Values

• One of my primary values stems from the various jobs I have had over the course of my professional career. Coming from Manitoba I appreciate companies and individuals that hold in high regard practicing safety and environmental responsibility. I find even within the role of programming so many companies do not look at ergonomics and posture within their employees, but rather stress long hours and tight dead lines. Thus resulting in developers who have essentially “burned out” their wrists and arms through repetitive stress.

• I hold in great regard people who are honest, and have integrity. I believe that a company should have a mission statement and have written goals, I also believe that companies should practice these goals from top down and press to move forward based on these goals.

1. • An example of business integrity gone arye would be when the smoking ban was imposed as legislation in Manitoba across the province. Many employers and establishments alike decided this wasn’t something they would abide by and thus didn’t. But this is missing the mark when it pertains to someone’s health and safety, if a company refuses to adhere to the regulations then what else are they willing to or not do? To openly break the law because they themselves smoke and have little or no consideration for others should send a clear message that if this is business practices then maybe they just do not need every ones business.

• I believe that in order for a company to continue to compete in their market they have to continuously tweak their processes and procedures to drill down into the bottle necks. I have seen a lot of companies that adopt a process and stick with it even if this process costs them business.

• • As an example: If your making coffee mugs, and you have employed 12 people to cast and mold them. Those salaries now are part in parcel to those mugs, so for every defect made that is a cost and when someone wants more money or is sick that influences how much those mugs have to be sold for. But if the company is pro-active and recognizes that certain mugs can be made through automated means while others can be hand crafted than they can mitigate salaries as the machines make mugs day in and day out.

• I believe that a job should be done well, and that all avenues should be explored in order to do the job. I believe that if a job is done poorly then that reflects on your professionalism and your name. If your willing to put your name on something then you should be contributing 100% to that product.

• This isn’t so much a value as a belief or practice that I hold dear. It has been my experience that when times are tough that certain people are laid off or let go by organizations to reduce operating capital. For the most part often those roles where greatly redundant and with current consumption numbers the reduction is justified. However, i have seen many organizations that lay off people who are integral parts of the organization, and have grown themselves and with the company through their ideas and imagination. And companies utilize them, train them, and discard them only to hire lower wage earners to off set their costs. But by doing this, with an employee that maybe have very well been your foundational structure  or that might have built a special part of your process. That employer has essentially just trained and cultured that employee for their competitor or possibly for some other organization to gain substantial market share from them.

• • For example, say the manufacturer is building trailers and they hire on individuals to weld the frames. The individuals they train and assure that there is a shop standard for the weld quality and the welders are all ticketed. However, the manufacturer pays the welders well below market rates for a welder. This often results in a revolving door on training of welders as the seasoned experienced welders head off to greener pastures with their newly obtained tickets and green would be workers fill in those roles. What does this do for a product’s quality? How do you handle the warranty claims and the weld failures? This behavior results in massive blows to a business as they put in months and even years into employees only to have them take that experience on down the road to a new employer to capitalize on.  Moral of the story: Take care of those employees that you have built your business success on. Because you certainly do not want your competitor to build his success on your past employees.