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Case Study: Putting People First
August 08, 2007
Superior recognition practices pop up in an unusual place—an animal research lab
By Maggie Rauch
Industry: Scientific
Objective: Engage a group of employees whose jobs are not particularly stimulating, and ultimately keep lab's ratings high.
Solution: Frequent field trips, pizza parties, and personal recognition from the boss. Manager frequently nominates staffers for industry awards, providing professional recognition and career development.
Results: In the past five years, government inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare haven't found a single violation at the lab.
When she responded to an online ad for an animal lab technician, Angela Lentini was just exploring her options after studying animal science and working as a veterinary technician. But her interview with Ron Gordon, who runs the Animal Research Laboratory at Wesleyan University in Middlebury, Conn., changed her perspective. "He was so excited about the field and telling me everything that was going on," she says. "It really got me excited about the good that you can do."
Two years later, Angela still finds her work dynamic and stimulating. She attributes much of this to Gordon's enthusiasm and efforts to feed staffers' interest in the job with more information—ordering magazine subscriptions and arranging field trips to learn from suppliers. Despite having no incentive budget, Gordon manages to keep his employees engaged and motivated.
Recipe for Engagement
The core tasks of a lab animal technician involve a lot of attention to detail, along with a pinch of drudgery and a healthy helping of pressure. Techs must ensure thousands of animals are fed and healthy, and that their environments are maintained to meet strict criteria in terms of cleanliness, temperature and air quality. They must understand the research the animals are used for, and meet the demands and deadlines of a rotating population of students, whose inexperience and preoccupation with other classes and activities, often lead to mistakes.
"In this field, [technicians] could easily gravitate to coming in and doing the work every day and just being bored and automated," Gordon says. "You have to find ways to keep them engaged."
Gordon does some garden-variety things to keep the work environment positive—he likes to treat technicians to lunch or pick up a pizza or some snacks for a morning break. "It gives us an opportunity in a relaxed environment to talk about some issues at the lab," he says. "Awards are nice, lunches are nice. But what people have told me they like the best is a personal pat on the back on a regular basis. They like to hear that a job is well done."
He also makes more formal efforts. He takes advantage of the recognition that industry associations offer.
"Whenever there's an award that he feels one of us fits into he'll send a nomination along," says Lentini. "He's just so supportive of everything we do day-to-day and week-to-week." Last year, Gordon urged Lentini to enter an essay contest run by an industry association.
She won the award, for excellence in "environmental enrichment," the term for a relatively new drive in animal labs to improve the quality of life of the animals. Lentini got to attend a major convention free of charge and also received a plaque and cash award.
"I never would have thought to apply for that award if not for him," she says of Gordon. Later in the year, Gordon nominated Lentini for another award for continuing her environmental enrichment efforts. She won again.
Gordon also looks for opportunities to show technicians the fruits of their labor. "There are organizations that document the progress that's being made in human medicine with the help of animal research," he says. "Sometimes I'll even have documentation of where Wesleyan is involved."
Lentini says this helps her see her work's purpose: "It definitely helps that ... we feel like we're at the edge of a frontier as opposed to just marching along."
This past spring, Gordon was recognized by his peers for his management of the lab, winning Lab Animal News' TurnKey Award for general excellence. It was his second major industry award; in 2005, he won the Charles River Medallion, the top annual award from the Laboratory Animal Management Association.
Why We Do It
The way Gordon runs the lab has a monetary impact on both the laboratory and the school. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare send inspectors every year, and fines for violations run $100,000 and up. On top of that, the organizations' inspection results are public information, so the National Institutes of Health and other major research funding bodies can, and do, cut off labs that consistently get bad marks.
Gordon and the people who work for him receive a bonus from the university for meeting their annual goals, but what really inspires him to take such an interest in his employees' engagement?
"My goal is to provide healthy animals for good research," Gordon says. "But I've realized that you don't start with the animals; you start with the personnel. If you can maintain a happy, enthused employee who's going to take care of the animals, then you have good research, which yields good results, and finally improvement in the human condition. That's what drives me."
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