Company: mbi | k2m Architecture Inc.
Location: Cleveland
Number of Employees: 22
What They Do: Architecture and interior design for the commercial, hospitality, government, institutional and residential sectors
Why It’s a Great Place to Work: A culture of adaptability, continuing improvement and transparency helped the company grow in a year when many in its sector suffered.
Karrie Williams agreed six years ago to help Scott Maloney build his budding Cleveland business mbi | k2m Architecture on one condition: She would have to do so from Houston, where her husband had been transferred.
No problem, said Maloney, who outfitted the firm’s Ohio City headquarters with videoconferencing gear to keep far-flung staffers such as Williams close. Allowing the firm’s marketing head to telecommute from Texas is the type of adaptability that enabled mbi | k2m to thrive in 2009’s treacherous economy, employees say.
As the market for hospitality, residential and commercial design fizzled in recent years, the Cleveland firm shifted its focus away from its comfort zone in those fields and sought government projects that kept the economy afloat. In a year when job loss was rampant for architecture and design professionals, mbi | k2m profited, adding two employees, paying down debt and doing more business in Northeast Ohio than in the firm’s previous eight years combined.
The company still did hotel work, such as the multimillion-dollar interior renovation of the 372-room Cleveland Airport Marriott hotel. But it offset a slow down in that sector by landing deals to design the $10 million Cuyahoga County Community Based Correctional Facility and more than $5 million youth detention facility in Highland Hills.
“Everyone recognizes that you have to be flexible and embrace change to remain successful in the economy we’re in,” says director of interior design Kelli Schaffran, who specialized in hotels and suddenly found herself pondering prisons.
Schaffran and others credit their bosses with setting the tone of adaptability. As they prepared for the changing economy, Maloney and co-owner Michael Ingram reduced their own salaries by 30 percent. Employees followed suit, voluntarily reducing their salaries to help the company through lean times.
“It was very important that we showed that as the leaders we were the first ones to make the sacrifice for the better of the company,” Maloney says.
The company didn’t stop at cutting costs and searching out new business. Its leadership also asked employees what they needed to do their jobs better, soliciting suggestions that were written on tablets and affixed to Maloney’s wall until each was addressed.
Ranging from allowing casual dress and hosting happy hours to ditching a weekly meeting format and changing the way assignments are handed down from management, the suggestions allowed employees to guide the firm’s operations in ways they thought would help them work more efficiently — and enthusiastically.
Like Williams, Schaffran and project coordinator Tara Pesta, both mothers of young children, took the opportunity to ask for flexible schedules that allowed them to balance their careers and families.
“I’ve done a part-time schedule; I’ve done telecommuting,” Pesta says. “And those kind of things have made it possible for me to be a happily working mom, not just one who’s getting through it.”