February 17, 2014
ETC is a family business. The way we treat our employees, the way we treat our customers, you can look throughout the organization and it looks just like any other small family business, but with the upside of a big business.
We realized a while ago that treating our employees like family is the best way to build our company. Truly caring for the people that work for you and wanting to see them grow is both rewarding for the company and the employee. Just think about how you would treat your own children if they worked for you and you’ll see what we try to do for our employees.
Being a dad has taught me a lot. At home we have a lot of fun as a family, but it isn’t all fun all the time. We spend time teaching them as much as we can, nurturing them, and making sure we are compassionate when we need to be. At the same time, our kids know what our expectations are and what the consequences are if they don’t meet them. More often than not our kids are well behaved, are relatively independent, and are always learning new things. Our goal is to always help them mature and grow as human beings so that they end up being independent and able to make good choices as adults.
The same applies at the office. People are nurtured, taught as much as possible and allowed to grow. At the same time, they are forced to be independent and are all allowed to make mistakes. We also have a lot of fun in the process.
At ETC, family always comes first. Employees are allowed to take time out of their day for appointments; moms and dads can take a sick day to stay home with their sick kids. We give an extra day for shopping at Christmas time because it is hard to fit everything into this busy time of year, and everyone gets a day off for the start of the Calgary Stampede to go down to the parade with their family.
We conduct regular performance reviews where expectations are clearly spelled out and ways to grow professionally are laid out. Evaluations are centered more on how a person acts and how much they live the culture as opposed to their technical skills. We spend several weeks indoctrinating new employees in everything about the company and how we do things. As an employee shows their commitment to the company and it is clear that they want to grow with ETC, we help pay for tuition. This allows employees to move their career forward and ETC gains additional capabilities. It really is a win-win situation.
As we move forward, we’ll add more hard working, intelligent people to our family. We will not only give them the opportunity to grow and be successful, we’ll be there every step of the way with the tools and support to help them get there.
Mark Scantlebury
President and CEO
ETC
Extreme Telematics Corp.
5925 12th Street SE, Bay 14
Calgary, Alberta T2H 2M3