People Power: AIT Worldwide Logistics

Smart Business Chicago, May 01, 2006 by Wurzinger, Amanda

Often in business, it is the intangibles that determine success.

A good first impression can lead to a job offer; the right sense of humor can land an important contract. And a company's culture can support and encourage growth, which is exactly the case at AIT Worldwide Logistics, an Itasca-based third-party logistics company.

Steve Leturno and co-founder and co-owner Dan Lisowsld started AIT in 1979 with just four employees the two of them and their wives. Twenty-six years later, the company has 720 employees and 2005 revenue of $300 million.

This success, the founders say, is a direct result of AIT's focus on three people-centered things: communication, training and promoting from within.

Mass communication

At AIT, open communication begins at the top - all employees are encouraged to share their ideas and concerns directly with the owners.

"With us, it starts with our accessibility," says Lisowski. "We've had the luxury of growing the company from when it was just Dan and Steve to the company today. It started out with just the two of us, and it was easy in those days - if you had a problem, if you had an issue or an idea, you came and you talked to Dan and Steve."

Today, the founders encourage that same smallcompany openness in many ways. First, they share an office, just as they did in the beginning, so employees don't need to track them down and arrange special meetings to speak with both of them.

In addition, they ensure that employees and managers aren't hung up on the company hierarchy.

"It's not the type of environment where if somebody goes over their supervisor, heads are going to roll for it," Lisowski says. "We tell the supervisors that we don't want to see that. Ideas start everywhere, so if somebody has an idea, somebody has an observation, let's hear about it, let's talk about it, let's make the company better."

The founders also ensure that employees have access to them by maintaining their presence in the company headquarters.

"We're here every day," says Lisowski. "I walk around the building a number of times a day just to say hello to people and see what's going on so people know us and feel comfortable with us."

Finally, the founders make sure that employees understand from their very first month with AIT that Lisowski and Leturno are open and available for chats by meeting with new employees to discuss company culture and history.

Cultural training

Beginning a new job is never easy - besides dealing with new job responsibilities and new co-workers, there is also a new culture with its own quirks and nuances to learn. To help facilitate integration into the company, Lisowski and Leturno host monthly meetings for all new hires.

"We tell them the story of AIT and tell them that 26 years ago, we were just a couple guys from the Chicago suburbs, much like they might be, and we had an idea," says Lisowski. "We wanted to serve our customers well, we wanted to treat our employees right and we wanted a business for ourselves. We really tell them the story of AIT and how we began, and I think that that really goes a long way."

In addition, they take care to emphasize the importance of the individual employee within AIT.

"I think one of the things I like about our training is we try to make them aware that each and every one of them can make a difference," says Leturno. "Our product is service. (There are) a number of steps that have to be carried out successfully in order for a shipment to be delivered on time. (If) any one step in the process that fails, we have a service failure that affects our customer.

"So every person, it doesn't matter if you're the first one to touch the shipment or the last one to touch the shipment, they have to do the job. And we try to stress that with the people right from the very beginning - it doesn't matter what your position or role within the company is, you affect the total quality product that we have." After their initial orientation, new hires are turned over to their managers for further training in a very informal process. Simply by working closely with their department and supervisors, new employees begin to absorb the culture and learn what is acceptable and not acceptable and what the company's values and beliefs are.

This also helps develop and establish mentoring relationships throughout the company.

"Everything that we do is about mentoring, but it may not be a big formalized process," says Leturno. "But that's the way people learn in this business. There's trial and error, but that's costly to the customers."

So new employees work closely with their supervisors for the first six to 12 months of their employment.

"Our industry is pretty straightforward you're picking freight up and you're delivering freight," Leturno says. "But then there's all these twists that are thrown into the process, and if you've never experienced it before, you don't necessarily know what to do. That's where these new employees can go to their supervisors, and (the supervisors) can mentor them to sort of get through that first-time experience without too many problems. It's mentoring, and it's on-the-job training as well."