Issue Date: Best Places to Work 2008
BY:MICHAEL SCHWARTZ
www.insidebiz.com
John Hewitt admits that the tax preparation business by nature isn’t very exciting.
People like visiting tax preparers as much as they do going to the dentist, Hewitt concludes.
“It’s worse than visiting the dentist,” he said. “It’s the second worse visit they make all year.”
So when he set out 11 years ago to create Liberty Tax Service after having already started Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service, he thought of ways to make tax prep less like pulling teeth. He not only found a way to attract customers but a way to create a culture in which employees don’t feel like they’re working in the typical tax prep company.
“I was searching many years ago for what makes great companies great and ordinary companies ordinary,” Hewitt said.
With his namesake and others already well established in the market, he needed something to make Liberty Tax stand out. For example, Hewitt said, Wal-Mart and K-Mart are essentially the same type of business atmosphere.
He thinks he discovered the answer and believes it is one of the reasons why Liberty Tax has been named one of the region’s best places to work.
“It’s the culture,” Hewitt ultimately realized. “You’ve got to have some advantage. Our advantage is culture.”
Liberty’s corporate headquarters, which helps manage its 3,000 franchises, is located in Virginia Beach and starting with the dress, exemplifies that culture Hewitt set out to create.
The nearly 300 local employees are free to show up daily at the office dressed up as Lady Liberty, the company’s mascot. There is a Culture Taskforce that meets every week to plan employee events, many of which revolve around the stress of tax season. Free lunches are provided for employees on Friday during the busiest weeks of tax season and there is an annual end-of-the-tax-season carnival at which employees get the chance to rally around the company’s charitable efforts by paying to dunk the bosses in the dunk tank.
Around the headquarters building you’ll find dollar bills randomly pinned to the wall, thanks to Hewitt’s penchant for settling disputes with dollar bets.
Whether it’s work, fun or community service, Hewitt said his employees follow the company’s simple mission statement, “Set the standard, improve each day and have some fun.”
“If you are in your car and on your way to work and you’re not looking forward to it, you’re not going to the right place,” Hewitt said.
Hewitt said the biggest challenge in creating and spreading a friendly corporate culture is making sure that culture permeates the 3,000 Liberty Tax offices around North America.
“It has spread to maybe 10 to 20 percent of the offices,” Hewitt said. “We just have to keep working day in and day out.”
Company: Liberty Tax Service
Company description: Individual international tax preparation franchise company.
Phone: 301-8148
Address: 1716 Corporate Landing Pkwy, Virginia Beach, VA 23454
Web site: www.libertytax.com
Top local executive: John Hewitt, founder and CEO
Number of local employees: 300 full-time, 10 part-time, 80 seasonal
Benefits include:
1. Stock options are offered to all full-time employees.
2. Financing and support is available to any employee wishing to become a Liberty Tax franchisee.
3. Employees get free lunch on the busiest Fridays during tax season.
Fun factor: The company headquarters has a break area where employees can play ping-pong, basketball and horseshoes. At chess boards around the building employees can challenge the boss, and at the End of Tax Season Celebration, workers get a chance to dunk the bosses.
Community service: The company is a national partner for Cell Phones for Soldiers, March for Babies and March of Dimes, and participates in Stop Hunger Now, the Mayflower Marathon food drive and other organizations.
