2009 Overall winner:
Booth Machinery Inc.

Company adding jobs despite
downturn in economy
BY NANCY GILKEY, SPECIAL TO YUMA SUN

Booth Machinery Inc. engages employees, informs them of the company¹s financial health, offers paid incentives and keeps a full-time, year-round crew working despite the state of the economy. Not only has the company not laid off any employees since the economic downturn, but it has recently employed people who were laid off of other jobs.

Those are just some reasons why Booth Machinery Inc. takes top honors for Workplace Excellence 2009.

The company begins engaging employees during the hiring process, when a team of representatives from each department reviews all applications and conducts interviews using predetermined questions for comparing applicants fairly.

"This process demonstrates to the prospective employee that we are serious about working as a team across departmental lines," the company's nomination application states. To foster employee engagement, employees are allowed to make decisions that are supported by management.

"It is engaged employees that deliver the best customer service and the best customer service only occurs when management has spent enough time coaching employees on making those decisions."

Octavio Meza, service scheduler, wrote in his nomination form that the company is always looking for new ideas for success and positive attitudes for the best customer service.

To keep employees engaged, management at Booth Machinery shows a sincere interest in the job that each employee performs. Managers regularly leave their offices to go out on the floor and discuss tasks employees are currently performing.

"Management is understanding and caring," wrote Gabriel Sarabia, service technician, in his nomination form. "(The) owner is very fair and nice. People are great."

Employees are encouraged to act like owners who share responsibilities for maintaining a successful business. "If we want employees to act like owners, then we need to treat them like owners," states the company's nomination letter. "This means sharing the financial performance of the company with them through open book management. Not only do we need to share this information, but we need to have an incentive plan that shares the profits of the company as well."

Management at Booth Machinery believes an incentive plan must be both measurable and meaningful. "If you cannot measure the activity that you are paying an incentive on, and generate a report of that activity, you do not have an adequate plan. Conversely if obtaining the goal is not meaningful to the company and the incentive is not meaningful to the employee, you do not have an adequate plan."

The company¹s incentive plan and employee engagement efforts must be paying off. Claudio Sarabia, parts technician, wrote in his nomination form: "This is a good place to work because this is the only company in the agriculture industry that has not laid off any personnel during this bad economy. And on the contrary, this company has hired people that have been laid off from other companies."

Rick Adams, back parts department manager, wrote: "We are still working year-round with a full crew."

Management at Booth Machinery is open to suggestions, according to Greg Steed, fuel injection technician. "The management is open to us through the Great Game of Business program they offer so that even in these hard times we can see how the company is doing and what we need to work on to keep it stable."

Karen Medrano, service writer, agrees that the company keeps employees informed of the overall picture so there are no secrets.

And another service writer, Julie Frist, wrote: "The most important reason I enjoy working at Booth Machinery is that (I) work for a company that has integrity and honesty. It starts at the top and you find it all the way through the company."

Performance management

• Booth Machinery manages company performance by sharing information about sales, cost of sales, gross margin, expenses and net profit with employees at weekly meetings.
  
  
  
  
• Each department head generates a revised monthly forecast that is shared with all employees at weekly meetings.
  
  
  
  
• Employees calculate financial numbers and question management about the accuracy of forecasts during weekly meetings.
  
  
  
  
• Each department meets weekly to review its own financial numbers and discuss specific sales targets and expense items controlled by that department.
  
  
  
  
• All employees are aware of the financial health of the company and what they can do to improve company performance.
  
  

Compensation and rewards

• Booth Machinery's open book management is the basis for its storewide incentive program.
  
  
  
  
• Incentive is paid out as a percentage of the employee¹s base on a quarterly basis.
  
  
  
  
• The program setup allows the company to pay the incentive for two quarters if it misses its goal for payout the previous quarter.
  
  
  
  
• During weekly meetings, discussions center around what each employee can do to attain corporate incentive goal.
  
  
  
  
• Department specific goals are addressed by short-term programs that have team payouts such as barbecues or gift certificates to local restaurants.
  
  

Employee engagement, communications and morale

• Booth Machinery uses anonymous surveys to assess employees' perceptions on its Core Cultural Drivers: Honesty/Ethics, Communication, Politics/Silos, Values/Attitudes, Vision/Leadership, Management and Performance.
  
  
  
  
• The April 2006 survey indicated that while the company was better than average in all categories, there was most room for improvement in communication.
  
  
  
  
• Management's efforts to improve communication over the next 12 months resulted in decline of communication.
  
  
  
  
• Management then discovered that employees wanted more information about the company's financial health, which led to the implementation of its open book management in May 2007.
  
  
  
  
• The company's latest survey completed in June 2009 indicated a 20-point improvement in its communication score with a significant improvement is scores for all other areas as well.