President's Letter Fall 2019

5 years, 1 month ago

In mid-September, one of our longtime employees, Don Jaeger Jr., let us know that he was going to retire after serving Carl A. Nelson & Company (CANCO) for 38 years. We are grateful to the Jaeger family, as Don’s father, Skip, served CANCO for 45 years; his uncle, Rich, for 38 years; and his son, Ben, is still with CANCO. Earlier this year, we had retirement receptions honoring Kim Bailey’s 42 and Jim Quickstad’s 37 years of service to CANCO and our customers.  Kim was the tenth employee, that we know of, who served more than 40 years with CANCO.

Given the prevailing industry condition of shortterm employment tenures, these milestones caused us to reflect on why we are blessed with these and many other long-term employees and what this means to CANCO and our customers.  First and foremost, people continue to serve companies that trust their employees and give them the autonomy they need to perform their jobs at a high level.  Our mission statement and culture encourage an entrepreneurial spirit among all employees, and being employee-owned by 33 employees certainly supports this.  We encourage and support continuous learning, which allows employees to grow and develop to their full potential.  We also appreciate and recognize our employees and their contributions, which we express through competitive compensation and benefits.  In fact, our 7% 401(k) match allows long-term employees to enter retirement financially secure.

As a company that relies on repeat and reference business for over 75% of our work, we know that consistent and excellent performance is what earns that repeat business.  By deploying longterm employees on projects, we know what the results will be based on dozens of prior successful projects performed by those employees. Longterm employees have a stake in providing service second to none to our customers.  The long-term relationships in our company allow us to work as an integrated team to solve problems.

We still have ten employees with more than 30 years, and 24 with more than 20 years of service to CANCO and our customers, so we expect to continue to serve our customers and earn their confidence for years to come.

 

Tim Seibert, P.E.
President, Carl A. Nelson & Company