More than just a sign on the wall

Reimagined company values drive expectations and success for employees and customers

New Berlin Plastics has reimagined our company values, which summarize our guiding principles. They help us increase our focus on the success of our employees and customers.

These are our new values:

• Be accountable: Take ownership of yourself and your responsibilities. Meet your commitments.
• Be a team player: Our strength is in our team. By working together toward common goals, we outperform our competition and provide our customers with excellent service.
• Have a growth mindset: Get smarter with every mistake and learn from every experience. Our team and company will grow alongside you.
• Have a positive attitude: Positive attitudes are infectious – be the person you want to work with.
• Find a way: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of great. Approach challenges with a solution-based mindset.

“We identified qualities in our employees that make the workplace great. We then distilled them into a list of key values that apply to everyone, whether they work in engineering, sales, manufacturing, or administrative functions,” explains Business Development Manager Karl Held, “All the decisions we make as a company are based on these values.”

These values have been further distilled in The Bar – a tool that gives a minimum level of adherence to each value and is used in when reviewing employees and candidates. Prior to this, employees and candidates go through a simpler review regarding their duties. Do they get it? Do they want it? Can they do it? By using these two tools, New Berlin Plastics feels they can more effectively guide the growth and development of our team and company.

New Berlin Plastics has been growing significantly, with headcount up 47% in the last year. In anticipation of further growth and expansion into a second location, these new values serve as a consistent, identifiable system that can be recreated throughout the entire company and in other facilities. 

“It’s a shared, actionable value system that will be driven into the DNA of our organization,” says President Jim Schneberger. “By living these values, we can manage growth and market challenges while continuing to perform at a high level.”

Attracting and retaining quality employees

These new values have another important function: They help New Berlin Plastics retain quality employees and attract new talent. All team members know what’s expected of them. Managers can use the values as a tool to determine whether employees are living up to their commitments. The company already has an employee turnover rate that is lower than the industry average. With significant growth on the horizon, attracting and retaining the best employees is more important than ever today.

“We didn’t want just an ideological, ‘feel-good’ value system slapped on the wall,” Held adds. “We want actionable values so that everyone shares our focus on high-quality, reliable people who make the workplace enjoyable. These values should resonate with everyone.” 

New Berlin Plastics shares its values with applicants during job interviews, to determine whether they are a good fit. 

“We want everyone to know this is a good place to work long-term,” Schneberger adds. “This is a stable, safe company with many growth opportunities. We’ve gotten feedback that these values resonate with employee candidates, and that they feel they reflect the kind of place they want to work.”

Our values matter to our customers

Our new values are not only relevant to how our employees behave in the workplace, but they also matter to our customers. These principles give them confidence that they’ve chosen a partner that keeps its commitments, works together as a team, and finds creative solutions, even during challenging times.

“These are the values that customers can expect from us, but they also represent the behaviors we look for in the customers we partner with,” Joseph Mechery says. “If we’re like-minded in the way we do business, we’re much more likely to be successful and grow together.”

There are many challenges across the industry today, including supply chain delays, lack of raw materials, and labor shortages. These conditions have accentuated the importance of collaboration for everyone at New Berlin Plastics.

“The only way we can manage in this hectic world right now is to work together. We’ve been working with OEMs to find alternative solutions to keep their production lines running. That requires a major collaborative effort,” Mechery emphasizes. 

“Our values give our customers greater confidence that they can rely on us every day. They know they have a long-term partner that is fully invested in our mutual success,” he concludes.