The magazine article had me at the headline:The Best Company to Work For In the World- Period.

"I love my job. I love my job. I love my Job"

Since the article's publication in mid-March, a few bloggers including Lynn Cherny's Ghostweather Shortform,Ann Hudspeth's Design Geek

and myself have felt compelled to share the remarkable story of Motek.

As Lynn Cherney wrote,

As someone who needs at least a 3 day intro to a vacation to even start to relax, the European-style 5 weeks of vacation initially caught my eye and kept me reading. The rest of the story brought tears to my eyes (and I read a fair amount of business overview articles, for your average UI designer). A woman-owned company, with acknowledged lower salaries and internally published salary levels, in return for real quality of life outside the office? But that's not all.

Employees also know when an employee isn't able to keep up with the workload. The result? Price offers a financial reward to employees who ask for help in order to stay on schedule. "The goal is to get the work done, not establish a star system," she says.

And as Ann Hudspeth noted,

Price offers her employees a $5,000-a-year travel benefit - for flights, tours, cruises, you name it - but only if they take at least a three-week paid vacation. She gives employees another two weeks off for paid holidays throughout the year and leases luxury automobiles for any employee who has worked at the company for at least 10 years. Then there's the fact that Price sends employees home at five p.m. sans laptop and locks the doors on the weekend.

We weren't the only ones thinking about business culture this past week, blogher Michelle Golden at Golden Practices asks the question, "If Internal Communication is Poor, Can You Still Have a "Great Culture"?

Golden writes about companies who have worked on their culture, feel they have created a very positive one and now feel the work is done

When owners believe their firm is "all that" with regard to culture, they tend to behave as though they don't need to keep working at it. (hmmm, reminds me of a lot of marriages...)

Firm culture, like a happy marriage, is not static. Enough withdrawals from the "emotional bank account" of either will erode a positive situation.

Golden then goes on to include a list of misteps companies make that will undermine and destroy their coveted great culture.

The Top 3:

#1 - Notifying people by memo or e-mail about their colleague, even manager, having been "let go"

#2 - Relying on the informal gossip chain to replace formal presentations of "state of the firm" or goals, visions, and other important news or changes

#3 - "Leakage" of preliminary information (often by owners to select team members) about pending policies, pending raises or bonuses, or other critical economic information, such that a mention or two to friends means pretty soon the whole firm "knows" -- often it isn't even final so the info may be wrong(!)

So if you want to take in a little culture today, take a few minutes out and read the article about Motek and then after you are duly inspired,print out Michelle Golden's list as a reminder of what not to do to undermine the culture that you've worked so hard to create.

Image Credit: Flickr image by pcurtain