My grandfather had a habit of going throughout the entire plant to say good morning to each employee every single day.  This is still the number one memory and comment I receive from former employees that I meet or even from current employees that worked with him.  This also happens to be one of the requests that I get from those same employees, is that they wish I had kept up this habit.

It is obvious that he was passionate about connecting with employees, making them feel valued and special.  He knew them by name and looked them in the eye each and every day.  As he got older and had less responsibility for running the business, his good morning routine got longer and longer, because he would stop and talk.  He would spend more time in people’s offices or at their work station.  This is the true evidence that this was something he really loved doing, not just rote behavior.

My honest assumption was that he did this because it was his business and these were his employees.  I also felt that it was a habit that he started when the company was small having been started from nothing and once started he never stopped.  It was always manageable because the facility was not that big and there were not that many people.  That was part of my excuse as to why I have not carried on the practice.  The facility is bigger now and there are more people.  Besides that, we now operate in 3 different cities, in 3 different states.

In a recent conversation with someone who first met my grandfather when they worked together in 1968, I learned how flawed these assumptions were.  Before starting Hermetic Switch, now re-branded as HSI Sensing, my grandfather worked for a company called Gordos.  It was located in New Jersey and made similar products to what we manufacture today.  This gentleman shared some of his memories of my grandfather from that time.  He spoke about his technical expertise, his skills and intellectual prowess.  But I never expected his number one memory to be about how my grandfather would go to every one of Gordos 400 employees every single day and say good morning!

This was not a habit my grandfather adopted in his new company, it was one he continued.  It was that important to him to be connected with his coworkers.

This is a legacy I am grateful to have inherited.  Granted, my methods are different, but it is one that I hope continues to be felt under my leadership.  I do not go throughout the plant to say good morning every day.  However, we are now an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) company, so that each employee owns a piece.  As such, I want employees to truly feel like owners.  I am very open in our management, sharing details of our success and struggles.  I share results of key metrics, the business outlook and selected financial results.  This is done through meetings where I meet personally with small groups of employees and encourage them to ask questions about pretty much anything.  I have added weekly 15 minute Q&A sessions meeting one on one with employees.  We have a wellness program that levels the organizational structure, so that we build camaraderie (as I have written about in a previous post).  We also make great strides to maintain a flat organizational hierarchy that allows me great access to employees and them to me as we tackle various business challenges.  We continue to give a Christmas basket containing all the ingredients for a family Christmas dinner to each employee and my father, cousin and me insist on passing them out ourselves in order to look each employee in the eye and say Merry Christmas!  There are other habits and practices in daily activities as well, but these examples illustrate some of the intentional ways I try to protect this cultural element.

The fact that this is the number one memory from time spent working for my grandfather has not been lost on me.  Even now, I sometimes wonder what  employees will say about their time spent working with me.  I can only hope it to be something so positive and reassuring to each individual.  Thus, it is my sincere desire that the legacy of the daily good morning continues to be an integral part of who we are as a business and who I am as a leader.