The "About ORR" video Series Dives into how we operate
In our ongoing series, About ORR, Chairman of ORR Protection, Clark ORR, has been discussing what keeps our organization healthy and growing. A big part of that is our Core Values at the center of how we operate internally and externally as a business. Transcript below.
So I think, ORR Protection's core values really started with the beginning of, or corporation, which goes way back to the, the early forties with the advent of, of, or safety. And I think the core values started with my grandfather Clark ORR senior. The way he treated people, the way he interacted with people, not just inside of our company, but our customers and our suppliers as well. I think that really set the groundwork for how we continue to operate today. And of course, when my father took the business over in the 70s, he built upon that and the business grew. We added a lot of people, which shifted the culture and the values as we grew and as we brought in new people to the organization with different perspectives and different values.
And that becomes part of our DNA as well. I would say culturally we continue to evolve which I believe is a healthy thing for companies to do. You don't want to stay static, but I believe our values really remain unchanged. Our core values as we publish them today are honesty and respect for all individuals. Anybody we come in contact with, we want to treat them as we would want to be treated, Solutions also for our customers; that's critical. Our customers are coming to us because they have specific needs. They have problems that that need to be solved. We provide the expertise, the products, the services, and the solutions that provides them with the greatest level of protection possible to give them peace of mind. Customer dedication, similar to providing creative solutions for our customers.
We want our customers to know and to see through how we behave, that they are our priority. We're in business to serve them and our associates. But obviously, if we're not to taking care of our customers, we're not gonna be successful as a business. So we've keep that at the top of the list. Continuous improvement is critical to our business. ISO has been a part of our business for many, many years, going back to the early 80s. We've really built on ISO quite a bit. We seek as individuals, the company as teams, and as an organization, to continually grow. We want to be asking ourselves, "How can we make this better? How can we run our company more efficiently? How can we serve our customers, in a better way?"
You have got to be evolving and you have got be looking for ways to do things better to improve your value proposition. Being thorough in all that we do is another one of our values. This is so important because people are so busy and distracted today. It's very important that we complete the job. We complete the job. We want to communicate thoroughly with our customers, both our internal customers and our external customers. We want them to understand where we are in the process. We want to make doing business with us as easy as possible. So there's less headaches, less concerns from our customers, and being thorough is part of the way that we do that.
We pay attention to the details. We're organized, we've got a process and we stick to that and that's how we get our projects done. That's how we get our service done for our customers. The last value that I wanna speak about today is our focus on safety. That is both an internal and an external focus, similar how we want to treat people with respect, everybody that we come in contact with. Everybody that we work with in our physical sphere can be affected by how we behave and our attention to being safe. The last thing we want is for one of our associates to be hurt, whether on the job or off the job. Certainly the last thing we'd want is for one of our associates to injure somebody in the field, or to have a car wreck and hurt somebody on the road.
So you've got to be very, very conscious of these things. You've got to make safety a priority. We've gotta constantly communicate about safety within the ORR organization to keep it top of mind with people. There's just nothing that we do in this organization that is so important, that we should take shortcuts on doing it safely. We've really improved our safety performance over the past several years and just like continuous improvement, it's something you can never take your eye off. If you start to ignore safety, your safety performance will decline. It affects the morale of the business. It affects the performance of the business. It affects the reputation. But the big driver for wanting to be a safe organization is because we care about our people. We want our people to be in great shape when they come to work in the morning, we want them to be in great shape when they go back home to their family, that certainly speaks to how they behave and their awareness of safety and the steps they take to be safe, day in and day out.
It also ties into health and wellness, and we are living in a day and age when the cost of medical care in the United States continues to go up and up and up. It continues to be a bigger part of our cost of doing business. So there's a, there's a financial component to health and wellness, but it's really about helping our people to see the picture or have a vision of, of constantly improving, becoming the best version of themselves that they can be. I think the way that we eat, the way that we exercise, take care of our bodies, getting an annual physical things like that are all proactive ways that we can live fuller, richer, happier lives. I don't think I've ever talked to somebody who has been sick or, or injured, who has said, "This is great. You know, I feel awesome. And I'm happy." We'r trying to be proactive, with our health and wellness and trying to help people get in front of it. Too many people, too many of us, myself included, we take our health for granted until we don't have it. In this day and age of COVID and the pandemic that we're in, that's even more relevant today than ever.
