Our Culture

WHY CHRISTY EXISTS AND HOW WE WORK TOGETHER.

Culture isn’t something that a company has or doesn’t have. Every organization already has a culture – whether it’s good or bad or somewhere in between. Making sure that they create and maintain the culture they want requires deliberate planning and constant vigilance.

At Christy, we work together using The Christy Way (below) as our guide to build and maintain our high impact culture. When we work together this way the outcome is that we ignite a brighter tomorrow for those we connect with today.

Click on a spoke of the Christy Way Wheel to learn more.

At Christy, we define our culture through a working model that we call –
The Christy Way

Each of the eight "spokes” of that model represents a key element of the way we guide our actions and how we run our company, as well as the expectations we have for everyone on our team.

Our Mission & WDDT Close ✕

“We believe that in the end any entity is judged by the good that it does. Complying with just laws and simply making money, we felt, is a rather low bar to achieve. This belief led to Christy's current set of Mission & Values which guide our daily efforts.”
- Frank O’Brien, Jr.
Owner, Christy Companies

Our Mission

We make our labor a pleasing offering to the Lord while enriching our families and society. Our decisions are guided by The Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. Discrimination has no place at Christy.

WDDT

We work together for Win-Win outcomes. We Do what we say. We eliminate Drama. We are Transparent.

We Listen Close ✕

At Christy, we believe that listening fully to what someone else has to say is one of the greatest acts of caring that people can show for one another. We emphasize that good communication is a dialogue, not a directive. If it’s not two-way, it’s not communication – it’s just somebody talking.

We know that employees have mixed feelings about communication in the workplace. On one hand, they want to be heard. On the other hand, they hesitate to be speak out at times because they fear being criticized, misunderstood, ignored or even punished.

To lessen those worries, we do the best we can to listen to everyone at all times – and take their concerns and ideas seriously. We encourage people to use good “reflective listening” skills to ensure that we understand what others are saying before reacting to what we hear.

We use a four-letter acronym – CORE – to help people remember important keys to effective listening:

Caring – Demonstrating genuine interest and concern
Openness – Being eager to consider different viewpoints
Respect – Holding others in high regard and showing appreciation for their worth
Empathy – Showing sensitivity for another person’s experiences and emotions

Here are a few tools we use to help people speak out and tell us what’s on their minds:

We conduct an annual survey to find out how employees feel about important factors that affect their quality of life in the workplace.
We do live, in-person listening sessions every year conducted by the heads of our company with all employees in small groups at all of our operations.
Employees produce and post their own “2 Second Lean” videos to show improvements they have made in their work areas, entirely on their own without permission from supervisors.

We Act Safely Close ✕

Our two safety priorities for Christy team member are 1) They return home safe and sound each day, and 2) They are able to work and retire with dignity – physically and financially. No other portion of The Christy Way requires as much commitment and effort on the parts of both our team members and our company.

Some of the key areas where Christy supports our team:

Avoiding and preventing accidents and injuries
Maintaining good health
Managing personal finances
Progressing in careers to the extent they desire (see our definition of A-Players)
Retiring with dignity and wellbeing

In striving for our foremost goal of ensuring that our employees return home safely every day, we employ a number of preventive and remedial practices:

Every person on our team participates in a behavior-based safety program or activity.
We have a process for reviewing and adjusting to safety incidents, including near-misses where no injury has occurred, which we refer to as safety opportunities.
We combine our safety goals with our 2 Second Lean methodologies – many of our 2SL videos are on safety improvements.
We look constantly for safety improvements as we strive to provide a zero-injury culture and work environment.
We encourage employees to be vigilant about any safety concerns, using the catch-phrase – “If you see something, say something – don’t wait until something bad happens.”

We Give Close ✕

Christy has a deep and longstanding commitment to supporting the communities where our team members work and live. One way we do this is by supporting The St. Nicholas Fund, our charity of choice. Through this charity we anonymously provide financial support for those in need and facing difficult circumstances.

We do this because “Enriching Society” is an element of Christy’s Mission & Values that requires action. In fact, The St. Nicholas Fund began in 2008 as a Christy program to meet this need. It was initially funded with a portion of the ownership’s tithing and has since grown into a 501c non-profit. Contributions supporting it come primarily from Christy’s owners and employees who choose to support those in need in their local community.

The St. Nicholas fund exists to “throw a bag of gold through the window” when a little monetary help may make a big difference to someone. All of our Christy employees are asked to keep their eyes open for when such a situation may be happening and to refer this to the St. Nicholas Fund.

The St. Nicholas Story

St. Nicholas was a bishop in the fourth century of Myra, which is now in modern day Turkey:

"St. Nicholas' parents died when he was a young man, leaving him well off and he determined to devote his inheritance to works of charity. An opportunity soon arose. A citizen of Patara had lost all his money, and had moreover to support three daughters who could not find husbands because of their poverty; so the wretched man was going to give them over to prostitution. This came to the ears of Nicholas, who thereupon took a bag of gold and, under cover of darkness threw it in at the open window of the man's house.”

Learn More

We Pursue Dreams Close ✕

Welcome to your new adventure. Explore, discover, pursue AND achieve your dreams!

This program exists because many of us stop dreaming as we get busy working and managing adult life – but dreaming helps us remember to make time for the people and things we enjoy, like vacations, hobbies and fun! The purpose of this program is to help you explore and identify your goals and dreams and to support you as you move towards accomplishing them through three key elements: dream, act and contribute.

Christy supports our employees and their dreams that are aligned with our values. Stronger individuals make a stronger company. For any questions or support, reach out to [email protected].

Click here to learn more >

We Work Lean Close ✕

Working Lean puts powerful tools for continuous improvement right in the hands of each employee.

Traditional lean methods tend to be technical and complex, and it can take a long time to get improvements approved and implemented. For organizations with a do-it-yourself attitude, working lean and sharing 2 Second Lean changes make improvement so simple – and even fun – that everyone can do it every day.

Engaging a lean practice starts by encouraging employees to take charge of making whatever improvements they want in their own work areas. No supervisor approval is needed. Additionally, we can use lean to break down big projects into many small lean projects to improve efficiencies.

Then employees used their cell phone camera to make a short video of the improvement they’ve made, and they post it on the company’s in-house website for everyone else to see.

That’s it! Simply put, 2 Second Lean boils down to giving everyone the permission to … “Fix what bugs you!”

Even in its simplified form, 2 Second Lean covers the traditional “eight wastes of lean”.

Over-production
Over-processing
Transportation
Motion
Inventory
Defects
Waiting
Unused employee genius

Producing videos on their cell phones empowers employees and greatly accelerates improvement results. Here’s why it works so well:

Creating and posting a video reduces the hassle in showing other employees an improvement.
It makes documenting and standardizing an improvement extremely easy and fast.
It allows for easy employee recognition.
It streamlines training and standardization.

We Achieve Goals Close ✕

“Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless. The most successful business leaders have a clear vision and the disciplines to make it a reality.”
– Verne Harnish, Author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits

The success of any company depends largely on how well it defines a clear direction for its business, and how effectively it plots a sound, strategic course to its desired destination.

At Christy, we conduct that essential process with a mindset that “We Achieve Goals.” One of the primary tools we use for this is a management framework called The Rockefeller Habits, based on the book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

The process is based on three core pillars:

Priorities: Setting a few top priorities for the year, the quarter and the month with one primary priority that aligns the entire team around the company’s main goals
Data: Compiling sufficient, relevant metrics on a daily and weekly basis to provide definitive insight into how the organization is running and what the market is demanding
Rhythm: Establishing an effective cadence of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual communication to maintain alignment and ensure accountability

Building on those pillars, we create detailed plans that guide us on our ongoing journey to growing a prosperous business for the benefit of our company and our employees alike.

We Build A-Players
Close ✕

At Christy, we define A-players as people who want to achieve, belong and contribute at a level that aligns with our company’s high-performance goals.

They do it for the mutual benefit of themselves and their families, co-workers and customers, and the community and the company we all count on to provide a high-performance culture of trust.

They are not superheroes, but they always put forth a super effort, and they are eager to learn and grow.

They make mistakes, and they accept responsibility for fixing and making things right.

They are not content with the status quo, and they are always looking for ways to do things better than before.

They appreciate how much people everywhere count on the products and services we provide to make the world work.

With those qualities in mind, we encourage everyone at Christy to invite other A-Players to join our team in a rewarding career with a company that places great value on the people who help us excel.

Our Mission

WDDT

We Build A-Players Close ✕

We Build A-Players
Close ✕