Employee retention no game at NMC

ALISA VIEJO, Calif.—In any business, maintaining a good pool of employees can be challenging, so it should come as no surprise that National Monitoring Center has taken some unique steps to ensure that its employees are happy. One of the perks NMC has recently added for its central station employees is an entertainment room, said Woodie Andrawos, executive vice president and co-founder of the company. “We took a room that we actually had for storage, actually quite a big room, and we changed it and made it an entertainment room or a game room, as we call it,” he said. “We put in an air hockey table and a foosball table and an Xbox [game console from Microsoft] and a TV and all that kind of stuff.” Andrawos said that in the short time the company has had the game room, it has done a lot of good toward boosting employee morale. “When you come in here, you’d be shocked how that has helped us in maintaining good employees,” he said. In fact, a while back, one of NMC’s employees was thinking of leaving for a position with another company, Andrawos said. Coincidentally, plans for the game room had gotten underway at around the same time. “One of our supervisors was going to leave and we were just designing that room,” Andrawos said. “It really helped a lot. I don’t know if it was the only factor, but it really helped him change his mind. He didn’t go. It is a big thing. It really shows our people here that we care.” Michael Schubert, president and co-founder of NMC, said, “You have to balance things in business. Your employees are just as important as your clients. Both drive the direction in which you want to go.”