Episode Description
Creating a thriving employee ownership culture cannot be done alone.
In fact, it takes an entire team to create a workplace environment that truly embraces the power of employee ownership.
In this episode of Empowered Owners, Dawn Dilts, customer support specialist at TVF, Sarah Neff, accounts receivable clerk at Paramount Plastics, and Diane Bokar, secretary/treasurer at Firstar Precision, share their experience working together at the Employee Ownership Summit.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The importance of fostering an environment where all ideas are heard and considered, even if they may not all work out. It’s okay to try something and move on if it doesn’t succeed.
- How successful engagement activities such as team-building exercises, lunch and learns, and family day events have had a positive impact on employee morale and engagement.
- The impact of exploring new topics within employee ownership, and never hesitating to ask “why” when coming up with new solutions.
Jump into the conversation:
[02:33] How the EV Employee Ownership Summit went[03:18] The purpose of the summit
[08:42] Expectations vs reality of employee ownership
[11:34] How to be a culture champion
[14:47] Future questions for the Employee Ownership Summit
How to Listen or Watch
Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Watch below or @Empowered_Ventures on YouTube.
Read the full transcript below the media links.
Episode Transcript
Dawn Dilts: And I think remembering that or being reminded of the summit, that not all of your ideas are going to always come across as this great thing. You get enthusiastic and you just know it’s going to work. And just to remember that’s okay if it doesn’t, you tried something and you just move on. I think just that was something I took away as a really important thing to remember, just to remind so personally. Maybe all of our ideas won’t work, but maybe some of them will.
Chris Fredericks: Welcome to Empowered Owners, the podcast that takes you inside Empowered Ventures. I’m your host, Chris Fredericks. In each episode, I’ll have a discussion with one of our employees to discover and highlight their distinct personalities, perspectives, and skills while also keeping you in the loop with exclusive news, updates on company performance, and a glimpse into the future plans of Empowered Ventures. This is an opportunity for me to learn more about our amazing employee owners and an opportunity for you to hear regularly from me and others from within Empowered Ventures. This is a special episode of Empowered Owners where I get to have a conversation with several of our employee owners, one from each of our businesses. I’m joined today by Diane Bokar from Firstar, Sarah Neff from Paramount, and Dawn Diltz from TVF. These three EVers are on their company’s employee ownership committees, which is a group of volunteers each company has that is tasked with fostering employee ownership culture through education, celebration, and more. Diane, Sarah and Dawn were just together in person in late January at our annual EO committee summit, which was in independence, Ohio. Together, we talk about this year’s summit and why getting together in person is so important to us. We also talk about what it’s like to be on an EO committee and why they are important for the success of our businesses. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into our shared experience and appreciate how connected our EO champions are becoming across our family of businesses. With that, let’s get to my conversation with Diane, Sarah, and Dawn. So we’re here to talk about the employee ownership summit that EV put on about a month ago, and the three of you spent some time joining this summit. It was a couple days near Cleveland, Ohio, and I think it was a lot of fun, and I think it was for all of you. It was your first time doing this. So I guess, first off, thank you for coming and doing that. I think it was really productive. But how would you describe what this employee ownership summit is that EV puts on once a year? How would you describe it?
Sarah Neff: Inspiring.
Dawn Dilts: I think I was in awe a lot during the whole event, there were moments I would look around and just think, wow, we have this one purpose, right? And we’re representing all these people. And it was amazing that everyone was so open and receptive to the different ideas. And I thought that was awesome, given how many people there were.
Diane Bokar: It was really fun to see the excitement and the energy level from, especially the TVF team, and we’re new to this, so to see them so engaged and so excited after that many years, it was great.
Chris Fredericks: How would you describe what the purpose of this summit is? Some folks might not even know who’s coming to this and why we do this. So if you had to explain to someone that didn’t know what this summit is about, who goes and why, what’s going on at this, I think the.
Dawn Dilts: Way that I described it, at least to my husband, was I go as a representative of the rest of my company so that we can all join in together and just join our ideas and just mix ideas that may work for us, may work for the other companies, but maybe not. And it’s really just this exchange of ideas and how do we support our people? How do we support our team? How do we make sure they’re heard?
Diane Bokar: I would agree, yeah.
Sarah Neff: Especially the support. I felt very supported from Paramount because it’s what, our third year as an ESOP, so we’re still trying to make that culture, and I just felt very supported.
Diane Bokar: It felt good to have Paramount there for us because we’re manufacturing. It’s a different ballgame than it is for TVF, so trying to engage is a little different for us.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah. Were there any stories that stand out? Like things that happened that were particularly fun or funny even, not work related? Emily mentioned kind of heading into this that at Topgolf, Tabitha almost killed Emily with a golf ball. So that was one of the examples of something that happened. How about you? Any memories that stand out to you?
Sarah Neff: Dawn and Ben?
Dawn Dilts: They were, you know, Ben’s a handful, and he’s a lot of fun. I make him suspicion. Our personalities are very similar, and so if he was given grief, I was probably almost always giving it back to him, but it was just in this very. I don’t know, almost like a brotherly kind of. And that’s probably a really good explanation, too. I think sort of the family and I gave him a hard time, and I totally intend to continue that.
Diane Bokar: I missed Topgolf, but I enjoyed the next morning when I got there, that ball toss. It was fun. Yeah.
Chris Fredericks: Describe what that was like, what that exercise was. And how it worked?
Diane Bokar: Well, Emily had a ball that had just different sayings on it. And where you caught it was where your thumb landed. Right. Mine was, what would your favorite full of something be? And I said, puppies.
Chris Fredericks: It’s a great icebreaker. Do you remember any other questions or answers that really stood out?
Dawn Dilts: I remember that you almost water or coffee, or maybe both. I’m not sure.
Chris Fredericks: I was one of the lucky ones where the ball actually hit the table and I didn’t catch it and my coffee went flying. Luckily, it didn’t get on me, but, yeah, that was awesome. What would you say stood out to you as far as any ideas that you took back to help the employee ownership culture of your company maybe take a step forward? What was one specific idea that you.
Sarah Neff: Came away with instead of calling them employees, calling them employee owners? That has helped us a lot. I feel like the culture since the summit has really ramped up, and it’s awesome.
Dawn Dilts: And I think remembering that or being reminded of the summit, that not all of your ideas are going to always come across as this great thing. You get enthusiastic and you just know it’s going to work. And just to remember that’s okay. If it doesn’t, you tried something and you just move on. I think just that was something I took away as a really important thing to remember, just to remind myself personally. Maybe all of our ideas won’t work, but maybe some of them will.
Diane Bokar: I enjoyed the last day of the brainstorming that we did as a company and to try and plan our year and decide what we were going to do. It was a good atmosphere to do that in because there was so much creative energy already bursting out of us. Salts I came right back and we did an annual calendar that’s very linear, shows everything going on every month. So we’ve decided where to strategically place that. And it’s above the water cooler where everybody refills their water.
Dawn Dilts: That’s great. I think the night that we went to dinner, I think that was Saturday night, and Sarah, we were on a table together with a few others, and it was just funny. We started the conversation out, just getting to know each other a little bit personally, and then very quickly it turned into just really another mini conversation. And it all came about something that we. I can’t remember exactly, but something that we do. And then it prompted questions. I think it was the use of teams, and it turned into this again, this mini summit right there at our table among the six of us. I just thought it was great that we were comfortable enough after some short time together to be able to transition from personal right into the really important stuff, even though we’re sitting there at dinner. So that was fun.
Diane Bokar: There was no negativity whatsoever. Everything was very positive throughout the entire time. So that’s important.
Dawn Dilts: I think the only negative was the snow and the cold.
Diane Bokar: Yeah, that drive in during the ice was not fun.
Dawn Dilts: I think if that is all we can count as negative, I think that alone is a huge win. The bad weather was it.
Chris Fredericks: So I’m curious for each of you, how long have you been part of your company’s employee ownership committee, and what were your expectations going into it, and how has it been different maybe than what you expected?
Dawn Dilts: Let’s see. I think I’ve just been on maybe four or five months now, so not very long at all. And I’m not sure I had any real expectations. I thought that I would be more of a maybe support player. I didn’t really know what to expect, but what I’ve come to find out is just that, how my ideas are listened to and they’re heard. And I really feel like part of this team. I really feel as a group that we are really representing our company. And it was great to come in feeling that way, even though I didn’t know much at all. I’ve just been with TVF almost two years now. So I think for me that was it.
Sarah Neff: I’ve been on mine for about a year. I think, like Dawn, I didn’t really have any expectations because we were just building from the ground up again. But it’s really growing into something special, and I’m so excited for the future.
Diane Bokar: I was on for about a month before the summit, not very long. And it was just something that. A gap that needed to be filled for an employee that left. And Luke asked me to do it, so I agreed, and I’m glad I did. At first I thought, oh, boy, more stuff to do. But it’s been enjoyable and I’m glad I’m on the committee now.
Chris Fredericks: That’s great. One of the other activities we did that I think was the first time we’ve done this at one of these summits, is that we had the opportunity to actually visit first star, which, Diane, you work for, and I don’t think Dawn or Sarah or many of the folks had ever been to. So curious. Sarah and Dawn, like what your impressions were of seeing one of your sister companies and what thoughts or takeaways you had from that visit, how clean they were.
Diane Bokar: We take great pride in that as you should.
Dawn Dilts: Absolutely. And I noticed just right away how easily you all work together and how easily you get along. And it wasn’t just a presentation for visitors. It seemed so genuine and so very real. And I thought that was the neatest thing, to be able to come in and see that. And for people that don’t see that environment every day, to pick that up, I think that’s amazing.
Diane Bokar: We’re like a big family.
Dawn Dilts: We spend a lot of time with the people we work with, and it showed that you guys care about each other and genuinely care about what you do.
Sarah Neff: When you talked to one of the employee owners how happy they were to talk to you and how happy they seem to be there, that was great to see.
Diane Bokar: We have a great group.
Chris Fredericks: That’s awesome. So I’m curious, now that you’re on the committee, and by the way, for all of you being relatively new, I thought you just hit the ground running coming into this summit and participating and sharing, and I was really impressed with you and everyone that was there. The camaraderie and the openness was really impressive. So for me personally, it was an amazing experience. But I’m curious how you think about the responsibility in terms of being on this committee. And one way we talk about it is that these are like our culture champions, the folks that are on this committee. How do you think about that? And how would you recommend other employee owners think about what it means to be a culture champion?
Sarah Neff: Doing my best every day.
Dawn Dilts: And having a good attitude, even on the days it’s so hard. Maybe on those days you have to work a little harder to maybe get through that. But I always feel like I want to portray a positive attitude. And quite frankly, I don’t know how not to talk. So this stuff comes a little easier to me, I think, than probably some people. But for me, it’s important to portray that. I may not be having a great day, but I still love what I do and I still love the people that I work with. And no matter how frustrated you get, sometimes you just take that away and you sort of move on. And it’s important to me to always try to portray that.
Diane Bokar: I’ve been trying and doing a lot of searching on things to get these machine minded guys and gals engaged and let them have fun and try to teach them at the same time. So, yeah, we’ll try some new things, and if they work, let’s hope they do.
Chris Fredericks: What are some things you’ve done that have worked really well?
Diane Bokar: Like the paper airplane challenge. I mean, the winner walked in with a paper airplane in a box, like a suitcase. He was serious. It was great.
Chris Fredericks: You guys. Sarah and Dawn, what are some things you’re thinking about or remember from the past of your company and events or activities that you’ve done that hit particularly well?
Sarah Neff: Anything with food really goes over well on Paramount, as you guys have heard. Also, our family day is something that really goes over well, and everyone’s always looking forward to it. I’m already getting questions about it for this year.
Chris Fredericks: What did you guys do on family day?
Sarah Neff: We had a bounce house. We had a dunk tank. We did courthole. We had Nelson’s. And then Newmar and Rev brought their class a motorhome so our people and their families could see their work in action.
Dawn Dilts: We’re excited. We have TVF is celebrating 50 years this year, and so we’re excited and just planning those things and talking about retro what it was like 50 years ago and just bringing some of that stuff up. The other day, it was something about flip flops today, like when flip flops person invented. So just little nuggets of knowledge that are fun. And we use teams a lot to do that. So it can be engaging with everyone who we have, remote workers, a lot of them. And so that’s a great way to keep everybody engaged.
Chris Fredericks: Well, I think this has been a great conversation, kind of recap of this year’s summit. But before we go, I want to give you the chance to turn the tables on me. Is there anything you want to ask me about the summit or anything else that is on your mind about kind of employee ownership and ev.
Dawn Dilts: I think maybe I’d like to know, is there anything that we didn’t get to over the summit that you wish we had or that you think needs to be maybe moved to a different spot in the timeline of the summit?
Chris Fredericks: Great question. This was the first time that I think we touched on a lot of topics that I was hoping we would get to in previous years, but it was just too difficult to get to everything. For example, two things that got touched on this year that I’m excited are on the table now for the whole committee is financial literacy. That’s not something we’ve really ever started talking about at any of our companies in a really specific way. And that conversation started this year at the summit. And also, we learned about some efforts that are already starting to happen in some of our companies before the summit. So I’m really excited about that because I think financial literacy can be a really big part of helping everyone embrace that employee ownership mindset is becoming more comfortable with their personal finances and kind of understanding business finances. The other topic that got addressed or brought up this year that I’m also excited about is the topic of health benefits and health insurance. So we had kind of a carve out of people that are interested in that, and for a lot of reasons, I think it’s a really good topic for this group in particular. It does impact ESOP in a lot of ways because it’s one of the most expensive things on any company’s profit and loss statement. Health insurance is not cheap, as everyone knows, but it also is such a big deal because we care about our employees well being and having a great benefit. Using it well. Ultimately being healthy is a really big part of life. So I just love that we can start to talk and dig into that topic too in future summits going forward.
Diane Bokar: I’d like to know where you found Emily Bopp. She’s a my goodness.
Chris Fredericks: Emily. She facilitated and planned and facilitated the summit. Emily and I met many years ago at a conference in Indianapolis, and we stayed in touch. She had started working for a startup firm that works on business processes and accountabilities, and that was a really great product that she created with another consultant and executive, and they helped a lot of companies with that. But she ended up wanting to find something else. And we just got to talking as I was thinking about creating a role, like a Chief of Staff role. She’s the type of person I had in mind. So I was really lucky and fortunate that she chose to join.
Chris Fredericks: Any other questions for me?
Diane Bokar: Just wanted to mention we have started our financial literacy already. I just got out of financial piece before I came into here, so we’ll be doing that in ten week segments with a small group. And then we also have lunch and learns set up for every month.
Chris Fredericks: I’m excited to hear how that goes. That’s great. All right, anything else before we go? Anything else on your mind or questions for me?
Dawn Dilts: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.
Chris Fredericks: No, thank you. Thank you guys. Appreciate it and have a good rest of your day. I hope you enjoyed that discussion, which was a lot of fun for me, both as a way to relive this year’s summit and also as the first true group discussion we’ve had on this podcast. Thank you again, Diane, Sarah, and Dawn for joining me on Empowered Owners. Huge thank you as well to Emily Bopp and the team at Share Your Genius for producing this episode. Remember, we want to hear from you. Please give us feedback. Suggest guests and topics for future episodes and tell us how we can keep improving the show. To reach us, email [email protected]. Thanks for tuning in.