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May/June 2012 –
BizVoice
/Indiana Chamber
33
to everybody’s strengths.”
Burke insists, “It’s getting to know what motivates. Companies
are getting much, much better at that, but it is a challenge. If
you’re really stubborn and you don’t want to have to deal with
it, you’re going to find yourself in trouble, especially as that
group (Millenials) becomes more prevalent in the workplace.”
Peters believes that it’s crucial to personalize supervision.
“I think you have to manage diversity in general,” he
relates. “I think you have to really tailor your management
style to embrace that. If you don’t –
it’s not one size fits all – you’ll leave
somebody behind.”
Olson poses the following scenario:
“If you can have Baby Boomers who
can model that work ethic and that desire
to succeed, but then also let the
younger (employees) – the Gen X,
the Gen Y – leverage their knowledge
of social media in order to develop a
great communication or a great recruiting
strategy for young people, then why
would you not take advantage of those
strengths and those opportunities?”
Another element of change deals
with business growth, a positive
development that can nonetheless
pose challenges in maintaining an
established workplace culture.
“I think what’s interesting is
when the smaller organizations start
to get to bigger sizes, and you add a
location and you go from 50 employees
to over 100 employees. Those are
huge differences that if you’re not
equipped to deal with it, what you
found sort of easy to manage one day
is now, ‘Whoa, what do I do now?’
because it’s completely different,”
Burke reflects.
Peters says that Wessler Engineering
keeps the firm’s family environment
in mind when considering expansion.
Since he joined the company 10 years
ago, it has grown from 20 employees
to 60.
“Someday, we think we’d like to
be maybe a 100-, 150-employee firm,
but we recognize that as we get there
and as we’re heading in that direction,
we’ve got to structure our organization
where we can communicate and be
effective as a firm of that size, but still
maintain the atmosphere of the family
firm because we feel that’s one of the
attributes that makes us a great place
to work.”
Work-life balance means
something more here.
A lot more.
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I N F O R M A T I O N L I N K
Resources:
Peter Burke, Best Companies Group,
at www.bestcompaniesgroup.com
Chris Olson, Blue & Co., at www.blueandco.com
Jeff Peters, Wessler Engineering, at
www.wesslerengineering.com
Melissa Proffitt Reese, Ice Miller, LLP, at www.icemiller.com