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| 2004 Providence Business News Business Excellence Award |
Gem’s senior leaders, along with the President set, communicate, and deploy organizational values that are the foundation of the company mission statement and are inherent in setting both long and short term direction as well as performance expectations. The company has a long history, and since its inception-from a one-person business to where now it is now, a rapidly growing family business, the core family values and culture transcends into the business. The dynamics of the culture have been identified, documented, and adopted by the leadership as their own internal mission statement that encourages a creative, supportive atmosphere, innovation, a diverse environment, professional development, open communication, and a clear mission. These core values now inherent in the culture, have since evolved to reflect a changing business environment and continue to evolve by comparative evaluation with the values of top companies, and are now the framework for of all of the company’s business practices.
The senior leaders personally lead, monitor, and coach the leaders of each team, the service delivery work unit where the focus and first contact with the customer takes place. Short-term direction within the frame work of the strategic plan is targeted toward meeting objectives and is communicated verbally and in writing by the President (particularly with issues and problems arising in day to day operations needing resolution) cascading downward to the managers, and team leaders, down to the basic work unit, but at the same time encouraging communication upward in resolving issues at the level where they occur. In essence it is a cascading empowerment process down to the basic work unit with open lines of communication to ensure the flow of information in both directions. In addition to having the two way communications open in the daily management of business, there is a twice annual comprehensive employee satisfaction survey asking for a response that covers issues such as company direction, work related policy, wages and benefits, and training opportunities. The intent of the survey is to assess the attitudes of the work force and make any changes that may be necessary to improve working conditions as well as the operations of the company. With regards to suppliers, the leadership has made an innovative strategic decision, a first in the industry, to partner with and relinquish the company’s inventory management system to its major supplier. The company does not have or manage stock inventory but is a link in the supply chain from supplier to customer. The supplier is now located and manages its warehouse operations on the Gem premises and supplies the company with all the stock items it needs to service its customers. The supplier’s system are linked with the Gem inventory system assuring a seamless two way communication in the supply chain and where the values and direction of both have been integrated into a common system. Short term direction that is also prompted by repetitively recurring issues and may indicate a trend either in terms of requiring corrective action, or a trend that benefits the operations in the long term, may form or become policy. Should it become policy in general or a standardized procedure, it is communicated in writing as a memorandum as well as documented in the company’s policy and procedures manual.
Long term direction as well as performance expectations, are communicated as elements of the strategic planning process with a one year horizon and deployed through out the teams by various means. First – a training and orientation period where the values, vision, and mission of the company are presented for new employees, newsletters, performance review meetings, mandatory 250 hours of aggregate training annually, reports, and interaction with respective team leaders and technicians. Success is determined through communication between the field technician and the corresponding team leader to the unit manager up to the senior leaders as previously described. Work documentation including a customer follow-up call and on site survey cards completed and returned by the customer, provide the information that assures performance expectations are in conformance to the values and mission statement inherent in the leadership system and are designed to ensure that the integrity of the leadership system will be continually maintained.
The leadership has learned through experience that the key to fulfilling the company’s dedication to excellence is through empowerment of a highly competent, motivated, and rewarded workforce. The leadership believes that empowerment is created through trust and trust is reinforced and maintained through education and training in the processes that deliver the services to its customers. Therefore the company has an ongoing policy instilled in the corporate culture that it will provide its work force the opportunity for career growth by building and enhancing their job skills through education and training. Licensed technicians who deliver the service and where the revenue is generated are continually trained in sales techniques as well as technical training particularly in using new technology appearing in their field. A climate for innovation is another. Gem has far surpassed the traditional “plumbing” company. With world class standards set in place, Gem has re-invented the way plumbing services will be performed in the future. The results have been a quantum leap of process improvements, including a state of the art customer call and dispatch center, an innovative, first of it’s kind inventory management program, a highly focused customer first approach in conducting business, a documented policy of expected ethical and legal behavior, and a maintained 30% annual growth rate.
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