Why Centro’s Culture Works

Recently, Centro was named the Best Place to Work in Chicago, according to business

publication Crain’s for the third year in a row. As much as we’d like to credit our freebies (yoga, food, etc.) and great health benefits for helping us attain this award, there are factors at our core that drive the happiness in our employees across the U.S. These are simple ideas that, when put into action, return incredible results.

Centro hires responsible adults that care about the betterment of this company, their team and the individual. Sounds like common sense, right? Unfortunately common sense is not always common in corporate America. Trust in employees and managers is a foreign concept for many corporations. When it is practiced, it cannot just live within Talent & Development (HR) either. You need all executives, managers and individual employees to care about keeping that trust intact.

We trust that if we allow employees to work from home, then they are high performers who know their business can be done just as effectively as being in the office. We also believe they will let us know if they recognize it’s not working. We trust our employees to get their job done during some time of the day. Passing the time until the 5:00 pm whistle blows is not something we enforce, and it has never proved effective across companies.

Shawn Riegsecker (our CEO), says there is no such thing as work/life balance, it is just a “Life Balance.” Thanks to technology, employees can now work 24/7, so how do we stop them from doing that? We let them know that we care. Our company cares about their well-being. We care about how their family is doing. We also care about enabling them to become the best version of themselves. Not just a great employee, we want them to be a great PERSON —  father, mother, friend, partner. Got personal conflicts? Leave. Go home. Take care of it. We’ll still be here tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week. Let us know how we can help. Got a personal achievement? Tell us about it. Let’s all celebrate it!

HR teams and corporations often give up on trusting their employees too quickly. Hiring the right people with competencies important to the company allows us the freedom to trust and empower each individual. It’s what makes Centro a great environment for our 300 employees.