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byline: Gary Robertson

New job description

On the day Carlyle Ramsey announced plans to retire after two decades as president of Danville Community College, the college also revealed that its first major gifts campaign had surpassed its $7 million fundraising goal.

Fundraising didn’t used to be on the plate for community college presidents, but these days it’s the air they breathe because of dramatic declines in state support.

“If there has been a change over the past 20 years, it’s the expectation that [community college presidents] must be able to develop fundraising activities — serious funds,” says Ramsey.

In Virginia the average state funding per student at community colleges fell 36 percent from 2006 to 2011, from $4,602 to $2,946, according to a survey by Insider Higher-Ed, an online higher-education news service.
But becoming fundraiser-in-chief is not the only new role community college presidents have had to assume in an era of rapid change.  As he prepares to step down Aug. 1, Ramsey explores the challenges that community college presidents face and the changes that lie ahead.

School safety
If anything keeps Ramsey up at night, it’s concern about safety. When he joined the college, administrators’ principal safety concern was warning students to lock their cars and watch their wallets and purses.

Those days are long gone. “After Columbine, after Virginia Tech, everything changed. Safety is uppermost in your mind,” Ramsey says, reflecting on the mass shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High School in April 1999 (15 dead) and at Virginia Tech in April 2007 (33 dead).

“After Virginia Tech, we invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on cameras in every building, down the corridors. This is like 1984, a brave new world.”

Retooling for jobs
Danville once was home to the world’s largest textile mill, owned by Dan River Inc. It also thrived at the heartland of Virginia’s tobacco business. Now both of these industries largely have been swept away by the tides of change.

The nation’s once formidable textile industry has moved overseas, spurred by cheap labor, and the tobacco industry has weakened as government regulations tightened and the smoking population declined. People who once had well-paid positions in those industries had to retrain as jobs vanished.

The community college became the focal point of that retooling, Ramsey says. “We got hit big time, and we had to build partnerships,” he adds.

Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, says community college presidents increasingly are catalysts for regional change, especially in rural areas. “The president is the lead chef or the choreographer,” DuBois says, often bringing together such diverse elements as industrial employers, chamber of commerce officials and K-12 school administrators to create plans for work-force development.

A new skill set
Norma Kent, senior vice president for communications and advancement at the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington, D.C., says that being a community college president is a much harder job than it used to be.

In fact, Kent says, the association is revising its list of leadership competencies that will help guide the selection of community college presidents nationwide.

She reiterates Ramsey’s point that community college presidents increasingly are going to be responsible for creating new sources of revenue. “They’re going to be more externally focused,” Kent says.

That’s only the beginning. Presidents also are becoming more accountable for students’ performance, including their graduation rates, and that will be tied to the funding colleges receive. “They’ll be data driven,” Kent says. “You say your college is doing well, ‘Then give me the numbers.’”

Economic engines
Angeline Godwin, in her first year as president of Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville, brings many of the skills community colleges are seeking in presidents these days, especially in the area of work-force development and job creation.

She has worked extensively in public and private economic development positions as well as in community colleges, and she holds a law degree in addition to a doctorate in English.

Community colleges, Godwin says, “are absolutely economic engines” in their communities. Programs offered by community colleges are especially important in a place like Martinsville, which consistently records the highest unemployment rate in the commonwealth.

Godwin believes that the barriers between academic course work and work-force development training are beginning to dissolve.

“No matter what road students start on, they want to have a job,” Godwin says.  “We want to allow people to come into a college, then move into the work force and move back and forth throughout their entire lifetimes” as the economy dictates new skills.

Reducing costs
Edna Victoria Baehre-Kolovani, president of the 46,000-student Tidewater Community College (TCC), says a fundamental tenet of community colleges is their ability to provide access to a good education at an affordable cost.

As a result, community college presidents must not only be good fundraisers, but they also must be innovators in reducing the cost of education.

That aim motivated TCC’s plans to offer an associate degree in business education in which students will pay nothing for the textbooks. “It is really our job to look to reduce the cost of textbooks,” Baehre-Kolovani says.

Beginning this fall, students participating in the pilot project — the brainchild of Daniel T. DeMarte, the college’s chief academic officer — will use free “open-source” textbooks and other materials that are readily accessible in the public domain.

The college projects that students who complete their degrees through the initiative will save one-third the cost of college, $2,000 to $2,500 each during the two-year course of study.

Reducing textbook costs, Baehre-Kolovani says, can help students stay in college and obtain degrees. “The ones who come to a community college are often the ones least able to go to college,” she says. 

Boosting school spirit

J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond is thinking about fielding sports teams, and perhaps even adopting a mascot.

It’s all part of the changing times at community colleges in Virginia, as they move closer to the model of four-year institutions.

Thomas Hollins Jr., vice president of student affairs at J. Sargeant Reynolds, says a task force is scheduled to present a report on the feasibility of sports teams in September.

Meanwhile, he says, a lot of students and faculty are excited about the idea. “It has generated a buzz,” Hollins says with a laugh. “If we are able to put together a business plan, we see athletics as not only engaging the students, but we are cautiously optimistic that it will engage the community.”

Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, says he generally supports institutions that want to start sports teams. But he has one unbendable rule: “They will not bring to me a student athletic fee” to support the programs, which is the case at most four-year institutions.

If Reynolds moves ahead with sports teams, Hollins says, it will play other members of the National Junior College Athletic Association in Virginia and in the mid-Atlantic region.

Several sports are up for consideration, but there is one notable exception. “Football is not on the table,” Hollins says. “We know it would be cost prohibitive.”

While the sports task force is at work, a separate group is discussing a possible mascot. Steve Vehorn, assistant director of public relations, says if a mascot is created, it would become part of the college’s branding.
He says many things have to be considered in thinking about a mascot. “How scary will it be? How big? Does it have to do gymnastic tricks? Will it go out to meet children? Is it worth the resources?”

So far, Vehorn says, the mascot idea has been well received in focus groups.

J. Sargeant Reynolds is only the latest Virginia community college to join the trend of community colleges interested in fielding athletic teams. Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville took the plunge when it joined the National Junior College Athletic Association in 2006.

Patrick Henry’s teams play junior college and community college teams from throughout the region, as well as the junior varsity teams of four-year institutions.  “For the college, it has given us an identity,” says Christopher Parker, the college’s athletic director. “The student body has embraced our teams.”

Today, the college has eight sports teams. The men’s sports are baseball, soccer, basketball and golf. The women also play basketball, soccer and golf but substitute softball for baseball.

The teams have attracted athletes from other states and other countries. Patrick Henry’s teams are called the Patriots, and their mascot is the Patrick Henry Community College Patriot.

A recent study indicated that the sports program, supported by private funds, has an annual economic impact in the community of about $1 million. 

Since Patrick Henry started its sports program, Parker, who also serves as director of women’s sports for Region 10 of the National Junior College Athletic Administration, has greeted a stream of community college representatives coming to campus to discuss how the program operates.

Parker says the list of community colleges with sports teams now includes Wytheville Community College, Danville Community College, Rappahannock Community College, Northern Virginia Community College and Tidewater Community College. 

You’ve got to be green

Michael Rao, the president of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has a pretty good idea what being green means to his nearly 32,000 students.

Nationally, two-thirds of prospective students search out information about a college’s commitment to sustainability, and a quarter of them consider an institution’s sustainability efforts an important factor in deciding where they go to school.

But the importance of growing up green really hit home when Rao’s 4½-year-old son, Aiden, recently led him through an inventory of the kitchen trash can. The boy was looking for items that had not gone into the recycling bin, and he wanted to know whether they might be repurposed in some other way. “We didn’t consider the bacteria,” Rao said with a laugh as he told the story at VCU’s annual Energy & Sustainability Conference in late January.

For a generation that has come of age with recycling in the home and lessons in environmental stewardship at school, going green has become an anthem. “It’s not just a movement, it’s a way of life,” says David Lubin, chairman of the Connecticut-based Esty Sustainability Innovators Working Group.

The group is a research consortium of leading firms — among them IBM, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Disney, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, FedEx, Xerox and Johnson & Johnson — that are collaborating on new models for executing corporate sustainability strategy.

Lubin was the keynote speaker at the VCU conference where he urged the more than 700 business, academic and corporate leaders to view sustainability as a “megatrend.”

The changes that shape a sustainable economy will be broad, deep and persistent, he said, and urbanization, new technology and innovation are all driving the process.

Sustainability can be defined in many ways, but one widely accepted definition is that it is a method of harvesting and using a resource without depleting it for future generations.

The corporate world often defines successful sustainability efforts with the mantra, “businesses doing well by doing good.” A growing number of Virginia businesses, from A-Active Termite and Pest Control in Virginia Beach to Philip Morris USA in Richmond, are finding that sustainable practices are helping them recruit skilled workers and improve their bottom line.


An edge in the talent search

Genevieve Roberts, a partner with the Titan Group, a human resources consulting firm in Richmond, says that companies with green practices have a leg up when searching for the best talent.

NewsIf an employer meets other values that a skilled job seeker is looking for, then a company’s green profile might be the tipping point. “People do want to work with employers who practice sustainability,” she says.
Roberts adds that young workers are much more comfortable than their parents in asking a prospective employer about its sustainability plan, whether employees work in a green building and if the company uses environmentally safe chemicals.

That doesn’t mean a company’s environmental record is the top priority of applicants in this troubled economy.  First of all, they want jobs, says John Martin of the Richmond-based Southeastern Institute of Research.

Citing results from a recent survey conducted by his firm, Martin notes that 62 percent of respondents listed “offers good health benefits” as a major employer attribute while only 28 percent cited “perceived as environmentally responsible.”

Martin suggests, however, while a green reputation may not be top-of-mind for many job seekers, they still care about how a company treats the environment.

He notes that one in three people surveyed said they would be more inclined to work for a green company, and six in 10 said their current employer should be doing more to be environmentally responsible.
In some ways the recession has aided the green movement. Martin says hard times have pushed some elements of society into a position of “responsible consumption,” and frugality also has become a trend.
As a result, a World War II-era rhyme that became popular when consumer goods were in short supply is now sometimes heard as part of the green movement: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
Martin also notes the increasing presence of women in the work force — they now outnumber men — bodes well for the green movement. Female influence likely will lead to more socially responsible decisions, he says.


Business school cited

Students at the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary receive a lot of exposure to the virtues of going green. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked the school first nationally in sustainability, in a nod to courses such as “Green Supply Chain” and “Environmental Consulting.”  Recently, the school also was named one of the nation’s “10 Environmentally Aware Business Schools” by MBAPrograms.org.

Christopher Adkins, executive director of undergraduate programs at the Mason School, says these accolades reflect the attitudes of future business leaders.

“Students want to make a difference by what they do every day in their careers,” he wrote in a CNN blog post. “They want to work for organizations that weave sustainability into their core strategy.”
Among other evidence, Adkins cited an IBM global student study “Inheriting a complex world: future leaders envision sharing the planet.”

One finding was that students are much more interested in sustainability and globalization than CEOs, and they view the two issues as inherently linked.

The study quoted the response of a U.S. student as an example of an emerging ethos. The student said an emphasis on sustainability leads to an awareness of the effects of globalization and everyone’s responsibility to others in the world.

An example of William & Mary’s commitment to going green is its “Do One Thing” (DOT) initiative that asks the college community to do one thing for sustainability.

For example, W&M President Taylor Reveley has pledged to use non-disposable coffee cups whenever possible.

Net Impact, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group whose aim is to help business-school graduates make social and environmental impacts, recently released the results of a survey indicating that by a ratio of 2 to 1 workers who were able to make such impacts were the most satisfied.

The survey of 1,726 respondents — heavily tilted (47 percent) toward those in the 21-32 age group — was conducted by Rutgers University.


Good for more than PR
In addition to attracting skilled workers and keeping them engaged, companies are finding that being green also helps the bottom line.

A 2011 survey by McKinsey & Co., a global management consulting firm, found that many companies are actively engaged in integrating sustainability principles into their businesses. Initially, most companies used these practices as a way to manage their reputations, to show that they were doing their part to help the planet.

But the McKinsey survey found that many companies have moved beyond reputation management. Today, saving energy, developing green products and retaining and motivating employees are equally important, if not more important.

In fact, the most frequent reason to initiate sustainability efforts — chosen by 33 percent of 2,956 respondents — was not to manage a corporate reputation but to improve operational efficiency and lower costs.
The McKinsey survey noted, for example, that Wal-Mart is expecting to generate $12 billion in savings by reducing packaging across it global supply chain. The company’s goal, by this year, was to reduce packaging by 5 percent, compared with 2006 totals.

Smaller packages mean more packages per carrier of cargo, which in turn means fewer carriers, a smaller carbon footprint and less diesel fuel. That all adds up to savings, which resonates with Wal-Mart’s ubiquitous slogan “Save money. Live better.”

The McKinsey survey also cited Dow Chemical. It has invested less than $2 billion since 1994 to improve its management and use of resources but experienced a savings of $9.8 billion for reduced energy consumption and water waste in its manufacturing processes.


Virginia success stories

At VCU’s Sustainability Conference, companies with operations in Virginia told of their successes.

Sean Delehanty, sustainability manager for BAE Systems Electronic Systems Group, reported that his unit had cut its operating expenses by $6.7 million during the past four years, including an 11 percent drop in energy costs and a 14 percent reduction in its carbon footprint.

If you want to get the C-Suite’s attention for money to fund sustainability efforts, Delehanty said, a manager needs to show how those efforts will create savings or improve the bottom line.

Jeff Rinker, environmental engineer at the MillerCoors Shenandoah Brewery in Elkton, said the brewery reduced its water consumption by 23 percent, or a million gallons, compared with 2008 levels. Among the strategies used to achieve that: Everyone looks for leaks, which brings employees together in a common cause.

Blasé Keegel, utility and environmental engineer at Philip Morris USA, said the company’s Park 500 tobacco processing facility in Chester had cut landfill waste by more than 95 percent, and also had significant reductions in electricity use and water.

To reduce the level of nutrients in wastewater discharge from the facility, Philip Morris developed a wetlands system that not only reduces nutrients but provides 60 acres of wildlife habitat along the James River. The system has won environmental awards and helped the company’s relations with conservation groups and its neighbors.

Elizabeth Povar, vice president of business expansion for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, says that for many “sustainability is almost a synonym for energy.”

And she says sustainable energy development can drive economic development. She offered several examples in Virginia, including the $75 million Enviva wood pellet manufacturing plant in Southampton County, which has a work force of about 70.

The plant, which uses local raw materials harvested through sustainable forests, will be exporting most of its wood pellets to European utility customers.

Povar also pointed to the $285 million biomass boiler that MeadWestvaco invested in its bleached paperboard mill in Covington, which employs about 1,000 workers.

The new boiler — burning mostly renewable biomass such as wood bark and wood residues left behind from logging operations —will enable the mill to be self-sufficient in energy and eliminate its need to burn coal.


The ‘green’ exterminator

NewsWhile many large national and multinational corporations can garner headlines when they commit to sustainability efforts, smaller companies also are finding their niche in the burgeoning efforts to go green.

One of the state’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders for sustainability comes from an industry — pest control —not often associated with the green movement.

Kevin Kordek, president of A-Active Termite and Pest Control in Virginia Beach, says sustainability efforts and sensitivity about the environment have become hallmarks of his company, which has 39 employees and had revenue of $3.79 million in 2011.

A biology major in college, Kordek says he’s always tried to avoid using harsh chemicals in pest control, opting instead for treatments that are far less damaging to the environment, such as controlling termites with baits instead of sprays.

Those efforts have earned the company a “Green Pro” designation from the National Pest Management Association, a group that Kordek led in 2010-11 as its national president. “The attitude I have is not universal within the industry,” Kordek acknowledges, “but if you can turn it into a positive, it’s great for your customers. ”

Besides his belief that pest control can be environmentally responsible, Kordek also has pursued changes in his businesses that produce savings and also are environmentally friendly.

For one, he has replaced service vehicles with more fuel-efficient ones, and the company uses a routing program to reduce the number of miles driven every day. That move not only saves fuel but also helps put more money in the pockets of technicians because they can make more house calls.

Office recycling of paper, glass, aluminum and plastic and a paper-reduction program — “We’re 99 percent paperless now” — also are steps he has taken to become greener. One aspect of the paper-reduction initiative is to have technicians carry handheld devices that eliminate printed service tickets and invoices. Customers conduct most of their transactions online.

Last year, A-Active Termite was named “Small Business of the Year-Virginia Beach” by the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. In February, Virginia Business named it one of the Best Places to Work in Virginia.

Kordek says stewardship of the environment is part of the culture of his company, and he looks for people who share that philosophy. He said he’s had no trouble finding them, because his employees do the recruiting. “We haven’t hired anyone off an ad in three years,” he says.

One of Kordek’s neighbors in Hampton Roads, Old Point National Bank, also has integrated sustainability practices into its culture. “We’re community oriented. We want to help the world become a better place,” says Erin Black, Old Point’s director of marketing.

The bank’s sustainability efforts range from aggressive recycling to turning off lights whenever possible. When its old headquarters was torn down, the bank reduced the environmental impact by sending debris to a recycling center and reusing the vault door.

Black says the bank’s new headquarters will be LEED certified. In that respect, Old Point will be in good company.

In 2012, Virginia ranked as the top state for new eco-friendly buildings, according to the D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council.

No one can say for certain what overall implications the green movement will have for business. Nonetheless, Lubin told the VCU conference that companies need to build sustainability into their business strategy, because that’s where the marketplace is heading.

He acknowledged that some business leaders are trying to ignore the movement completely. They have been successful doing things the same way for many years and see no reason to change. “They are prisoners of their own success,” Lubin said.

Institutional memory bank

Every day for the next two decades, about 10,000 baby boomers will reach the age of 65, according to Census data.

When they leave the workplace, the retiring baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — will take with them their institutional memories, their technical expertise, even their intuition and ability to find creative solutions to problems, garnered through years of life experiences, successes and failures.

It could be lost knowledge for the companies and institutions that employ them. And in an economy that’s increasingly being recognized as a “knowledge economy,” retaining intellectual capital is important to economic vitality.

MIT fellow David DeLong detailed the ramifications of the looming problem in his groundbreaking 2004 book, “Lost Knowledge:  Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce.”

Among other examples, DeLong noted that the early, and often forced, retirements of key engineers involved in America’s mission to the moon had left NASA without the institutional knowledge to put another man on the moon.  If NASA wanted to do that today, the agency would have to start from scratch, DeLong says.

Unless steps are taken to somehow capture and preserve the knowledge that baby boomers and others are taking out of the workplace — either through retirements or cutbacks to the work force — some experts predict that the outcomes could be dire. “I think that a lot of companies have their head in the ground on this. They know it’s an issue, but they don’t know how to handle it because it is such an issue,” says Clair Dorsey of Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Dorsey is director of professional development in the Virginia Applied Technology and Professional Development Center at ODU’s Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology in Norfolk.

At the request of military representatives in Hampton Roads, Old Dominion created an 18-month certificate program in knowledge management. One goal of the discipline is to retain and preserve key information and experiences within an organization, so that lessons learned can be lessons remembered.

The first online class at ODU in the certificate program filled all of its available slots with military personnel and defense contractors from across the country. It graduated 20 students in October.
The next class in the spring is being recruited from military and civilian organizations. “In the future, I perceive that large companies who are facing a huge number of retirements in the next few years will have a knowledge manager just as they have a quality control manager,” Dorsey says.

Indeed, she says, the Army and Navy already are putting knowledge management officers in place to collect important information from future retirees. For example, someone always has to know how to disarm nuclear weapons.

To create its course, ODU drew from disciplines throughout the university — engineering, business, psychology and the arts, to name several.

Teaching through storytelling
Although some aspects of ODU’s Knowledge Management certificate programs involve hard skill sets such as data mining and classification, softer skill sets are also required. “One of the modules in the certificate program is storytelling,” Dorsey says. “A machine operator who has a manual and goes by the manual [finds] that certain nuances don’t get documented.

“Storytelling is a way to communicate how to do things other than writing it down in a manual. It’s not an engineering documentation type of thing; it’s interpersonal skills,” Dorsey says.

Bill Ermatinger is a man who thinks a lot about knowledge management, gathering statistics and data points, weighing options, stirring psychology and philosophy — even patriotism — into the mix as he contemplates the future and how it might be shaped.

He is corporate vice president and chief human resources officer of Newport News-based Huntington Ingalls Industries. Newport News Shipbuilding, a Huntington Ingalls division, is one of the largest employers in Virginia, with a payroll of 21,000.

All told, among all divisions, Ermatinger has 40,000 people to think about. And when the next order for an aircraft carrier or submarine arrives, he must have the workers who can build it.
But here’s the rub on the readiness of the current work force:  “Twenty-three percent can walk out whenever they want. They’ve earned it and deserve it,” Ermatinger says, speaking of the possibility of retirements.

He says one strategy in preserving experience and skill sets is simply to try to encourage people to stay, even if they have reached retirement age. By any measure, Huntington Ingalls has been doing a good job with that. In 2012, for example, the retirement rate for the company’s work force was 1.69 percent.

“A lot of my peers ask me, ‘What is the secret sauce?’ Well, this is it: I make sure that when employees come in the gates, they’re going to have a challenge, and they’ve always got that,” Ermatinger says.

A sense of purpose
Another part of the mix is to ensure that employees feel that what they’re doing contributes to something larger than themselves. They can see that whenever a submarine or aircraft carrier is under construction or being refitted in the shipyard.

Then there’s the patriotism and pride.

Here’s the mantra Huntington Ingalls tries to teach every worker, from welder to CEO:

  • We are America’s greatest shipbuilder.
  • We build the most complex and formidable machines on the planet.
  • We know our sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, Mothers and Fathers, neighbors and friends take our ships into battle.
  • We never want an American to go into a fair fight.  We believe that our American military should never go into harm’s way without an overwhelming technological and capability advantage … such that a foe would see their significant disadvantage and choose flight or surrender instead.

But encouraging older workers to stay longer is not all there is to Knowledge Management.

“So, our macro-level institutional knowledge is to a great extent maintained in processes, procedures, work breakdown plans, integrated master plans and master schedules that guide and authorize work,” Ermatinger says.

Also important to the knowledge management equation are extensive internship programs, on-the-job training and high-quality mentoring.  Equally vital is having skilled leaders in supervisory and middle-management positions who can guide less-experienced workers.

While agreeing that it’s important to capture current institutional knowledge, Ermatinger says it’s just as important to know when such knowledge actually impedes the way toward further progress and advances.

Modern advances
Rafael Landaeta, who teaches the knowledge management certificate course at Old Dominion University, says that knowledge management, under different names, is not new.  “In reality, this process has been around forever … learning from our mistakes, learning from people who do great things, learning how to create knowledge by experiment,” Landaeta says.

“[But] we’ve made a lot of progress in different areas — psychology, business, engineering and management — that have enabled us to become better knowledge managers.”

Landaeta adds that advances in technology and a better understanding of how to accumulate, validate and transfer knowledge have also seen advances, from data mining to video capture.

One of the profound lessons of knowledge management, according to Landaeta, is that to advance toward an envisioned future any organization must carry with it the knowledge and experiences that it already has accumulated.

“If you don’t have the right knowledge at the right time,” Landaeta says, your glowing vision of the future might never be achieved. 

 

Staying ahead of the pack

It’s a warm Friday in July. The weekend beckons.

And at the accounting firm Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer PC in Norfolk the doors close early.

For 11 weeks every year — mostly during the summer — the Norfolk-based company shuts down at noon on Friday, and turns its employees loose.

The early closings are one of the company’s perks in an era when many companies ― especially the best ones in competitive industries ― are trying to distinguish themselves from the pack to recruit and retain stellar employees.
Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer ranks 22nd among small companies on this year’s list of the Best Places in Virginia to Work.

The firm’s employee practices touch on growing trends in the best-workplace practices: such as a liberal policy toward telecommuting in a population that’s becoming increasingly mobile and a nod to environmental stewardship, especially when it means good business.

This is the third year that Virginia Business has compiled the Best Places to Work in Virginia in cooperation with Best Companies Group, a Pennsylvania-based firm.

In 2012, 108 companies registered to become one of Virginia’s Best Places to Work, and 80 were selected in three size categories: small (15-99 U.S. employees); medium (100-249); and large, (250 or more).
The Best Companies Group made its selection based on surveys from the companies and their employees.

Employees benchmarked their companies on a list of core values: leadership and planning; corporate culture and communication; role satisfaction; work environment; relationship with supervisor; training and benefits; pay benefits and overall employee engagement.

Among small companies on the Best Places to Work list, 67 percent regard telecommuting as standard practice; among medium companies it’s 47 percent; and for large companies, it’s 65 percent.

Heather Sunderlin, director of employee services at Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer, says that telecommuting practices are tied to the embrace of software scanning technology.

Compared with the old days in which accountants were swamped with documents, “We are essentially paperless,” Sunderlin says.

The result is that many employees do much of their work online and can operate from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. This development, in turn, has led to an improved work/life balance, Sunderlin says.

“I believe our employees are happier,” she says, noting that they could look after a sick child or meet a repairman at home, knowing they could go online to keep in touch with the office or resume work on a project.

Best Places companies also show a heightened concern about the environment. Among companies asked if they promote sustainable or green practices, 97 percent of small companies said, yes; for medium companies, it was 93 percent; and for large companies, 92 percent.

One company that places a high priority on giving its employees every opportunity — and then some — to become friends of the environment is the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in Arlington, ranked No. 7 among the best medium-sized companies.

CEA is a trade association with more than 2,000 company members. It offers its 134 employees a monthly $120 Metro subsidy, discounted parking for employees who carpool to work and a $25,000 loan toward the purchase of a house in Arlington to encourage a shorter commute to and from work. (According to residential real estate firm Long & Foster, the median sales price for an Arlington home in November was more than $500,000.)

If an employee applies for the loan and is approved, the company can forgive it — meaning the employee doesn’t have to repay it — after three years. Employees are eligible for the loan after one year of employment and must be in good standing.

In addition, the company has lockers and bike racks and an on-site gym to encourage workers to walk or bike to work.

Krista Silano, CEA’s communications coordinator, says that “going green” is a rising trend in the consumer electronics industry. “Since CEA promotes the industry, we want our office to reflect what is important to the industry,” Silano says.

An emphasis on flex time and a work/life balance is one of the reasons that WR Systems Ltd. in Norfolk, a systems engineering firm with 300-plus employees, was named Psychologically Healthy Workplace Award winner in 2009 by the American Psychological Association.

It’s kept up the good work, ranking No. 2 among large companies in the Best Companies competition.

For example, when new employees report to their desk for the first time, there’s a chocolate bar waiting for them along with a hand-written note from their manager welcoming them to the team.

Job-sharing means that at least two people are trained to do each job, enabling employees to take time off — for an illness or other reasons — without delaying a project.

Employees also can bring their children to the office when there is no child care available — and their dogs, if they want to do that. The dogs usually show up on Fridays.

All told, the company has a culture of its own, and Debbie Odell, its director of culture, works to make sure that it remains intact. “A lot of us have read that when you go above the 250 [employee] mark, you can lose that culture unless you pay attention. I’m here to pay attention,” Odell says.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that nearly 47 percent of the total work force is female, and people 55 and over represent 19 percent.

But when 85 percent of your work force is female and 25 percent is 50 or older and you want to hold on to their experience, then an employer has to create a culture that speaks to those employee groups.

That’s what Bon Secours Virginia, a health-care system, has strived to do. Bon Secours ranks 23rd among large companies on the list of Best Places in Virginia to work.

To accommodate its predominantly female work force, Bon Secours has worked to become family friendly, with onsite subsidized child-care centers at three locations in the Richmond area that take care of employees’ children and grandchildren. The costs to employees vary depending on the age of the children, whether the employee is full or part-time and other factors.

“We take care of 450 children a day. We open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.,” says Dawn Trivette, administrative director for work and family services.

Bon Secours Virginia also helps parents with sick children through the company’s Rainbow Station Get Well Place. Employees pay $9 daily, and the company picks up the rest of the cost.

Trivette says Bon Secours also has been working to determine why experienced health-care workers leave before typical retirement age.

Among other reasons, the company found that nurses at all levels frequently are required to do heavy lifting, and this becomes harder as they age. It also can cause injuries.

To help, Bon Secours established Patient Mobility Teams — employees who assist nurses in moving and repositioning patients — sometimes with the aid of special equipment.

Today, Trivette says Bon Secours has employees in their 80s who still are working. “I think our oldest employee is 87,” she says.

In fact, many of Virginia’s Best Places to Work have instituted practices to recruit and retain an aging work force.

Among small companies, 64 percent report such practices; 87 percent of medium companies do; and, 81 percent of large companies.

There seems to be general agreement among employees at the Best Places to Work that they are being fairly paid.

Small company employees have the highest percentage of agreement — 87 percent on that question — with 82 percent of employees at medium-sized companies saying yes, and 83 percent of employees working at large companies agreeing.

Large companies are in the lead among companies that offer employees paid time off for community-service activities and volunteer work.

It breaks down this way: large companies, 73 percent; medium-sized companies, 47 percent; small companies, 56 percent.

Mixing good business with good works, many companies have remarkable and varied community service projects.

These are just a few:

    • Arc Aspicio of Arlington, a Homeland Security and intelligence firm ranking 32nd on the list of small companies, actively supports the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation;

 

    • Endurance IT Services of Virginia Beach, ranking fourth among small companies, helps support a therapeutic horse riding program for children with special needs;

 

  • Valkyrie Enterprises, LLC of Virginia Beach, a defense contracting firm ranking third on the list of midsized companies, donates a personalized, hand-stitched American flag to a family that has lost a loved-one in service to the country, each time it hires a new employee.

All in all, Virginia companies are finding new ways to be the best places to work. From telecommuting to opportunities for community service and bringing their dogs to work, employees feel valued.

Employer Survey Results

Virginia Business Best Places to Work 2013
Top Small Employer: Knight Point Systems LLC

Top Midsize Employer: NES Associates

Top Large Employer: Accounting Principals – Richmond

Related story: Unusual perks

Unusual perks

It’s the little things that count — in life and, increasingly, in business.

A card on your birthday, a party where everyone comes dressed as a pirate and goes on a treasure hunt, insurance for the furry friends in your family.

Those are just some of the ways that Virginia’s Best Places to Work are rewriting and expanding the traditional benefits package for employees.

The return, according to company officials: happier employees, better retention and more applicants for vacant positions.

A company’s reputation for giving their employees special treatment gets around, through word of mouth and social media. Just ask Caitlyn Scaggs, director of communications and marketing at Polymer Solutions Inc., in Blacksburg, who says, “We do get a lot of inquiries” about job openings.

Polymer Solutions, an independent testing lab, has 35 employees and ranks 18th on the Best Places to Work list for small companies. It has a corporate culture that might be summed up in four words. “Work hard. Play hard,” Scaggs says.
One aspect of that philosophy is that, if employees are happy and engaged on a daily basis, good things — like company growth — begin to happen.

Polymer employees have come to anticipate company-provided treats like Slushies and Blizzards plus breakfast every Friday.

“We have exceptionally smart scientists who take their work very seriously,” Scaggs says. So, she says, organized fun, like the pirate party, is one way to loosen things up and help people relax, before they plunge back into their work.

Free iPads
Birthday cards, Thanksgiving gift cards and reimbursement for flu shots are some of the ways that Base Technologies of McLean tries to let employees know that the company cares about them.

And, oh, by the way, every employee also receives a free iPad. “The iPad really caught the attention of our employees,” says Mirvat Suleiman, Base Technologies recruiting manager and a member of the HR team.

When she talks about the iPad benefit to prospective employees, she says they always perk up.

Suleiman emphasizes that the iPad is not so much about fun and games as it is about keeping employees connected when they’re away from the office.

An IT company with a work force of 165, Base Technologies, ranked second on the list of medium-size companies, sends its employees to a number of government work sites. It views the iPad as an alternative to assigning everyone a laptop computer to lug along with them.

“I don’t think we realized the impact [of the iPads] until we passed them out. People were saying, ‘Oh, this is really nice!’” says Suleiman, who credited her CEO with coming up with the idea.

In many ways, she says Base Technologies swims with the big fish in the IT business, but it operates as a small business that constantly tries to let its employees know that they are valued.

Ordering out for free ice cream on hot days and maybe for pizza on rainy days are among the ways the company strives to keep things interesting.

Domestic partner benefits
On a more serious note, Base Technologies began offering domestic partner benefits two or three years ago. “It’s a trend that’s happening,” Suleiman says. “For us, it’s something that opened more doors” to highly qualified prospective employees.

“We wanted to be able to say we had it, if someone wanted that option,” she says.

Among the firms on the best companies list in Virginia, 33 percent of small companies offer domestic partner benefits; 47 percent of medium-size companies; and, 60 percent of large companies.

One of those large companies is CARFAX, a company of 600 employees ranked 10th on the large companies list. The company provides customers with a wealth of information about used cars.

The company has found that keeping their families healthy is a major priority for employees. “Families are defined in different ways,” says Larry Gamache, CARFAX’s communications director.

In addition to domestic partner benefits, CARFAX also provides employees the opportunity to purchase pet insurance.  Once a gagline for comedians, pet insurance is no longer a laughing matter. It has become an emerging employee benefit nationwide.

Only a handful of the companies on the best companies list now offer pet insurance. CARFAX , however, believes it’s headed in the right direction. “We want to do what’s important to [employees],” Gamache says.

Gateway gains momentum

Renee Chapline’s voice rose with excitement. “It’s like the stars have become aligned,” says Chapline, executive director of Virginia’s Gateway Region (VGA).

Think Amazon, think Rolls-Royce, think the sprawling military base of Fort Lee, think a fast track to Virginia ports, think hummus and Steven Spielberg.

Chapline has been thinking about all those things during the past year, as a wave of capital investment — and a pinch of Hollywood pixie dust — has boosted opportunity across much of the region she represents.

Virginia’s Gateway Region is an economic development entity that promotes industry and enterprise across multiple jurisdictions in an area that generally begins south of the James River near Richmond.

Chapline says recent development activity is energizing the region — more so in some areas than others, but helping to raise all boats.

The region stretches from Chesterfield County through the cities of Colonial Heights, Hopewell and Petersburg into Dinwiddie and Prince George counties, and then even further into far-reaching rural areas such as Surry and Sussex counties.

Chapline says she never could have forecast the progress the region was going to make when she came aboard in 2005 to take a leadership role in economic development.

The exclamation points in her list of economic wins include:

  • The explosive growth of the Fort Lee Army base, adjoining Prince George and Petersburg, and its whale-size $2.4 billion contribution to the area’s economy;
  • The construction of two mammoth Amazon distribution centers in the region within the past year, one in Chesterfield and the other in Dinwiddie;
  • The establishment of a 1,000-acre Rolls-Royce aerospace campus in Prince George, and the recent announcements that the company is going to build a second manufacturing plant on the site;
  • The opening of a research center for advanced manufacturing, also in Prince George;
  • A proposal to fast-track construction of a new U.S. 460 toll road that would open a high-speed connection with Hampton Roads for the entire region;
  • Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln,” that has focused national attention on Petersburg, whose old mansions and vacant commercial buildings have been receiving renewed interest from preservationists and developers.

“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Chapline said, speaking of the region’s sudden momentum.

Comparatively low overall unemployment in most areas has been one benefit of that momentum, though pockets of above-average unemployment, such as in Petersburg, remain high.

Led by Chesterfield at 5.3 percent, five of the eight localities in the region had unemployment rates under 7 percent in October at a time when the national jobless rate was 7.7 percent and the overall Virginia rate was 5.7 percent.

The region’s anchor is Chesterfield, one of Virginia’s mega-counties with a 2010 population of more than 316,000.

Will Davis, Chesterfield County’s economic development director, says 2012 was a banner year.

“A 148 percent increase in fiscal investment, one of the biggest years in the history of Chesterfield County,” Davis says.

That translated into nearly $355 million in new capital investment and 2,276 jobs, coming at a time when many other areas of the country were plagued by mounting layoffs and plant closures.

The charge was led by Amazon’s construction of an $85 million distribution center in the county’s 1,300-acre Meadowville Technology Park off Interstate 95 next to the James River in the eastern side of the county.
The Amazon facility is a behemoth — a million square feet under roof, an area so large a couple of aircraft carriers could fit neatly inside.

Another 1-million-square-foot Amazon distribution center went up in Dinwiddie County. The two centers will employ a total of 1,350 workers.

Capital One Financial Corp., based in McLean, has said it also will be moving into the Meadowville Park, investing $150 million in a data center employing 50 people.

Besides Amazon, another park partner is Northrop Grumman, which oversees a sizeable slice of technology services for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  In 2005, when the state announced that Northrop Grumman would establish operations in Chesterfield, its initial investment was to be $125 million, with a total of $250 million over 10 years.

Hummus also is playing a bigger role in Chesterfield’s future, with a recent announcement by Sabra Dipping Co. that it will invest $28 million to expand its production plant in the county and build a 20,000-square-foot research center, creating an estimated 90 new jobs.

Davis notes that the company also is exploring the possibility of involving Virginia farmers in growing chickpeas, the primary ingredient in hummus. “Chickpeas could become a cash crop in Virginia,” he says.

Chesterfield has been aggressively bolstering its position in tourism, including sports and entertainment tourism, as well as historical destinations such as Henricus, an early English settlement on the James River where the Indian princess Pocahontas lived and met John Rolfe, whom she eventually married.

Uptown Alley, a $21 million bowling/entertainment complex, recently opened at Commonwealth Center Parkway.

Davis says that while Chesterfield has a lot going on, befitting a very large county, it considers itself a partner with the other jurisdictions in the region in economic development. “A prospect doesn’t know where a boundary line is and doesn’t really care,” Davis says, and jobs created in one area draw workers regionally.

If the Gateway Region has a colossus it would be Fort Lee, an economic powerhouse for the Tri-Cities, which encompasses Colonial Heights, Hopewell and Petersburg, and the counties that abut them.
A recent study by the University of Illinois at Chicago found that the sprawling Army base had an annual economic impact of $2.4 billion in the region.

Fort Lee has nearly doubled in size since 2005, thanks to a $1.5 billion investment that was part of the Base Realignment and Closure process, which shuttered some bases at the expense of consolidations and growth at others.

Today, Fort Lee generates more than $124 million in state and local taxes and accounts for 28,000 jobs in the region immediately surrounding it.

About 38 percent of the U.S. Army is trained at Fort Lee, now the site of the Army’s quartermaster, transportation and ordnance schools.

Percy Ashcraft, the county administrator in Prince George County, says Fort Lee’s expansion has generated revenues that helped the county to weather the economic downturn that crippled other parts of the nation. “Since 2009, we’ve received $4.2 million in contractor fees, and that’s a direct payment,” Ashcraft says.

The revenue stream created by Fort Lee, Ashcraft says, has enabled the county to build a new library, open an animal center and renovate the police station, all without contributing to the burden of local taxpayers.
Ashcraft added that Fort Lee’s growth has not strained government services or the schools, and retirees from the military installation have been assets to the community.

For Prince George County, the last several years have represented a watershed of good economic news.

In May 2011, for example, Rolls-Royce officially opened its 1,000-acre Crosspointe aerospace campus, having completed about six months earlier its first factory for producing precision-engineered engine discs and other advanced aircraft components.

The factory represents a $170 million investment and will eventually employ 150 skilled workers.

In mid-November, Rolls-Royce an­­nounced that it was planning to build a second plant on its property, this one to produce turbine blades for its engines, used on some of the world’s most advanced aircraft.
The company’s investment will total $130 million and create an additional 140 jobs. Construction of the new plant is expected to be completed by the end of next year, with the first components being produced in late 2014.

In time, Rolls-Royce has said it likely will invest a total of $500 million in its Crosspointe campus.

To serve the power needs of Rolls-Royce, Gateway Green Energy Holdings will build a $136 million gas-powered power plant in Prince George using Rolls-Royce turbine generators.

The company also has said it will develop an 8-mile pipeline to supply water to the power plant, drawing from the South-Central Wastewater Authority’s treatment facility on Pocahontas Island in Petersburg.

Abutting the Rolls-Royce campus on a 20-acre site is the recently opened Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing, a symbol of the transformation taking place in the once largely agricultural economy of Prince George County.

CCAM is a collaborative venture to develop advanced manufacturing technology through a partnership between corporate and university researchers.

During a visit prior to re-election, President Barack Obama lauded CCAM as a model for advanced manufacturing for the nation.

Currently more than a dozen companies have signed on with CCAM. The goal is to build that number to 25 to 30 during the next couple of years.

Three Virginia institutions — Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and Virginia State University — also are in the mix to conduct research, and CCAM’s executive director, Dave Lohr, says that more educational institutions could be added later.

When legendary movie director Steven Spielberg came to the Richmond area in 2011 to film the movie “Lincoln,” he included Petersburg in his shooting schedule, and some of its buildings are prominently displayed in the movie.

Production of the movie showered tens of millions of dollars on the region and drew special attention to the Petersburg area, where Lincoln visited with Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at City Point (now part of Hopewell) as the Confederacy began to collapse.

Vandy Jones, Petersburg’s economic development director, says that Petersburg — a community of more than 32,000 — has been on the build in recent years, as developers using historic tax credits to offset renovation costs have readapted older buildings to new uses, such as apartments. “Since 2006, we’ve had 700-800 units come up, just into the downtown area,” Jones says.

Old tobacco buildings — Petersburg was once a bustling center for tobacco manufacturing — have been a favorite of developers.

A local newspaper, the Progress-Index, has cited a 1917 Chamber of Commerce report noting that the city was then producing an annual average of 2.1 billion cigarettes, 13.2 million cigars, 600,000 pounds of smoking tobacco and 5.5 million pounds of plug and twist chewing tobacco.  The last remaining tobacco manufacturing company in the city closed in 2010.

Petersburg has been a traditional center for medical services in the region, and in recent years it has solidified that position.

In 2008, for example, Southside Regional Medical Center built a $145 million replacement hospital, at 200 Medical Park Blvd. in the city. It is building a $10 million Cancer Center, attached to the hospital.
Poplar Springs Hospital also is completing a nearly $6 million Behavioral Health Unit, specifically designed to meet the needs of military service members.

Virginia State University (VSU), a historically black institution adjacent to Petersburg, has been involved in many of the most important economic projects in the region. In addition to being a university partner in CCAM, VSU has expanded its programs and course offerings for military and civilian personnel at Fort Lee, and it has been working with Sabra Foods to determine whether chickpeas could be grown in the region for the production of hummus. “I think there is an intrinsic link between economic development and universities,” VSU President Keith Miller says.

Miller notes that in working with Fort Lee one of his goals is to keep in the region some of the military’s best and brightest minds.  He also wants to help develop the best minds in area school systems. To that end, Miller says that numerous VSU honor students have volunteered in Petersburg schools to help students who might be struggling.

In 2011, Gov. Bob McDonnell awarded the Reginald F. Lewis School of Business at VSU the Governor’s Award for Technology in Innovation in Higher Education, as it became the first school in the country to deliver its core curriculum in a predominantly digital format.

With the growing presence of nearby Rolls-Royce facilities and the opening of CCAM, Miller says, “There are tremendous opportunities on the research side for our faculty,” which will enrich both the region and the university’s students.

CCAM recently announced that VSU has committed five faculty members to support the center’s research efforts in surface engineering and manufacturing systems.

One of the potentially most positive economic impacts on the region is the recently announced proposal to build a high-speed toll road through this region to Hampton Roads. The precise design and route of the road have not yet been determined.

It will be a new U.S. 460, and could carry a price tag of $1.4 billion or more. For vehicles traveling the entire 55-mile route of the road, the toll would initially be $3.69 for cars and $11.72 for trucks, with tolls gradually rising in future years.

The existing U.S. 460 would remain open for travel with no tolls. “People said a [new] 460 would never happen in their lifetime, and now it’s happening,” says Chapline, of Virginia’s Gateway Region.

With increased shipping expected through Hampton Roads with the expansion of the Panama Canal, Chapline says the Gateway Region would become a vital link in an increasingly important transportation network.

“For us, it might be the last piece of the puzzle,” she said.