We're sure most of you are familiar with the Myers Briggs assessment many companies give their potential employees. There's also the Enneagram assessment and the Holland Code. We don't use personality assessments at Bridgeview. Instead, we focus on making sure our different personalities can communicate, which is why everyone who works for Bridgeview takes the DISC assessment.
There are four categories of communication according to DISC: Decisive, Interactive, Stabilizing, and Cautious. Depending on how a person answers the DISC questionnaire, they will be strong in one or more category. Knowing how a person communicates makes for an environment where we can be ourselves and still respect the communication style of others. Which assessment do you use at your company?
0 Comments
We believe in clearly laying out for team members exactly how they can succeed at Bridgeview. When they're first hired, part of our onboarding process is to explain the "Bridge to Success" to them.
Everyone starts at the beginning. We don't care if you have a high school diploma or a college degree, when you first start a Bridgeview, you're a Junior-Level team member. After a year (and the accomplishment of various tasks/trainings), a team member can graduate to a Mid-Level team member. This involves a certificate, a round of applause, cupcakes, and a raise! As our team members, gain more experience within the company, they have opportunities for raises, promotions, and more cupcakes. How do you encourage team members to grow within the company? Below: Peter (right) is learning how to insert a small and complicated pin. His sign-off sheet (right) is a record of the various tools he has been trained on. Way to go, Peter! Here at Bridgeview, we believe in lifting up and empowering people of all backgrounds and abilities. We have various personalities that work for us but we also have team members with challenges that other employers might shy away from. From autism to mental health issues, we feel strongly that we can be a place of respect and encouragement for those who simply want to feel proud of the work they do.
How do you support team members of different abilities? Below: Richard and Peter (left) make a fantastic production team, even if there is 40 years difference between them. Kevin and Seth (right) developed our testing procedures. With their combined backgrounds in engineering and programming, they have developed a solid testing program. Oh yes, it's that time of year. It's time for the Safety Review!
We spent our weekly team meeting discussing the various safety measures we take here at Bridgeview to make sure we all have a safe and happy work environment. This include things like wearing gloves when working with materials that might slip or that might affect our skin, and wearing safety glasses when soldering. We identified the many various pieces of safety equipment we use around the shop, like cord strips for the floor and machines shields for our pneumatic tools, and we talked about the processes we include in building assemblies that keep everyone safe, like keeping our work area clean. Safety is never the most exciting topic but we tried to keep the discussion light-hearted while also making sure that everyone understood the importance of the topic. How do you keep your team members safe? Below: Richard's pneumatic tool (left) has a guard to protect fingers from the moving crimping part. Peter (right) uses gloves to help him grip the assemblies better and protect his hands from sharp crimp edges. Welcome to 2024! We have a lot of exciting things happening at Bridgeview and a lot of plans for 2024.
As you know, we cover topics in our blog that we discuss as a team during our weekly team meetings on Mondays. This Monday we talked about the future of Bridgeview and we asked our team members to dream with us about what 2024 could potentially hold for our company. Our mission at Bridgeview is to empower American manufacturing. This means not only helping companies produce an amazing product but it also means lifting up and supporting American workers. We do this by focusing on amazing customer relations and telling the "story" of each of our customers to our team members. Our team members know when a company was founded, who founded it, what the mission of the company is, the names of people we have contact with, and information about the specific products we are helping build. This paints a great picture for everyone of who we're building for. We can't build for a faceless corporation. We build for people: for the men and women, the moms and dads, and the grandmas and grandpas that work for the companies we support. We are a people-centric company and we feel that's what sets us apart. What do you have planned for 2024? (Below: We love to visit our customers. Collin and Kevin (left) are checking out our cables inside a customer's industrial automation machine. Collin (left) visits Chris and gets a demo of how our cables are installed in their conversion van. A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Here’s to a year of growth and change! Some has been great, some challenging. As the year has gone by we’ve seen companies emerge as leaders while some fade into the background. We’ve seen new ventures and new technologies take hold, as well as challenges of all kinds. Here at Bridgeview we’ve had a year of growth as well as challenges too – we’ve added several new customers, for whom we’re very grateful. We’ve also continued to add to our facility in terms of equipment and increasing the amount of organizational and storage options we have to accommodate the inevitable increase in inventory. Most important of all the internal changes are the additions to our team! A great blessing as it gives our leadership the resources needed to focus on moving Bridgeview forward. We pray that 2024 will prove to be another strong year, our plans include preparing to move to a larger facility, finalizing our ISO9001:2015 compliant QMS and beginning to train some of our dedicated team for management as they grow in their roles. We’ll be exploring new avenues for Bridgeview, including building up our 3D printing activities and working towards partnerships with other businesses so we can provide our customers with more options for services. Our dedicated Sales Rep, Greg, is working to enhance communications to support all of these efforts. One aspect of this we will be focusing on in ’24 is getting out to see you all more frequently. Our recent trip to the Portland area was a great success and we had a fantastic time seeing some of our customers, it’s always exciting to see how things grow and change while we have our noses to the grindstone, growth and change we’re thrilled to be a part of! From our team to yours, we wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Below: Ben, Seth, and Greg (left) open their gifts at our company Christmas party. Ashlee, Haley, Collin, Ben, and Greg (right) watch Kevin trying to open the parcel during our "Pass The Parcel" game. We had a great time at our Christmas party! What a great way to end 2023! Every good work space has flow to it. A chef knows where everything is in his kitchen and can easily access his equipment and ingredients to make a quick and delicious meal. An accountant knows which documents she needs and where to find the forms to prepare a quarterly tax return. Organization goes a long way to making work life easier but so does knowing the order in which we do things. This order is called our process and knowing the process allows for a work space with good flow.
An example of process is what happens when a customer submits a Request For Quote (RFQ). A company that does not know how much materials cost, what their overhead is, or even if they have available workers to fill the order won't be able to complete the RFQ in a timely manner, resulting in frustrations and possible loss of customers. They have no process and no flow. We actually pride ourselves in getting quotes turned around quickly, sometimes even as quick as a few hours. Why can we do that? Because we have defined processes of how to perform the operations required to create a quote. This speeds up the operation, giving us a flow. Successful process and flow allow for happy customers and a feeling of accomplishment. Have you defined your processes? Does your work space have a flow? Below: We have a defined process flow chart (left) posted at the shop to help everyone determine where they are in the process and what should come next. Ashlee (right) follows the process of putting away closed out orders and restocking the shelves. It's hard building a business. There's a reason why people like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos fascinate us. They have built billion-dollar empires and are seen as people who made it, despite all the hardships they may have faced over the years. If building a successful business was easy, everyone would do it.
The most obvious side affect of spending the necessary time to build a successful business is stress. Do we have enough money coming in? Do we have enough people to help? Do we have a space big enough to handle production? And why does everyone keep stealing my favorite pen? One of our team members found an article that offered some strategies to feeling stressed. While the article is written from the perspective of the employee, it can also be adopted by those in leadership positions. The article can be found here: www.happyhighlysensitivelife.com/blog/6-ways-to-reduce-work-stress-as-a-highly-sensitive-person#:~:text=Take%20leave%20time%20when%20you,time%2C%20it's%20yours%20to%20take. One of best points of the above article is that energy spent must be restored. If we spend 60 hours working during the week, we must spend time on the weekend to restore that spent energy. If we continue to give and give and give, at some point there will simply be nothing left to give. Burn out is real and it's hard to come back from it. Not impossible, just really hard. To prevent burnout and make sure that you can keep your business growing, you have to take breaks. A stressed boss is no help to anyone. How have to make rest a priority? Below: The Padres' Swinging Friar (left) takes time out of his busy day of playing baseball to check in on Collin. Our 3D-printed dinosaur (right) joins Seth in checking on the progress of the 3-D printer. This week we had some shop projects that we finally had time to get done. We painted the breakroom, re-organized our loft storage space, and tackled a dozen smaller projects that we had been putting off. Since painting the breakroom was a bit of a larger job, we put Richard in charge of it and made him project leader. Richard did an amazing job and our breakroom looks fantastic.
That brings us to this week's topic: Are you ready to lead? Richard has many years experience being the leader of a small team so he was a natural when it came time to choosing a project leader. What about out other team members? Do we have the confidence in them to ask them to lead? Part of our hiring practice is to ask if a potential team member is hungry, humble, and smart. Hungry means they are driven and will do what's necessary to get the job done. Humble means a person knows they don't know everything and are willing to ask questions and admit mistakes. Smart means they are emotionally intelligent and can get along with a wide variety of people. All three of those qualities make a great team member. Incidentally, they also make a great leader. When we hire a new team member, we're also hiring a future leader. What about you? Are you humble, hungry, and smart? Are you ready to lead? Below: Richard (left) is teaching Peter and Seth how to use a jigsaw. Peter and Seth (right) are getting ready to start painting our breakroom. This week we taught our team about Dr. William Edwards Deming and his theory of variation in Quality Management. You can find a short article about Dr. Deming's life at the link below:
deming.org/deming-the-man/ Dr. Dreming said there are four factors as to why there is variation when it comes to the quality of a product. 1. Common cause variation 2. Special cause variation 3. Tampering 4. Structural variation Understanding the different variations, and then collecting data to better understand which variation could be at play, is so beneficial in figuring out how to fix the problem. Although we believe we have a high level of quality accountability at Bridgeview (you won't find shoddy work from us), sometimes variations happen that then results in products not meeting our high standards. When that happens, we come together as team to figure out what went wrong. Are our tools worn out? Did someone hiccup as they were crimping? Were the instructions not followed correctly? Did the level of humidity in the shop cause electrical interference? When you know what happened, you can then figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again. How do you use Dr Deming's theory of variation to help with quality management? Below: Seth (left) is studying customer requirements for the assembly he is inspecting. Collin (right) is working with Peter to make sure instructions and production procedures match. |
AuthorsChristina and Kevin Hayward Archives
April 2024
Categories |