For the last 20 years, Howard
Tellepsen Jr. has been seeking professional help, not only
for himself but for every
employee in his company.
For Tellepsen, owner, chairman
and CEO of Tellepsen Builders
LP, this help comes in the form
of an industrial psychologist
who has become an essential
member of the Tellepsen team.
This outsourced counselor
performs compatibility tests with
job candidates, facilitates team
building and visits the company
two days each month to help
Tellepsen’s 345 employees manage personal and professional
issues.
“It’s an ongoing commitment
to have this industrial psychologist as a resource for our
employees,” Tellepsen says.
The fourth-generation owned
and operated construction company posted 2007 revenue of
$283 million, and Tellepsen says
that making a counselor available to employees has reinforced
his company’s philosophy: Treat
everyone with mutual trust and
respect. He says this leads to a
feeling of ownership, which fosters an atmosphere of empowerment.
Smart Business spoke with
Tellepsen about how he builds
the foundation for his company’s
greatest asset — its employees.
Hire to fit your culture. We work
closely with our industrial psychologist in terms of recruiting
employees in the first place.
Culture is very important here,
and it’s based on values.
The most important value —
mutual trust and respect — is
how you treat your employees,
and it’s how you get that same
trust and respect from them in
return. Mutual trust and
respect is how you want them
to conduct their business with
the people they deal with internally and externally.
These tests that are given by
our industrial psychologist have
allowed us to identify people
who have a high probability of
fitting into our culture and
growing with the company. We
have very low turnover because
we spend time on the front end
making sure that we are the
right culture for them. It’s
important to make sure that
employees are going to fit into
our culture because our company was built in 1909, and our
culture is well established.
When you have that kind of
culture and you have employees who fit that culture, it
makes it easier to be able to
empower them because you
can trust them. Somebody certainly might be smart enough
to work here and they might
have experience, but they may
not be able to thrive in our culture.
When they understand the
culture, it allows us to empower them to be responsible for
their actions, and holding them
accountable is part of the
empowerment. You have the
right people in the first place,
and then they understand that’s
how we function in terms of
giving a lot of responsibility to
the employees. We allow them
to make decisions because we
want them to take ownership
and to be held accountable.
Don’t take chances. If an employee isn’t compatible with a company’s culture, especially when
the company has a very strong
culture, you risk a low-performing, unhappy employee, and that
is not healthy to the rest of the
employees. You then risk a
short-term employee who does-n’t stay.
Try to make long-term decisions rather than short-term decisions. Our people are our most
important asset, so it’s a long-term decision to spend that time
on the front end having them
test with our industrial psychologist. It’s a real investment.
You’re only as effective as
your people. I don’t know how
you could not make a long-term decision on your people
because they are the ones who
are representing you every single day to your clients. Your
company becomes — in the
eyes of your clients — who your
employees are, how they conduct their business and how
they treat their customers.
