College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving tell us what led to them lifting a 2017 TINYaward

TINYpulse has announced the winners of the third annual TINYawards. TINYawards are given to organizations which have exceptional scores for their industry within TINYpulse's employee engagement platform. College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving (CHHJ), a junk removal and moving service headquartered in Tampa, Florida, with over 100 locations across the United States, won for Happiest Organization in the Transportation & Logistics category.

This means that CHHJ had the highest average employee happiness score within Transportation & Logistics. I connected with Kim Roneree, HR and Recruiting Manager for CHHJ. Here’s what she had to share:

Congratulations on winning the TINYaward for Happiest Company! What does this award mean to you?

Winning this award means that we value our team members. It validates that we care about our people and that we are creating an environment that they want to work in.

Why is it important to have happy employees?

Happy team members are far more productive than others. When team members are happy, they want to work hard and continue to meet and exceed goals.

Is the Happiness Score in TINYpulse something that you pay attention to?

ABSOLUTELY! We pay very close attention to this score. Our Recruiting & Culture team is held accountable to maintaining our happiness score.

What other ways do you measure employee happiness?

We measure with different internal and external activities we do as a brand. If team members are happy, they want to participate in extra “fun” activities. It’s never forced fun. We actually like hanging out with our teammates.

What makes CHHJ such a happy workplace?

We have a leadership team that values each team member. We leave our titles at the door and have a high level of trust with each other. We are all very passionate about our brand, franchise partners and our overall success.

What do you do to maintain that culture of happiness throughout the year?

We have events throughout the year. We have themed months for decorating the office. We do “free” Fridays - each Friday we offer a free item of food; donuts, ice cream, sandwiches, bagels, a taco bar, and so on. We celebrate birthdays every month with cake, balloons, and cards. We have a recognition and reward program and celebrate work anniversaries.

We have annual events each year as well. These include an employee appreciation week, founders day celebration, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and a No-Shave November contest. We are also involved in our community as much as possible throughout the year, in everything from parades to volunteering.

#MoveTheWorldMonday We're participating in #Movember to help raise awareness about Prostate Cancer & men's health! https://t.co/e8AUrc1T6s pic.twitter.com/kq8QS9b171

— The College Hunks (@CollegeHunks) November 6, 2017

Was there a particular moment of happiness that stands out from 2017?

A specific time that was extremely happy was our Grand Opening event in August of 2017. We moved our world headquarters to our new beautiful building. We had a celebration and invited all team members, Franchise partners and community partners to celebrate with us. We also held our inaugural Feeding Children Everywhere event and packaged 25,000 meals for those in need here in Tampa.

How does happiness relate to your work values and culture at College Hunks Hauling Junk?

At College HUNKS, we have 4 core values that we live by every day. Every decision we make must align with our 4 core values. We talk about these values everyday and our team lives them every day. Those core values are:

1. Building Leaders,
2. Listen, Fulfill & delight,
3. Create a fun Enthusiastic team environment,
4. Always Branding.

If we are living our core values every day (LOVE), then there is no reason to not be happy!

Can you tell us about a major challenge within CHHJ that has affected employee happiness? 

We have our World Class Call Center here in our HQ offices. Once challenge we faced last year was the big move to our new HQ offices. To many of our team members, this was going to make things a bit more difficult. In our old building we were in walking distance to many restaurants, bars, stores, and major bus lines.

Many of our team members did not feel positive about our move. Change is very hard for many people. Everyone was excited for the new, much bigger space, but felt cheated as they lost some of the convenience of having the ability to walk everywhere. We had to ensure we addressed these concerns in our new building. We wanted to make sure all team members' ideas and concerns were addressed.

How have you overcome that challenge?

We added fresh food in our vending machines, so our employees can get lunch without having to leave the office. We have created a food binder that is shared by all, which contains all nearby restaurants who do carry-out and delivery. We have also gone to the City and asked for them to build a sidewalk from the closest bus stop, so our employees have a safe area to walk to work.

Do you have any upcoming plans or initiatives that you hope will improve happiness in the future?

We continue to add monetary and non-monetary benefits for our team to continue to make College HUNKS a great place to work!

Who are the biggest champions of employee happiness within CHHJ?

Our Hunk Brigade Team and various team members throughout our office.

What are some of the ideas they’ve put forward that have increased happiness?

The Hunk Brigade is responsible for planning of all activities throughout the year. They are also the ones that are generally doing various random acts of kindness throughout the regular day and week.

In one sentence, can you give us your best advice for other companies looking to improve their employee happiness?

Trust, value and communicate to your team members.

The Happiest Company Award honors organizations with the highest average Happiness Score throughout the year. Happiness Scores are tabulated from anonymous employee responses to the frequently asked survey question “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at work?”.

A full list of Happiest Company Award winners can be seen at TINYpulse’s awards page.