"Canada's Best Bosses"

A balance of good compensation and strong learning opportunities is what motivates Chris Anstead, a program manager for operations support systems at Toronto-based SBR International Inc. (No. 105). Anstead works about 55 hours a week at the management consulting firm. And while such hours aren't unusual in today's workplace, he is unusually happy to put them in. That's because employees at SBR are paid by the hour. "If you want to work more or less, it's up to you and we'll pay accordingly," says founder and president Steve Ralph. "We have some employees who work three or four-day weeks or seasonally, such as rowers who want summers off to dedicate to their sport and actors who perform in community theatre and festivals during the spring or summer. People want flexibility." Anstead also benefits from the unique bonus scale in place at SBR: each month, managers evaluate employees' commitment, loyalty and dealings with colleagues on a scale of one to 10. Anyone scoring six or less receives coaching and additional training from management to help improve performance, while a score above six triggers a monetary reward consisting of a percentage of the employees' monthly wages.

Financial rewards aren't the only perks that have kept Anstead at SBR for five years. "The bonus scale is a good short-term motivator, but what really keeps me going are the opportunities to move up the ladder in a growing company and the chance to do work I might not have been offered in a more traditional firm," he says. With staff turnover at SBR hovering at a low 2%, it seems that letting employees move around the company is a much better solution than watching them move on. "In a lot of other companies, you're a specialist working in one industry," says Anstead. "At SBR, I'm constantly moved into new products. Here you're allowed to start as a generalist and gradually become a specialist."

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