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46

BizVoice/Indiana Chamber – May/June 2017

CULTURE CLUB

Festering worms.

That symbolic phrase turned out

to be quite pertinent in framing

what separates a great employer

from those that are merely okay

or possibly struggling internally.

BizVoice

®

talked to representatives from

four companies that have made the Best

Places to Work in Indiana list multiple times:

• Chris Campbell

, president of First

Bancshares (parent company of Centier

Bank) at

ccampbel@centier.com,

and

Chrisanne Christ

, senior partner at

Centier Bank, at

cchrist@centier.com

• Mark Chamberlain

, CEO of Lakeside

Wealth Management Group, at

mark@lakesidewealth.com

• Tom O’Neil

, president of OfficeWorks,

at

toneil@officeworks.net

• Casey Stanley

, vice president of product

management and marketing for Ontario

Systems, at

casey.stanley@ontariosystems.com

As for those worms, Christ gets the credit

for the visual: “If there’s a can of worms festering,

let’s pop the lid and let’s deal with it!”

That mentality of not being afraid in the

quest for continual improvement is a

characteristic the companies share and

demonstrate throughout the discussion.

‘You matter’

An organization won’t get very far in the

Best Places evaluation – or be viewed as a

desired employer in general – if its workers

don’t feel valued. And there isn’t a secret

weapon to making it happen; a varied

approach is what’s in order.

Empowerment is one avenue for Lakeside,

based in Chesterton.

“Every decision that gets made here

doesn’t have to come from me, and I want

them to take the bull by the horns and make

decisions, and take projects and run with

them. It’s rotating leadership,” Chamberlain

explains. “They don’t need to run everything

by me. That’s not what we’re about. If that

happens, the dynamic then is this company is

only as smart as I am, and that’s an extremely

limiting thought process.”

Offers Stanley, “I was speaking to our

people service leader about culture and her

take was the big stuff is easy; the one-time

stuff will often get attention and be taken

care of, but it’s a sustained effort around the

little things that make a difference for us.

“Attention to detail and ongoing little

things help build those sort of lasting

emotional bonds and relationships that matter

at the end of the day,” he surmises.

“That translates to volunteer time off; an

on-the-spot bonus program where someone

ROUNDTABLE

By Rebecca Patrick

Building and Growing Outstanding Workplaces

“She (a co-worker) had a violent type

of cancer that she wouldn’t have known

she had if she had not gone for these

(company-provided wellness) screenings

and the doctor hadn’t really encouraged

her to keep up her exams.”

– Chrisanne Christ