Lay the foundation
“You have to talk to them until they puke.”
That’s Simon’s philosophy on communicating with his employees.
Without constant communication — even to the point of overcommunication — from the top, the vision and values of your business
will never take root with your employees, and by extension, your
company’s culture won’t flourish.
“You have to continue to make sure they understand your vision,
then you have to constantly continue to train them to do the same
thing,” Simon says. “It’s like in boxing, if you want to get better, you
train and go running. It’s tough when you have pains, but that is part
of the growth. No pain, no gain.”
From their first day on the job at Atlas, new employees are
immersed in the culture of the company by Simon and his senior
management team. Simon spends four or five hours with each new
class of employees during their orientation. The orientation is the
same, no matter the job title of the new hire.
“Everybody comes in when they are new and they have to go
through the five-hour training,” Simon says. “It doesn’t matter who it is or what job, this is the orientation they go through. It’s a lot of
time and a lot of work, but you have to do it. It’s not sexy, people
don’t see the money coming in right away, but this is one of the
things that sustains long-term companies.”
Atlas focuses their employees on a set of core values that provides
the basis for the company culture:
Have passion for what you do.
“If you are delivering a load of fuel, if you are selling to a customer,
you have to have the passion to do it well,” Simon says. “You have
to be hungry and love what you do.”
Focus on the customer.
“A lot of people forget that without customers, none of us would
be here. We sometimes forget in business that customers are the
people who pay our paychecks, so we have to show them the
utmost respect as we go out and do our jobs.”
Be solution-driven.
“There are always going to be problems, always going to be issues
and things that are not working, but our team has to have solutions
for our customers.”
Have pride in your image.
“Image doesn’t just mean that the facilities are looking right, that
the delivery trucks are looking good, but that our employees having
all the paperwork that goes out to customers, that they’re polite and
honest. If you have a phony system, people will see it automatically.
That’s why you must have pride in what you do.”
Grow or go.
“It’s very key that you continue to improve yourself, continue to
handle your challenges well. Everybody has challenges, be they
economy or customer challenges. Things change, and that is why
you must continue to grow in training, education, being a little
aggressive on certain things. If you are not growing and improving
every day, you are going to be left out.”
During orientation, new hires are shown a collection of real-life
examples of Atlas embracing each of those values and why each
value is integral to the success of the company. After orientation,
Simon and his managers continue to hammer away at those values
with a philosophy of open communication.
“I’m a walking person, I go around and talk to people and they can
come to my office,” he says. “Anybody can walk in, and we encourage that. If people are looking for ideas or a solution, we want to deal
with that right away. That is how we’ve grown to a billion-dollar
company.”
