Real Estate and Construction
Career goals
How Robert C. Grubic mentors his staff at Herbert, Rowland & Grubic Inc.
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Pittsburgh | April 2007
When Robert C. Grubic says he leads by example, he demonstrates it by not asking his employees to do something that he hasn’t done before.
“Or not sitting down and dictating what people should be
doing but demonstrating by your own example, whether it’s
the way you handle yourself in a speech, in your character, in
your integrity, the image that you portray or how you deal with
people,” says Grubic, president of Herbert, Rowland & Grubic
Inc., an engineering and related services firm. “It’s much more
important to be able to show example to people and have them
follow it than have to dictate policies, management styles and
not have you follow up on them.”
Grubic says that, even as president, he still serves clients personally, which helps him keep his finger on the pulse of the
business side as well as the technical side of the engineering
world.
“It shows our people that I’m still actively involved and I am
able to help them understand things when they get in jams, and
they will come to me for mentoring,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with Grubic about how he leads by
example, how to delegate tasks and how to retain employees.
Q: How do you delegate responsibilities?
When you start out in business, you are doing routine day-today things. It’s tough to be able to delegate that to others. The
theory is by the time I can tell someone to go do it, I could do
it myself.
But that’s unfair to the manager because it does not free their
time up to do things they should be doing. It’s especially unfair
and not a good management practice for the person you are
trying to train and mentor because they need to have a broad-based exposure of what needs to be done.
You have to do it gradually. You can’t completely delegate
everything to somebody else. You start with small tasks and
assignments. Get the client familiar with the individual and get
the individual familiar with the client. Have a level of comfort
develop between the two.
Have a manager become the contact person but have somebody else doing the technical detail work and being the
resource person. It’s a manner of mentoring and step-by-step
training, educating the individual.
Q: How do you retain employees?
Showing people their career path. If someone is serious
about the engineering profession, we have shown everyone in
the organization a career path so they don’t get the impression
they are pigeonholed in the position for the next 30 years of
their career.
If they do certain things and perform to certain expectations,
they would have increased responsibilities and increased compensation. We have the ability to offer positions that would
involve promotions in other offices.
Plus, we have the constant communication with our people. If
there is a problem or an issue, come tell us. I don’t want to see
it at the exit interview. I want to see it now when a situation
arises so that we can do everything we can to prevent it from
turning into a problem.
Q: How do you motivate employees?
Recruiting the best people possible for the position, not just
filling a position with somebody because someone happened
to walk in the door and wants a job.
Communicate what the rules of the game are and the limits of the
playing field. Let them know you’re there to mentor or guide them
and not to direct them in every action or spoon-feed them. Then,
allow them to rise to their highest level of capability and reward
them when they do.
There are a lot of external motivators we do in terms of social
gatherings, fringe benefits and bonuses, and compensation.
Those things we found were important, but not as important as
instilling in people the spirit of the organization, communicating to the people what our strategic business plan is and how
we are going to implement it.
How they can work with us, and how important they are in
the implementation and success of the plan.
Q: How do you find the best people?
About five years ago, we brought in an in-house recruiter who
has been charged with responsibility of doing recruiting and entry-level and experience-level positions. We’d go out into the colleges,
meet with the faculty, and try to get the best and brightest students.
Also, internally, by word of mouth. We do have an employee
referral bonus program.
If one of our existing people knows someone and if they were to
come on with us, that individual responsible for the contact would
get a substantial bonus.
HOW TO REACH: Herbert, Rowland & Grubic Inc., (717) 564-1121 or www.hrg-inc.com
