Cover Story
Power of the people
How Todd Kenner used PBS&J Corp.’s culture to steer through hard times
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business Tampa Bay | March 2008
If you want to hear about the benefits of building a better company culture, go find Todd J. Kenner and ask him about how it
saved PBS&J Corp.
In 2006, everything should have fallen apart at the engineering
and construction firm that provides services in transportation,
environmental and civil engineering, and construction management. Three of the firm’s financial officers, including the chief
financial officer, pleaded guilty to an elaborate embezzlement
scheme of more than $35 million, rocking the firm’s core.
“It challenged every aspect of the firm, our culture, our character and our reputation in the marketplace,” Kenner, the company’s president and chief operating officer, says of the scandal.
Though it very well could have meant the end of any relationship between executives and employees, PBS&J had taken
a preemptive strike in that matter, having switched over to a
culture focused on employee happiness several years earlier.
From that momentum change, there were avenues for segments of PBS&J’s nearly 11,000 employees to sit in on board
meetings and have regular sessions with other senior leaders.
That policy wasn’t enough to stop the embezzlement, but it
certainly stopped the bleeding thereafter.
“I will tell you that if we didn’t have that cultural connection,
we would have never survived,” Kenner says. “If we didn’t have
those relationships, even though we challenged each other
over the last two years, I don’t think we would have ever gotten through it. The adversity we faced as a result of that was
the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to go through.”
But the benefit of the culture was that Kenner and the employees
at the $573 million firm didn’t have to go it alone. With the avenues
created by the company culture, employees were able to sit in
front of senior leaders and see the steps being taken to fix the damage.
“If that wasn’t already present, it would have had a dramatically different impact,” Kenner says. “It’s easier to get together
and deal with problems when there is a relationship connection. When there isn’t, the end result is, ‘Hey, I don’t want to
deal with this, I feel somewhat alone, and I’m out of here.’”
The process behind that cultural change dated back nearly a
decade. It started with convincing senior leaders to believe in
the fact that a better culture would equal a better company and
followed with figuring out ways to meet employee expectations of personal growth. From there, it was a matter of continuing to make culture a priority on a daily basis.
Change your cultural focus
If you tell someone a new product can make you more
money, you can show them data projections. If you tell them
that spending more time and energy on culture will create a
better company, you better have a heck of a sales pitch. Kenner
says that in the late ’90s the first conversations about culture at PBS&J were as much about faith as business.
“It took a leap of faith,” he says. “It’s difficult to draw some
direct correlation between investing in people and bottom-line performance. You just have to believe that if you create
an environment where people are inspired, and they feel
recognized and like the company is investing in them to not
only improve themselves but their work in the firm, that the
end result will be the firm will do better. And for some of us,
it’s not a major leap but for others it is.”
So in 1997, when PBS&J’s chairman decided to collapse the
firm’s nine operating companies into one corporation, there
was a focus on pushing a better culture for the first time. The
firm was realizing more and more that there was a bigger fight
for talent brewing the number of science and engineering
positions has risen at four times the national rate since 1980
according to the National Science Foundation and they
needed to make a push for retention in other areas beyond
compensation. The main thing that helped leaders in the company make that leap of faith was to emphasize the forthcoming
business imperative of the change.
“In our business, we’ve clearly recognized that people are our
greatest asset,” Kenner says. “Our people provide our services
and without them we have nothing to offer our clients. In our
industry, there is a virtual talent war. So as the opportunities
have increased, it’s simple supply and demand.”
Another of the strongest selling points in those top-end conversations about a culture focused on your people is to talk
about how building relationships with employees will help
build bridges in the company that will send messages both
ways.
“It’s continuity and sustainability,” Kenner says. “Whenever
you can build long-lasting relationships, and that builds trust
and confidence, obviously that leads to greater performance,
and we have seen a dramatic decrease in our turnover throughout this period.”
Though the initial sell was a little tough, soon enough there
was even some of that hard data that board members like so
much: PBS&J, which has had turnover numbers as high as 18
percent, has seen those figures drop to near 10 percent during
its focus on culture.
Involve your employees
By 2002, the movement to change the culture at PBS&J was no
longer just a small push, it was one of the company’s three strategic
plans. As senior leaders realized they had to help make the strategy
a success, they worked to increase communications from the top
level to the rest of the employees to figure out what employees
wanted in a new culture. One of the simple ways that Kenner has
built on the process is by simply making meeting employees a must
on his travel schedule.
“When I’m in one of our offices and traveling, I have a period of time
with no agenda,” Kenner says. “I’m just walking around and saying
hello to folks and talking and conveying to them what they mean to
us. No matter what reason there is in my travel, I spend quality time
with my employees.”
In conversations that Kenner and other senior leaders had, they realized that employees had expectations that the firm would provide
them with growth opportunities
“There’s an expectation that our professionals have: They expect the
firm to invest in them professionally and help develop their careers,”
he says. “Not just provide them great projects and opportunities, but
elevate their skills so they can take on more responsibilities as they
grow and develop.”
In response to that, PBS&J worked to create avenues that allowed
employees to take ownership of new projects and build up their skills.
PBS&J University was created for employees who wanted more training and employees were given the opportunity to volunteer to head up
initiative committees on the biggest issues and they could air those
issues in front of the board.
“They report directly to the board, so they have a direct conduit and a voice with our board of directors,” Kenner says.
“And they really kind of set out a work plan on an annual basis
and focus on specific areas where they are going to review and
make recommendations for and set forth actions that the
board can implement to have a firmwide impact.”
For each major area of interest for employees areas like
recruitment, retention, compensation, diversity and so on
those who felt most passionate about the issue formed an
employee committee. In turn, each of those committees is
teamed up with one board member and has its chance to
appear before the board with studies and recommendations on
what can be done to improve the company. The benefit to the
board is a wealth of inside knowledge.
“They do a lot better job than the board could ever do,” Kenner says
of the committees. “They are closer to the issues, they understand the
issues, and they live them every day, where the board has awareness
but not that direct involvement.”
Moreover, the bridge from employee to top decision-makers fulfills
the growth opportunities employees crave. They can see how company decisions are made and feel like a part of the process.
“We can talk all we want about opportunities,” Kenner says. “But
when they see a real example, they see someone they can aspire to
and know it’s possible, it’s going to be real.”
Make a daily commitment
Even when you start to see the positive change that an employee-friendly culture can bring, Kenner says you have to keep rein-vesting in it. Today, after pushing through the embezzlement fiasco, PBS&J still has company culture as one of its key strategic initiatives and focuses on updating its internal training programs and
employee committees. The main thing is not to just call it a strategic focus but to give it the same attention you would your other
key business plans.
“It’s just something you live with every day,” Kenner says.
“Again, it comes back to understanding that without great people all the rest will never take place.”
That commitment can’t just be all about today, either. To keep
PBS&J ready for the evolution of the business, Kenner makes
sure that different ages are represented on the board and that
new talent is given the opportunity to form culture committees
that can bring forth new issues. The goal is to keep from letting
one generation control the company’s way of thinking.
“It’s all about creating a sustainable future and a sustainable
organization,” Kenner says. “And if we don’t feed in that young
talent, you’re obviously not going to have much of a future.
Furthermore, with our focus on our culture and that cultural
connectivity, the only way that can live on is if we develop that
and build an awareness and strength to that with young folks
that eventually are going to lead the organization. You have to
feed it and mature it and develop it and continually cycle it
through.”
Another piece to keeping that daily commitment is an emphasis on the little things that drive communication at PBS&J. It’s
very easy to make senior leaders seem as if they are some farand-away power that just sends e-mails and memos, so Kenner
wants to put the face and personality of the leadership team in
front of employees as much as possible. That means practices
like no e-mail Friday, where instead of sending people in your
same office an e-mail, you have to physically go talk to them or
pick up the phone and have a conversation.
“Our conversations take on a whole different tone in e-mail
than if we were face to face,” Kenner says. “I don’t think it’s
doing any major thing, it’s doing a lot of small, simple things
every day. All too often, we just don’t pick up the phone anymore. One of our greatest challenges with the cultural connectivity is our technology. E-mail and Blackberry have almost
been contrary or worked against the relationship building. It’s
a lot easier to just e-mail somebody than to walk down the hall,
so it’s really not allowing technology to work against building
relationships, and it takes a lot of focus.”
Of course, the other piece to that is a lot of energy spent on
these daily communication tasks. Nonetheless, Kenner says
that commitment will make or break your attempt to build a
better culture.
“For some of us, it takes a lot of travel,” he says. “No matter
how large we get, we do not want to lose that connection we
have with our folks. We want to make sure they know we’re just
human beings like they are, committed to building the organization, and we’re all working together. The only way you can do
that is through face-to-face communication and working together on strategic issues.” <<
HOW TO REACH: PBS&J Corp., (813) 282-7275 or www.pbsj.com
