Romark Logistics: Culture, It’s Personal at Romark Logistics
By Marc Lebovitz, President, Romark Logistics
What does culture mean to organizations? At Romark Logistics, it is personal, which is in line with our company’s tagline of “Personalized Service…… Always”. As a 3rd party logistics customized solutions provider, we have many values, but the one that our culture is built on is “family values”. It all started in the 1950’s when the founder of our organization, my father, Roy Lebovitz, began his journey to provide the best specialized logistics services to his customers. Roy knew then that achieving success for customers was dependent on treating his employees with respect and getting to know them. He believed that an organization’s success would be built on the front lines that are doing the work day in and day out.
While Roy passed on a few years ago, what he built, a culture centered on personalized attention continues and flourishes today. My sister, Amy S. Lebovitz, and I work tirelessly to continue to instill this important value throughout the organization and in all that we do. While it seems companies and the world today are becoming impersonal, Amy and I make it a point to always be in touch with the people actually providing the service in the organization. With locations in California, Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas, it means that we need to visit all sites on a regular basis. We ensure we take the time to walk the floors of the facilities, talk with the employees and get to know what makes them tick. Employees understand Amy and I are literally just a call away. If an employee wants to speak to us directly, this is never a problem; we welcome the calls. My favorite calls are from some football fans located in other parts of the country to brag about a recent win over the NY based teams. We share lots of laughs and have an equalizing healthy banter. We also send out Birthday cards and, anniversary cards to all staff. To mark these celebrations Amy and I sit each month to write personalized messages to employees. In other words, you are not a number at Romark, you are family.
The leadership team at each of the sites takes the notion of personalization very seriously as well. They know their contributions are for a greater cause, to service the customer and they are appreciated. The leadership team focuses a great amount of resources into orientation and new hire onboarding and training. New hires are brought into an orientation where it is focused on ensuring everyone understands the company’s mission, vision and values. A new team member is not forgotten after orientation. After the time in the classroom is finished, a dedicated team member will work with the new hire one on one, so they don’t only learn their job, but they also get to know the rest of the organization, their shift and do not get lost in any kind of shuffle. In an ever-competitive labor market, investing the time into these types of efforts is something we do to make ourselves attractive as an employer so that people want to work with us.
Investment in employees, in their training, education and continually improving them is something that we believe is very important. We offer internal and external training opportunities on various topics to encourage cross training and personal growth, which could lead to advancement. Romark devotes resources into the development of its people and it pays off. Our service levels are consistently high and the employee’s report greater job satisfaction while taking advantage of opportunities for advancement in the organization. The opportunity for internal promotion is something you can easily see in many levels of the organization. When looking for new leaders we look within and to build upon the skills of those on the team.
In our business environment, while competitors are cutting back on employee services and incentives, we believe these types of incentives are so important they should have even more attention paid upon them. Each year, the company spends a great amount of time and money planning special events. Two of the events, the holiday party and summer event, are opportunities for employees and their families to meet up off site to relax and have fun with each other. We also do other special events such as appreciation lunches, attend charitable events and provide wellness education.
Speaking of wellness, this is a topic that is near and dear to the organization. We invest significant resources when it comes to ensuring employees are provided the best benefits and wellness education that we can provide. For example, each employee participates in a daily stretch program. Yes, that means those in the office, on a forklift, or even packaging goods – all will be stretching at least once a day in line with the program established throughout the company. (In case you are wondering, this includes me as well.) On a regular basis, Romark shares important health related information so employees can receive education on topics that they might not get otherwise. Each year we pick a health or wellness cause to celebrate where employees are provided with a shirt to wear during this month, educational seminars are provided, and fundraising events also occur. For 2018, during the month of October, we celebrated “Mental Health Awareness.”
We also hold State of the Business meetings, this is where all employees get to hear about the latest and greatest that is going on at Romark Logistics as a whole. Providing this transparency gives employees a clear and concise update on the business operations and based on the feedback we receive is a real value for Romark. While the organization is spread out among various states, these meetings give everyone the chance to see how all the moving parts working together contribute to the whole. Employees from location to location are not strangers, everyone works in a collaborative manner on projects and go from location to location to assist when business needs require it.
All in all, we think we have something we are doing right and that is, reiterating the importance of contributions of our team members and treating them like family. As we like to phrase it, everyone is part of a Romarkable team, made up of people that work hard for each other and our customers.