Bartlett & West integrates employee-ownership into the culture

Jane Wang is a senior project engineer in the wastewater/renewable energy group at Bartlett & West, located in Lawrence, Kansas. She has been with the company for about three years. With her background in chemical engineering and a master’s degree focused on green hydrogen and the renewable energy sector, Jane has found her niche doing design and consulting work for a variety of projects centered on renewable natural gas.

We talked with Jane about how Bartlett & West empowers employee-owners to learn, grow and thrive.

The culture at Bartlett & West includes being able to learn new things and grow our knowledge and skills. How have you seen that happen for you at Bartlett and West?

I've seen that the company is very dedicated to my professional development. I've gone to professional conferences associated with my engineering background and if there's a lunch and learn I'm interested in or software that I want to learn more about, the company has been very good at supporting those.

Also, they support other things I might be interested in, such as joining Bartlett & West’s Employee Ownership Council. I have been a member of that for the last two years. This year I attended the National Center for Employee Ownership conference to learn more about the ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) and how that integrates into our company as a whole. (Watch the video for more from the conference.)

What did you learn about how our ESOP compares to other employee-owned companies?

This is actually our 40th year as an ESOP, which means we're a very mature ESOP compared to some of the newer ones, and we're 100% employee-owned.

I learned from this conference that a lot of the things we should be implementing into our ESOP, including integrating it into our company culture, we already have been doing, which is awesome.

How do you see buy-in from employee-owners when it comes to company culture?

A lot of it has to do with senior leadership asking for input. We have board summary meetings where we learn about the financials of the company and what we are planning to do as a company to grow. Employee-owners are free to voice their concerns and make suggestions. We have a survey to find out about what employee-owners are happy or unhappy about in the moment, and people are free to make suggestions.

Employee-owners are very trusted here at Bartlett & West. The moment you're hired, you are believed to be able to do the work that you're assigned to, which means nobody is going to look over your shoulder. (Watch the video to see how Jane says Bartlett & West values each employee-owner.)

Interested?

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