For a lot of entrepreneurs, starting a business from scratch is like dream weaving—your own idea, your own structure, your own way of running things. But at one Oakbrook Terrace company, the employees are encouraged to follow their own dreams as well.
Geneca is a custom software development company, and while that may sound mostly technical, CEO Mark Hattas declares that it is all about the people.
“I was absolutely attracted to starting a company that had a strong people element to it, not just widgets,” he said.
Hattas and partner Joel Basgall started Geneca in 1998, following their own dreams of independence. So Hattas, then an electrical engineer, walked away from a job with General Electric to start fresh.
“I had a lot of fun growing up in a household with a strong entrepreneurial spirit,” said Hattas. His grandfather had a carpet business, and he said he grew up hearing great stories about the family-run company. His mother, as well, had dreams of starting her own restaurant.
“It was one of those seeds that festered in me. I had this pull of doing something on my own,” he said.
“The attraction wasn’t to build the biggest company, but to build the best company,” Hattas said. “When you garden, you want to create soil rich with vitamins and minerals so that plants will grow better. Creating that soil within Geneca was a priority from the beginning. I wanted to be involved in a business highly dependent on its people.”
And the first step in creating the culture Hattas sought was to hire the right kind of people.
“We have one of the most rigorous (hiring) processes to get through,” he said. “We are looking for a combination of things. One of the most important is capabilities.”
Geneca uses behavioral testing to determine how potential staff members react in high-stress situations. There are project testing scenarios, and even cognitive testing to determine whether the person being interviewed has the innate ability to do a job well.
“People who work here need to be self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses,” said Hattas. “No one is going to be managing their career. They need the entrepreneurial spirit. Otherwise it’s not a good cultural fit.”
That hiring philosophy, and the culture that results, have been good for business.
Geneca was recently named one of “Chicago's 101 Best & Brightest Companies to Work for” by the National Association of Business Resources (NABR). This award was created by NABR to recognize innovative human resources best practices demonstrated by the top companies in the area.
Some clients have even been so impressed with Geneca’s human resources standards that they have paid the firm to act as a hiring consultant.
“We have actually had a couple of clients pay us for the hiring process, Hattas said. “We had one client looking for an architect. When we interviewed him, he turned out to be not such a great architect, but one of the strongest leaders we had ever come across. We encouraged the client to make the hire. They ended up hiring him as a vice president.”
It’s no accident that such a vision of people continues from the point of hire on throughout an employee’s career at Geneca. Strategically, Hattas and Basgall work to foster an attitude that anything is possible.
“People can achieve a dream within the constructs of this company,” Hattas said. “We have always been open to listening to people coming to us with ideas and giving them a safety net to develop it.”
For example, a talented software developer at the company thought he wanted to get into project management. Through a pairing with an experienced manager, the employee was able to shadow, train and be mentored in project management before giving up his regular job.
What the software developer learned, Hattas said, was that he really enjoyed the teaching aspect of project management, but not the rest. Instead of taking the job, he stayed in development, but also created and teaches a series of technical seminars that Geneca now offers across the country.
“We don’t hand-hold people and say ‘here’s your career path.’ We tell them to look for the holes in our business that match up with their strengths,” he said.
As far as team-building goes, Geneca is full of opportunity. There are “knowledge nights,” a forum where an employee can present a work-related topic and share that information with colleagues. There are lots of company-wide meetings that are video broadcast to teams outside Geneca’s headquarters.
“We’ll have teams all over, in Oak Brook, Austin, Chicago, and at clients’ offices,” Hattas said. “The video broadcasts let us share knowledge about the company. That goes a long way to making people feel connected.”
On a social level, Geneca celebrates everybody’s birthday. There are game nights and other events to build camaraderie.
“You think, ‘wow that’s a lot to plan, along with meetings and corporate events, parties,’ but we don’t plan it all. The game night that happened was initiated by staff members.”
And staff are initiating work-related programming as well. One employee saw some holes in the company’s on-boarding process for new staff. He expressed his feelings, and his ideas, so Hattas and Basgall gave him the go-ahead to help HR make some changes, even though he wasn’t a human resources staff member.
“It was great for him, because he got to step up and do something meaningful. He takes part in the process,” Hattas said. “You have to set up a culture where employees can develop their own passions. They are going to help the business.”
Bob Zimmerman is one of Geneca’s newer employees, a client partner since January 2007.
“Some folks I used to work with, and highly respect, work at Geneca,” Zimmerman said. “They constantly have told me about the work environment and culture, and I have always been intrigued and interested.”
What Zimmerman found, he said, were smart individuals who genuinely care about each individual employee and client
“Everything I thought Geneca was when I was hired has been true,” he said. “Mark and Joel are terrific at balancing the good of the business against the good of the individual. At Geneca, no one will tell you it’s impossible, so long as you have a reasonable dream and unreasonable passion. I really believe that.”
And Hattas said believing in the employees is another important thing company leaders can do to invest in the culture.
Trust people, even after getting burned. “Forgive and move on, and trust again. The ones who put up walls don’t reach their full potential,” he said.
Trust them with information. “Share your financials with the staff,” he said. “Relate it back to them personally. Give them more information and they can see how they can help the organization. More connection means more loyalty.”
Be honest. “Integrity is an overused term but it’s really been at the heart of our business,” he said. “We do what we say and when we make decisions we take the collective group into account.”
Finally, invest into the community. “Employees see that, too, so make it a team effort,” Hattas advised. “We’re not working here just to build software. That’s our business, but we need to be good stewards of our money and our people”
Mostly, Hattas said, he and Basgall step back and let the culture at Geneca work for them.
“We didn’t do all these things, create all these programs. I wish I were that smart, but we just created the environment that allows these things to happen,” Hattas said. “We simply highlight and celebrate those actions. People see that and start stepping forward.”
“We have found a kindling of ambitions,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”