Brewing up a culture shock

Mickey McLeod's little coffee-roasting café was named for its location, the artisan community of Saltspring Island.

So when McLeod lost a rezoning bid and moved his growing business to the flat, industrial parks of mainland Richmond, he faced an additional challenge: managing culture shock for his employees.

"(Urban Richmond) definitely was a culture shock," said Salt Spring Coffee humanresources director David Norget, comparing daily life in the thriving city of 200,000 with life on artsy Saltspring, population 10,000.

"The (Richmond) houses are very ornate. They are bigger. It's not funky."

Salt Spring Coffee, an organic, Fair Trade and sustainable-environmental-practices coffee roaster, worked hard at change management, going so far as to provide a staff house for commuting employees.

McLeod told employees of the move some four months in advance, despite the risk of people quitting and leaving the company short-staffed. "Yes, it was a scary thing," said Norget, "But it seemed like the right thing to do."

Norget kept communication open, giving time off for job interviews and asking for help with transitions. Some people ended up working part-time at Salt Spring Coffee and part-time in their new jobs for a while.

"In some cases, we hired in Vancouver and brought people over here to stay while we were still in transition," he said.

In the end, just 10 of the company's 70 employees left and were replaced in Richmond. Fifteen employees, ranging from a production supervisor to roasters and lineworkers, moved to the mainland. The 35 employees who already worked in the company's Tsawwassen, Vancouver and Salt Spring cafés were unaffected. Eight people, mostly

senior management, McLeod and Norget included, chose to commute. They learned some surprising lessons.

Locating a staff house in Richmond, near their new 18,500-square-foot roasting facility, offices and education centre, seemed a sensible move.

But geographic proximity to work turned out to be less important than a familiar neighbourhood feel. So the company rented a four-bedroom near their Vancouver coffee house. The funky east Vancouver neighbourhood, boasting fashion designers, cafés and bike shops, was much more similar to home, but still close enough to Richmond to cycle to work.

Most weeks, at least five staff stay at the house.

While the big changes were a shock, the accumulation of little changes turned out to be even more stressful.

"It's the little things, like how do we get to work?" Norget said. "If I'm taking the bus, how do I get there? Where do I stand? Do I have the right clothes with me?

Toiletries?" Similarly, it was the little personal gestures that made all the difference.

One longtime supervisor was anxious about the move, which coincided with a personal move from Saltspring Island to the Sunshine Coast. Getting to work now meant taking three ferries, staying two weeks in Vancouver, then getting a long weekend at home. "That's incredible dedication," Norget noted, but said that at first, for this man, even staying at the staff house was stressful.

"A number of staff (took it upon themselves to) set up his bed and even turned down the covers," said Norget, who now works two days a week from Saltspring and two days a week in Richmond. "I don't know how that came about."