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This Is Our Five-Year Plan for Strengthening Our Core To Expand Our Mission of Meeting Needs, Supporting Families and Serving Customers – Fueled by Investment, Growth and Collaboration.
Issue 1 — See What’s Inside
Including articles describing safety leadership training progress, telling the story of family man, George Threadgill, and details regarding the annual technical meeting.
“Our top priority is keeping you safe. I believe, no matter the size of a project, we must train our employees to recognize risks and use their Stop Work Authority to help prevent injuries.”
Chad Watts, VP of Quality and Project Services, ISO Services
We’re building a culture where safety is everyone’s responsibility — emphasizing leadership training, open communication and the power to speak up and stop work with confidence if something doesn’t feel right.
We’re setting clear and consistent safety practices for every role across all locations — covering equipment care, hazard awareness and emergency readiness.
We’re investing in quality safety gear, smart systems and real-time data to prevent incidents and keep you protected — because nothing is more important than getting you home safely.
“Ergon will give you the opportunity to learn, take classes and do just about anything if you are committed and try.”
Bob Walley, VP – Operations, Southeast
We’re establishing the right connections, making it easier to join Ergon and ensuring employees have a smooth start and finish through strategic recruiting and One Ergon onboarding/offboarding.
We’re mapping out career paths, planning for the future and giving tools to new managers, interns and co-ops, and employees at every level—giving everyone a chance to grow and succeed.
As we expand across more locations worldwide, we’re focused on building one strong culture—guided by our Core Values and shaped by your feedback through listening sessions and engagement surveys.
“One of our greatest strengths is our commitment to providing solutions for our customers, which has led us to develop specialized products that give customers competitive advantage and allow us to meet needs globally.”
Juan Acosta, Senior Vice President – Global Supply Chain, Ergon
We’re investing in innovation that’s built around the solutions our customers need – helping them solve industry problems and grow their business.
Just like we maintain our equipment, we’re improving our digital tools to keep up with customer needs and support smooth and seamless operations.
We’re working on smart, strategic growth plans within each of our segments to expand markets, lead industries and make a strong impact on our customers and the communities where we live and work.
Initiative 01
We must have commitment and strong leadership from the Board, the Lampton family and management to support occupational and process safety initiatives. Expected behaviors should be consistently communicated and celebrated throughout the organization.
Ergon leadership must consistently, through words and actions, support the actions needed to ensure a strong occupational and process safety culture throughout Ergon.
We will establish a tiered governance structure that integrates occupational and process safety into leadership performance reviews, planning and decision-making.
Leadership must act as the primary safety influencers by visibly reinforcing and prioritizing safety over operational results in all decision-making.
We must develop occupational and process safety leadership and ownership at every level through training that will embed principles of ownership, care and compassion.
We must empower employees to be safety advocates by encouraging peer-to-peer accountability through real-time coaching, intentional observations and a culture of care and compassion for one another.
Initiative 02
We must emphasize a culture where anyone can and is expected to halt operations if they identify an unsafe condition, understanding that they are empowered and it is everyone's responsibility to protect their peers and the organization.
We must establish clear policies regarding Stop Work Authority.
Leaders must actively support and expect employees to use Stop Work Authority.
We must train employees on when and how to use Stop Work Authority.
We must effectively communicate Stop Work Authority to all employees at every level.
Initiative 03
To ensure continuous improvement, we will implement real-time safety data tracking with leading and lagging indicators to include proactive metrics, outcome-based metrics and severity/root cause analysis of safety incidents.
Initiative 04
We must identify safety skills and competencies needed for each job role, and we must train our employees so they can demonstrate those skills and competencies.
We must conduct routine refreshers and scenario-based training.
Initiative 05
We will invest in emerging technologies to enhance workplace safety, including integrating operational excellence and safety data into our S4/HANA upgrade and investing in improved safety technologies.
Initiative 06
To uphold consistent safety excellence, we are implementing a universal Operational Excellence framework that establishes minimum standards for facilities, regardless of regulatory requirements.
Initiative 07
We must enhance our focus on incident investigations and sharing through an incident management program, training on the program and a cross-functional team to assist facilities with incident investigations.
We must have clear communication and sharing of incidents and investigations through productive weekly safety meetings and monthly cross-company collaborative meetings, and by utilizing stories to reinforce personal commitment and cultural engagement.
Initiative 01
We recognize that the HR processes that got us here won’t get us where we’re going. It is critical that any new processes retain the positive, people-focused impact that makes us Ergon. We will scale up our people processes while ensuring consistent, positive employee experiences.
We must provide improved centralized recruiting support to reduce hiring managers' administrative workload and provide interview training for hiring managers.
We're focused on internal identification/sharing of best practices and an optimized new hire experience.
We must create clear development paths for internal growth and succession, with roles tied to market wage data for competitive recruiting and internal equity.
Initiative 02
We need to equip future leaders to expand and sustain the culture and level of service established by Ergon. This becomes increasingly important as we prepare for the retirement of senior leaders across Ergon over the next five years.
With our current organization-wide state of succession readiness, we've identified development needs with a proactive approach to preparing future leaders.
We're committed to providing training to create baseline managerial expertise, equipping new and frontline managers with the confidence/know-how to support their teams.
We're focused on internal, shared best practices for consistent, excellent intern experiences, integrating intern opportunities and full-time placement into our Ergon Talent Strategy.
Initiative 03
Fostering a culture consistent in Ergon values across locations is increasingly important as the organization becomes more geographically dispersed.
We're documenting the behaviors that differentiate Ergon and have built our unique culture.
Initiative 01
We are committed to investing intentionally by focusing on the specific competencies and capabilities Ergon needs to build. With the majority of investments remaining within the framework of the business segments, we will ensure that innovation efforts are close to customer needs, addressing immediate market opportunities that solve industry problems and build capabilities that directly drive margin growth.
Just as in the past, our success will come from enhancing processing expertise and application knowledge. The first step is intensifying our understanding of core applications within each business segment while also building cross-functional teams to ensure broader organizational insight.
We must establish stronger pathways for collaboration across segments.
We must expand our capabilities through intentional investments in talent, market research, tools and management systems.
We absolutely must create dedicated bandwidth to address the important but nonurgent activities that will make a difference over the 10-year horizon.
To manage cross-company innovation effectively, we will adopt a nonbureaucratic approach by implementing clear, flexible guidelines that foster creativity while maintaining strategic alignment.
Initiative 02
Our digital infrastructure is just as vital to our business as the steel and iron assets at our plants. Just as we invest in maintaining and upgrading our physical assets to ensure optimal performance, we must do the same with our digital systems. These systems are critical to meeting the evolving needs of our customers and supporting the continued success of our operations.
Initiative 03
Strategic growth is driven by our ambition to ensure Ergon continues to make positive impact on the lives of our employees, customers and the communities where we operate. ESS, PCR and ISL will implement growth strategies to maximize opportunities, provide industry leadership and expand markets.