SmartCEO: Kristina on exemplifying the brand promise
Today is Day 3 of our series sharing President and CEO Kristina Bouweiri’s thoughts on Brand-Driven Leadership as part of a panel at the 2011 SmartCEO G3 conference.
In today’s installment, Kristina answers how she shows her staff her commitment to the brand promise:
My situation is a little harder because I have 300 employees and 240 of them are chauffeurs and they are out on the road. So it’s hard for me to touch my employees every single day but some of the things that we do are on Mondays I am in the office all day long and I conduct all of my meetings on Mondays so all of the managers and department heads do see me on Mondays. During the rest of the week I’m in and out, doing a lot of networking, doing things like this. I’ve been in business 20 years so that now, I kind of do what I enjoy doing, which is mostly the PR and marketing for the company. But my policy with all of those employees is I have an open door policy. On payday I like to be the one handing out paychecks and that’s a great chance to see people because they definitely come in to get their paycheck.
I will do it in Virginia and also in Maryland, I have a 2-hour session in the afternoon where I have an open-door policy if anyone wants to come in and talk to me about anything. If one of my employees in Maryland wants to talk to me, I’ll get in the car and driver over to Maryland, as long as they make an appointment, and talk to them if they’re not happy with something. So even though it is a large company and we have a lot of employees, we still treat our employees as if it’s a family-owned small business. We’ve got the best benefits in the industry; even the chauffeurs get paid sick leave and I think that you’ll find that most transportation companies don’t offer that. We do offer health insurance, matching 401K, paid sick leave, vacation, and we treat everyone as family.
SmartCEO: Kristina on investing in the brand
Today is Day 2 of our series sharing President and CEO Kristina Bouweiri’s thoughts on Brand-Driven Leadership as part of a panel at the 2011 SmartCEO G3 conference.
In today’s installment, Kristina answers how she as a CEO commits to investing in the brand:
I’m lucky in a way because in my industry we only pay the drivers when they’re working so we haven’t had to cut back and lay people off because they either have work or they don’t. And we’ve been able to maintain a steady stream of drivers. With the government contracts they are paid 40 hours, they do get full fringe benefits. So my industry being a limo/bus mixture has really helped us a lot because they can drive for a government contract in the week, and then on the weekends they can drive a limousine for a wine tour or a wedding. And it has allowed us by diversifying and helping 12 different markets to keep our employees busy. We’ve been able to weather the storm through the recessions and not really lay any of the chauffeurs off. We find you always have to invest in technology if that is your brand and you are trying to stay ahead of your competition.
