The Power Book 2023

SMALL COMPANIES

SETHMAR TRANSPORTATION Hiring 10 people within five months is par for the course at larger companies, but at Sethmar Transportation’s scale, that’s a 20 percent pop in employee count in a short time frame. Imagine the impact of 200 new hires at a 1,000-employee organization, and you see the potential for impact on a carefully designed workplace culture at this Overland Park freight brokerage. In addition to the hiring burst, says founder Ben Bolan, the company has “streamlined our operations, migrated to a new operating system, and built our scalable processes to support a much larger sales presence. We have adopted technology to cover blind spots and empowered our people to really turbocharge Sethmar’s business.” Kansas City has been a DYNAMIC LOGISTIX If you want teamwork baked into the cake of company cul ture, you start with ingredients like an “Us and We” mindset. That, says HR Director Kristan Stanley, is the foundation upon which Dynamic Logistix was built. “When one of us succeeds, we all succeed,” she says. “The values embedded in our company’s culture reflect the genuine, lasting friendships formed between employees and the meaningful partnerships we’ve established with our clients” at the transportation-services company. The proof of this approach can be found in the numbers: A mere pup in corporate years—it was founded in 2012—the company roared past the nine-figure revenue mark in 2021, surpassing $151 million. As a result, it’s been expanding its staff, now at 94, CRUX KC The Mighty Mite of this year’s Best Companies to Work For is Crux KC, with just 33 employees. But the five-year-old marketing specialist is flexing big-time: That employee count has more than doubled over the past year as it added firepower to the leadership ranks, and it will soon relocate from the Freighthouse District to digs twice the current size in the 2345 Grand Building. Crux KC is fulfilling founder Melea McCrea’s vision of the “un-agency,” combining the leadership of a fractional CMO with a marketing department-as-a-service model. The goal is to provide simple, smart, and affordable marketing solutions for clients, allowing her team members “to integrate more fully into its clients’ organiza tions and to work more closely alongside their leadership teams ADAMSGABBERT At AdamsGabbert, placing culture first starts by offering excep tional employee benefits that support the whole person and by matching employees to work that aligns with their purpose. “We take a family-first approach to promote an award-winning company culture,” says CEO Denise Kruse. “Through employee benefits and activities such as unlimited PTO, paid holidays, a 401(k) match pro gram, full health-care coverage, annual bonus opportunities, social memberships, and community engagement, we encourage employees to engage in life outside of work and be active participants in our community.” That life outside work also includes nice touches like fully paid family gym memberships for each employee at Brookridge

hot spot for logistics growth over the past decade in particular, and a key factor in building a workforce isn’t just attracting talent— hello, competitive salaries—but retaining them with a solid suite of benefits one might expect from a considerably larger employer. For one, benefit eligibility starts with those working 30 hours a week, and there are three health-care plans, including a PPO and high deductible plan, as well as a health savings account option. The plans include competitive deductibles, with 100 percent coverage after those are met, and prescription-drug coverage. The company also offers vision and dental plans, flexible spending accounts, fully paid life and AD&D insurance with a $25,000 benefit (with optional coverage for family), disability insurance, and an EAP. so this will be its last year in the small-company category. The other ingredients that go into creating that kind of momentum include management practices, such as open communication and attention to physical space, as with the open floor plan with the recent headquarters relocation. Regular one-on-one conversa tions between employees and managers, ad-hoc and quarterly town hall meetings with the company leadership, and daily score cards all drive competition and camaraderie. “Communication is an integral part of the success and growth DLX has accomplished over the past five years,” Stanley says. That still leaves room for balance, whether that means stepping away to work on the office patio, breaking a sweat in the on-site gym, or a game of ping-pong and darts. No clock-watching: If you need a break, take a break. to provide more robust strategy and deliverables.” The founda tion for workplace culture is found in a values-based, eight-letter acronym: TEAM CRUX. Specifically: “Trusting, Entrepreneurial, Accountable, Motivated, Collaborative, Respectful, Unrelenting and X-ceptional.” “We’ve developed a leadership team to lead the company into the future by coaching, training, and mentoring the next generation as they enter the workforce to grow personally and professionally,” says vice president Kara Brooks. That means the development of a robust onboarding process to ensure reten tion of new hires, she says, along with leadership traits, giving the broader team a chance to offer feedback guided by those traits. “This process,” Brooks says, “has helped us to develop a culture of trust, communication, accountability, and results.” Golf & Fitness and free subscriptions for employees’ choices of appli cations, from wellness apps like Premium Fitness Pal and Calm or an Audible subscription. This is no drab office dynamic—heck, with a Chief Happiness Officer on staff, how could it be? In this case, it’s Sweeney, the four-legged office mascot. “We strive to create an environment of trust and respect, so each employee feels fulfilled and empowered in their career and beyond,” says Kruse. “Our distinguish ing approach to management stems from our focus on unlocking meaningful experiences for our clients, candidates. and employees,” she says. “This sets us apart from our competitors because our inter nal work and our work with clients are purpose-driven rather than purely tactical.”

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THE POWER BOOK

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