The "About ORR" video series explores the evolving workplace
As part of our ongoing series, About ORR, Watch our Chairman, Clark Orr, discuss ORR Protection's innate ability to adapt and thrive in the ever-changing work world.
It goes without saying that the world has changed tremendously in the past two years. The world was changing before the pandemic as well, especially when you look the technology that we have at our fingertips to interact, to communicate with one another, to collaborate and to operate a business and take care of customers. ORR Protection systems, has had employees spread out for a long time. Almost since the company began, we've had multiple locations and we've had technicians who work out of their homes. We've also had account managers who have worked out of their homes for years. We have the technology today, to effectively do your job from just about anywhere. If you look at companies over the past couple of years who are not capable of working remotely they really struggled. We were very fortunate in that were already already working remotely.
We already had the technology and the infrastructure and it really allowed us to thrive during the pandemic. We didn't have to go through that learning curve of figuring out Microsoft Teams or Zoom, or things like that. Those have been part of us for years, and I give a lot out of credit to our IT Team for having that vision and that foresight to get us positioned to do that. We've been able to respond very effectively to how the world has changed. And I think it's given us really a leg up on a lot of our competitors who are not so well positioned. Although it's been very difficult and challenging for a lot of reasons, our technology, our ability to connect and to collaborate was not compromised.
We were prepared to go into a remote work environment. Without the face-to-face interaction for a couple years now, of course it's, it's changing our culture. I've been really impressed with how our managers, our supervisors and our teams have adapted to a virtual workplace. A lot of our teams do weekly or more video conference calls with their teams and some of them even do cocktail hours. It's both a mix of business and social interaction, I think in some ways we're more connected through the technology now and that's a benefit. It's hard to replace the physical connection but I think we're doing a great job at it. I don't know if there's gonna be a time where we're 100% back in the office 8am-5pm. I think that may be a thing of the past.
I think there's pros and cons as well. Uh, I think people enjoy the flexibility being able to spend more time with their families and kids. And I think that's great because I think the balance was too far out of whack prior to the pandemic. I don't think working parents were spending enough time with their kids. I think the pandemic has changed that. You talk to some parents and they would say they're spending too much time with their kids. The world has changed. Our company has evolved. We've adapted to the new circumstances and we're doing incredibly well. Do I miss parts about our culture that we had prior to the pandemic? Yes. Here in Louisville, our headquarters, we would do a breakfast once a month for the office and anybody who was visiting. Those were a lot of fun for the leadership team to cook and it created a level of interaction that's more personal and fun and not so business oriented.
I miss that aspect, but I think that's gonna come back with time. And I think what's gonna be great is because of the technology that we have at our fingertips today, for better or worse, we can be more flexible give people more control of how they spend their time. I think these are all benefits for our society, for our families, for raising our kids and ultimately quality of life. For ORR Protection, we've been just really excited to get into our new corporate headquarters here in Louisville.
We plan on being here for a long time. This building gives us room to grow physically. It's very similar to our last headquarters but it's a newer building, it's contemporary and an open floor plan that allows a lot of interaction between our people. It's also a venue where we can bring groups together and do some culture building that we've been missing for the past couple years. This building's exciting because this is sort of the physical embodiment of our next phase. My hope is that this headquarters is a symbol to the organization that we're in it for the long term. We want this to be a place where we can bring customers and suppliers and really show off our business. In fact, our corporate headquarters and our branches around the country should reflect the type of quality organization that we are. I believe we're there, and it continues to get better.
