The storyline for this case study goes that the SAS Institute was facing increasing competition, etc. and the question was: “Could and should the Institute maintain its unique approach to pay and other practices?” Had their success been a product of their approach or achieved in spite of their approach?

Attraction and retention of talent was certainly a key to SAS’s continued success. Some of the perks that their employees enjoyed included healthy retirement, bonus plans and a lot of autonomy, freedom and control over their day-to-day schedules. SAS was of the philosophy that if they made their employees happy, great revenue and customer service would follow. They employed a trickle-down philosophy—”if you treat your people well, things will take care of themselves.” They believed that motivation was largely intrinsic. One interesting example, in the case study, was of a SAS employee who quit after 2 weeks because when she arrived at 9 in the morning, she wanted someone to tell her what her job responsibilities were for that day. SAS is not set up that way; they assume that their employees have talent, creativity and initiative. Their approach is to “give people the tools they need to do their job then get out of the way.” They believe that management “…should be a relationship instead of an infrastructure.”

SAS’s philosophy of assuming that their employees are intrinsically motivated works well (and should continue to work well) for them because of their particular type of employee (i.e. professional, educated, self-starter, etc.) but would probably not work well with, for example, many non-professional, hourly-type employees.

Lesson:

• There are different (and distinct) levels of professionalism among different types of employees (i.e. professional, salaried versus non-professional, hourly). Each has different expectations of their work environment, need different levels of supervision and guidance and are motivated differently (intrinsically versus extrinsically). It is important to keep the two clear in management’s head, so to speak, to foster employee performance.