The room.

This is Saishunkan Cosmetics. And it's just incredible.

Interviewing is based almost solely on character and values, with experience and degree being very low on the list. All new employees must work in the kitchen to learn about service. All new engineers or non-"communicators" must first work as a communicator in the call center, for a year. Even with that they still have a long line of potential employees wanting positions.

Every employee is reviewed by multiple managers to ensure a balanced perspective. A new hire has no goals, and is judged 100% on character. After the first year the person is judged 80% on character and 20% on achieving goals that the employee sets. The percentage continues to shift until directors are judged 80% on goals. By then they assume that the character of the person has been proven. Involuntary turnover has been zero... for ten years.

... Each year the company takes every employee, all 1,000 of them plus representatives from suppliers, to Las Vegas. From Japan! ... The company puts them in very nice hotels, the Wynn this year, so the employees can experience and learn from the best customer service.

There's a lot of genius going on here on all sorts of levels. I've tried to pick out one particular angle, but, really, go read all of it. Every sentence contains a revelation.

This has to be my favouritest bit of sheer perverse cleverness:

They operate a daycare for their employees and initially it was free. However they found that employees refused to complain about a free service, and the company wanted complaints in order to improve. Therefore they started charging $10 a month, the employees then felt they could complain about issues with the daycare, and the company was able to improve the daycare.

Wow.