, however that’s going to take a
long time. As a selfish reason, we want to
be a great employer for women so we get a
higher share of representation of women.
What is a good way to do that?
At one end of the spectrum, every
employer, particularly in the IT sector,
needs to be doing the right things to make
our own environments a great place for
women by trying to accommodate for
the unique challenges of parenthood, for
example. This includes women going on
and coming back from maternity leave.
We’ve had 2,000 years of male-dominated
environments, so it’ll take awhile to catch
up. We [also] invest in helping women
rise through the leadership ranks.
Does attracting women to your industry
and your company extend beyond
maternity leave and work-life balance?
The first thing is, you have to
philosophically acknowledge that there
is value in having gender diversity in your
organization… At Microsoft we’re lucky
we don’t have an equality problem, as
we don’t in this country. It’s not a quality
issue, it’s more about the business value
in having better diversity. There are plenty
of studies indicating that if you can mix
the genders together, you can have a
YW INTERVIEW
YOUR WORKPLACE | MAY/JUNE 2011 19

3. better team. In the IT industry, there are
some very specific issues with the talent
pool — not enough women entering our
area, and every employer has a challenge of
trying to make it an attractive place. As we
continue to evolve to be a great workplace,
gender diversity is a key focus for us.
What experience are you able to
bring from your work in the U.K. that
has been applicable to Canada?
In the U.K. we really value debate. So
I’m a big advocate of that. I want people
to feel free to get their opinions on the
table without fear of retribution. And I
find catalyzing debate is a good way of
doing that. What I’ve found is that our
culture here is more conflict-averse. Yet
my experience has been that it’s often in
those conflicts and debate and getting
those opinions out that you learn the most
significant things… As an organization
we’re trying to create an environment
where people feel trusted and safe and
won’t get in trouble with disagreeing with
something I or their manager says. YW
YW INTERVIEW
20 MAY/JUNE 2011 | YOUR WORKPLACE
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