Every employee at ProVia remembers when they started with the company, which is easy to do because we’re recognized each year on the month of our work anniversary. My first day was March 31, 2001, and back then we had 265 employees with everyone knowing most of their co-workers by name. Today, a little over 20 years later, we have more than 1,600 employees and are growing rapidly. In fact, we have now streamlined our onboarding process with a new class starting each week on Mondays and Tuesdays, and this process has become very effective and efficient. But even as we grow, and create bigger and better organizational structures, we’re also consciously adopting ways to retain the family feeling of a smaller company, such as fostering a strong team culture.
Camaraderie within our “work family”
Back in the day, Ed Mullet (the older brother of Bill Mullet, our founder) served as ProVia’s Vice President of Operations. Every day Ed walked the production floor and said good morning to each individual, and employees got to know each other through these casual conversations. Of course, this was back when he oversaw just one manufacturing facility, and today we have six, which makes this practice unrealistic. But people do mention this as a fond memory, and we know they value this kind of personal touch. We do too! So, we’ve implemented some programs that carry on the tradition of close-knit camaraderie within our “work family”.
Shrinking as we grow
To do this we’re placing a focus on supervisors and their teams, because this is where we can continue this strong team culture of knowing and caring for each other on a personal level. Within this framework we’re intentionally focusing on fostering an environment where we’re “shrinking as we grow.” This means that, even as our numbers grow larger over time, we’re continuously appointing the appropriate number of supervisors so we can keep our team numbers relatively small. We’ve even created our new Leadership Development Initiative to coach these supervisors and ensure consistency in living our company values as new people are added to lead our teams.
Nurturing a strong team culture
Our own Corporate Relations Team provides an example of how we intentionally nurture our team culture. One of the things we do is have some type of “welcome” event when a member comes on as a new hire. This past year, to welcome Chris Baio, our Media Strategist, we planned a casual field trip that allowed us to spend time together and get to know each other.
First and foremost, many of our team meetings feature some kind of food…which is a cherished tradition here at ProVia. For Chris’s outing we started at Park Street Pizza, a local, farm-to-fork style eatery that’s very popular and known for the fresh, healthy ingredients they use in their unique recipes. Shown on the right are the pies we dug into on that day.
Spending time together
After pizza, we made our way to the Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum, right here in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Billed as a “living, breathing roundhouse where talented restoration specialists work to preserve the locomotives, railroad cars, tools and machinery of the glory days of railroading,” the museum houses a unique collection of locomotives and railroad cars, along with a working, 18-stall brick roundhouse. It was a great way to soak up some history while spending time together, creating rapport and getting to know each other.
Pursuing our vision
As one might expect, this kind of personalized approach to building and leading teams creates a culture of caring and support, and this is quite intentional. We’re cultivating an environment where each individual is valued as an important contributor in pursuing our mission and goals as a company. Today ProVia is known as an excellent company to work for, and we tend to attract the best and the brightest when job openings arise. With the right people, and the right environment, we can most effectively pursue our company Vision, “to be the premier building products manufacturer, providing unmatched quality and service.”
Last Updated: October 22, 2021
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