Our Culture - Setting us Apart

inputs to our service customers doing retrofit and upgrades to their mechanical and electrical systems. We decided that after 28 years in the construction market we were going to exit it. It took all of 2014 to do this and our employees – mainly electricians – who had worked with us for many years stayed with us to help us cleanup our projects. Over the course of the year we had to lay off over 80 people. Like the early nineties when we did the same thing with our mechanical construction division we lost a lot of good people. It is the hardest thing to do as a businessman/entrepreneur to have to shrink your business. However we did it for the good of the company and we now had a model that was much simpler and highly focused on the service business and our long list of customers with whom we had maintenance contracts.

It was a difficult time for all of us to work through 2014. It was interesting, the problems we had with the banks in the nineties resurfaced this time too. When they were needed to help they were not there. This is the second time the Hitchman family had to learn a lesson so hopefully there won’t be a need for a third instance. Our Culture – Setting us Apart

One of Naylor’s greatest accomplishments is that we managed to maintain a great company culture and an engaged workforce. What’s more, we know that our employees are happy because they told us so! In 2006, we participated in the Queen’s University and Aon Hewitt Associates Top 20 Best Small and Medium Employers in Canada survey. It was a 3 ..0-minute online survey that questioned 75% of our employees about their level of engagement in nine key areas of business. We participated because the researchers provided valuable feedback and data from the surveys that we could use to determine our strengths, and even more importantly, our weaknesses in the human resources department.

Through their responses, our employees indicated that we were providing a welcoming and hospitable work environment that made Naylor a great place to work. The survey results could be broken down by geography and by operating unit, so we were able to conclude that between our four offices and three business units, there was consistency in how employees perceived the company. Overall, we ranked 11th in the national survey, and we were recognized as one of Canada’s Best Medium Employers. No other company in our industry (specifically mechanical and