HEALDSBURG – At Metier, a provider of cloud-based project management software and virtualized consultancy, employees who do well might enjoy an airplane ride with CEO Doug Clark, who co-founded the company with Sandra Richardson. “I love flying,” Mr. Clark said. He uses the plane, a Cirrus SR22 composite aircraft, to reward employees and also to visit certain customers. He also likes to encourage others to take an interest in aviation.
The carbon-fiber plane has an unusual safety feature, what Mr. Clark calls “the cool part,” with its Cirrus Airframe parachute system that can deploy to bring the entire plane gently to earth. “Not only does everybody survive,” he said, “everybody just walks away, no broken bones, nothing.”
The company, founded in 1998, does more than airplane rides to encourage and maintain lofty morale, and make it a best place to work, according to Mr. Clark. Nearly all of Metier’s 18 employees have volunteered to help with the Mike Hauser Algebra Academy in Healdsburg, where the company is based. The academy, run under the auspices of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, works with eighth graders to hone their math skills, particularly those for whom English is a second language.
“If they do well in math early, they do well in all their high school subjects,” Mr. Clark said. “We had our sales department give a presentation about algebra and sales. We did algebra from our engineers, from our consultants. It was kind of neat.” He had several of the students come to the Healdsburg airport; the trip sparked an interest in flying lessons.
Metier gives its employees a monthly meal stipend of up to $100 to encourage them to get out of the office and to feed dollars into the local economy of Healdsburg. “Get out of the office,” Mr. Clark said. “Don’t work at your desk all day long. Clear your head. If you can’t get a good meal here, you’re just too picky,” he said.
The company offers unlimited leave. Most people still end up taking about the same amount of vacation time as in other companies. “If they get a really cool opportunity, they take that extra couple of days, that extra week,” Mr. Clark said. “Walk away from it. Go have some fun. Go be with your friends.”
“Our people work really hard, they’re really creative,” and compete with such giants as Microsoft, he said. About a third of the staff write software. “We have got to be as good or better than them. We created the field of project portfolio management. We’re really experts in this field.”
The company has installed pictures of superheroes on its walls: Wonder Woman, Batman. “A whole bunch of Fatheads,” he said. “They’re all over the place.”
