Member Spotlight: Jo-Ann Birch, Fair Measures

An Interview with Jo-Ann Birch, owner of Fair Measures

Jo-Ann Birch is an Office Evolution member at our Cherry Creek location.

Jo-Ann’s company, Fair Measures, works to ensure that companies are creating respectful and legally sound work environments for their employees.

We got the chance to sit down with Jo-Ann to chat about what her company does, as well as hear how her time at Office Evolution is going. Don’t miss her best business tips!

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Meet Jo-Ann

My name’s Jo-Ann Birch and I’m the owner of Fair Measures. What Fair Measures does is we specialize in training executives, managers, and employees on fair practices, basically. The legal “do’s and don’ts.” How to hire correctly, how to fire correctly, not discriminate or harass your employees, how to do interviewing legally.
One of the things we do is we really teach managers where the red flags are. So before something becomes an employee lawsuit, for instance. We want to teach companies how to avoid an employee lawsuit. What we’re really inspiring managers to do is come from company values. And if they’re coming from company values, they’re often creating a respectful workplace for everybody. In looking for the red flags, who would they call if they see a red flag? Well, you have to call the experts, and those experts would be your HR department or your legal department, maybe an outside agency if your company has that.
So that’s what we do, we’re really teaching managers about coming from values, creating respectful workplaces, and what are those red flags, and who to call when you see them.

Differentiators

What differentiates Fair Measures is that we do live training, and only live training. About 2004, online training started to become very popular. It’s convenient, very cheap, and I understand the convenience. But the problem is that it’s not very engaging, and you can also get your secretary to do it. So in terms of accountability, it’s hard to track.
We think a live trainer is the way to make sure the learning experience is exceptional, engaging, and you have somebody there in real time that can answer questions for you. So that’s what makes us different. The other thing that makes us different is that all of our trainers are employment law attorneys. So they’re experts in their field, but they’re also very skilled facilitators.

How do you see your company evolving in the next 5 years?

We just are keeping the steady beat of respectful workplace going. And the steady beat of a learning experience that really caters to really high quality, engaging learning experience and we’re not taking any shortcuts in terms of just trying to put a rubber stamp on it, check the box, there you’ve done your training.

Best Business Tips:

Business Tip #1: Do What You Say

Do what you say you’re going to do. Follow through.

Business tip #2: Be Timely

I pride myself on being very timely, so making sure that I return calls or deliverables in a timely fashion.

Business tip #3: Soft Sales

The other thing that I have seen that’s really worked over time, and I do think this has to do as a society how we’re moving, is very soft sales. People do not like to be told what to do, they don’t want a kind of a hard sales line coming at them. And I really pride myself on really just giving the information, offering the service, letting the benefit be known, and really letting the customer decide. That way, when they come to you, they’re really wanting that service, number one, so there’s some integrity there, and also, you’re not misrepresenting yourself or inflating or doing something that may jeopardize your relationship down the road.

Experience with Office Evolution:

I’m a small company. And I did work out of my garage, so at one point I was working out of my garage, and I had a home office. It was really swanky and nice, but there’s something about coming to a business where other businesses are doing business.
It’s like going to the gym, 90% is getting to the gym. I come to work at Office Evolution, come into my office, and *snap* I’m going. At home, having a home office, the dog needs to get walked, those flowers need to be watered. So I’m able to focus here.
I really like this model of coworking, because I like to be able to walk out, get a cup of tea. I’m running into other people who are busy, and it’s that kind of energy that keeps me focused and doing what I need to do. Specifically about Office Evolution – I was in another coworking environment in Santa Cruz where I came from – but what I liked about Office Evolution is that I have colleagues that are more my age. I like that. It’s not that I don’t like young people, but I really like to have diversity of age. I don’t want to be the oldest person in a coworking place. So I enjoy that, too.
It’s been really wonderful; I love my office, I love being able to use the conference rooms, the coffee and tea, etc., etc. It really, really helps me stay focused.

What’s Your Favorite Thing about Office Evolution?

I think probably what I like is the professionalism of my colleagues here, of Office Evolution itself, and that it makes me feel like I’m a legitimate business doing great work. You need to have a great place to do that in.

For more information about Jo-Ann and Fair Measures, visit her website at https://www.fairmeasures.com/

For more information about Office Evolution and how we may help you get an office for your business, visit our website at https://www.officeevolution.com/locations/cherry-creek or call 303-376-6225.