If you want to work hard doing something meaningful to make the world a better place, Schweitzer is the place for you. During the past two years, SEL has hired more than 10 percent of the schools graduates, more than any other employer.
There were just 133 employees at the time. 
Devin Griffin, who works on Arars team, suggested reorganizing the storage of fixtures used to test circuit boards.
Thats his philosophy, in a nutshell; being exceedingly pro-employee SEL is 100 percent employee-owned, thanks to a series of transactions Schweitzer initiated gives SEL the devoted workforce it needs to continually innovate and to deliver top-drawer service. But she excelled as an SEL assembler, showed initiative in suggesting better ways to do things, took advantage of constant training opportunities, and today supervises 20 fellow workers who make and test printed circuit boards.
Selling to a competitor, also known as a strategic buyer. The willingness to innovate and take chances is admirable. The Friday Lunch: like any employer its size, SEL is a company of specialists, most of whom work on discrete projects, and workers would have little idea how their labors relate to the overall organization were it not for extraordinary efforts to keep everyone well informed. The new endowed chair will support WSUs teaching and research in the fundamentals of power engineering, including electromagnetics, controls, communication theory, high voltage materials and practice, work that is near and dear to the Schweitzers and the employees of SEL. SEL aims to add 15 percent of an employees pay to his or her ESOP account each year. The company pays well is well run and they make the employees feel part of the company and that no job is to small, one of the few Made in America companies out there. As with IRAs and 401(k)s, the tax responsibility rests with the owner-employee, who pays when he or she retires or otherwise withdraws stock. SEL is a good company in general but when it comes to opportunities I can't imagine finding a better place to start a career.
Intern pay is great and the company values are a great incentive to continue. Mary Josephs, former head of ESOP advisory at Bank of America, is founder and CEO of Verit Advisors, investment bankers specializing in ESOPs. While at SEL I have been lucky enough to learn and grow in whatever direction I wanted.
Attracting talent has to be in the DNA of an organization, Visokey says, and companies located in small markets must go to increasingly great lengths to stack up against brand name employers in major markets. A career, not just a job. How do you feel about going to work each day at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? Now youre going to be a machine operator, Arar says. These buyers are increasingly similar to strategic buyers, as private equity funds seek to roll up multiple companies in the same industry and then sell the company in an initial public offering or to other investors. ESOPs outperform similar companies with different ownership formats. Generally a great place to work. This remarkable success in recruiting and retention also comes despite the fact that SEL resides in Pullman, Washington, a city of just 32,000 half of them students at Washington State University (WSU) 75 miles south of Spokane, 285 miles from Seattle and 900 miles from Silicon Valley. Good benefits, positive atmosphere, clean & comfortable environment. Washington State Universitys power engineering program will establish the Edmund O. Schweitzer III Chair in Power Apparatus and Systems in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, thanks to gifts totaling $1.5 million from Edmund and Beatriz Schweitzer, and the employee owners of Pullman-based Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.
The job is more mentally demanding than anything.
Leadership does a great job allowing ideas from all levels be heard. And employees manage themselves and each other to build their shared investment. Management is awful! These equipment are quite heavy and have to be lugged around when needed. Ideas are welcome. How often do raises occur at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? Culture, Friday Lunch, Bonuses, Gym, Medical Center, Not recommended for people with prior engineering experience. SEL has never laid off a single person, says Sara Arar. And ESOPs overall, recently studied by EYs Quantitative Economics and Statistics Practice (QUEST), have significantly outperformed the S&P 500, delivering their worker-owners an 11.5 percent compound annual growth rate vs. 7.1 percent for the S&P 500 on a total return basis. Lots of opportunities to bring software into the company, but progress is slow.
This company really is a good place to work. Dale Visokey, a managing director at Crist/Kolder Associates, an executive search firm, has been recruiting talent to industrial companies for more than 25 years, including to such out-of-the-way locales as Benton Harbor, Michigan, Versailles, Ohio, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Instead we have short-term leave for all employees. Amazing company that always looked out for it's employees first. He built one and wrote his dissertation on the subject, founded SEL in his basement and spent years (while also teaching at WSU) patiently persuading the utility industry to take a chance on his small firm and its product. We dont have maternity leave specifically. How did you get your first interview at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? What benefits does Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories offer? The entire product is made in Pullman from circuits to the final object. Typically, a founder/owner, nearing time to sell part or all of the company he or she launched, will consider the options: ESOPs enjoy another major tax benefit. Still wish I hadn't left that job years ago. What is SELs secret? Good health and retirement benefits. I really dont suggest this place unless youre desperate. Picking up a book about protective relays for a class, I couldnt put it down, Schweitzer recalls. What is the best part of working at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? A great company that offers challenging tasks, offers good pay, has benefits and will train you to do the job by SEL's standards. To date, the Schweitzers and SEL have collectively contributed more than $3.6 million to support students, teaching and research across the university. An OK company to work for if you are right out of school or have not worked in the industry very long. Free Lunches on Friday's (or Monday's in some time zones). Some are adopted across the company after theyre proven on a smaller scale.
The company values its employees, many benefits outside of medical, dental, and such. Starting as an assembler with no experience and a high school education SEL has trained or paid for professional certifications, multiple management systems, a college degree, allowed me to work with members of R&D, documentation, interior design, compliance and more. This can also be used for maternity leave but its not technically maternity leave. No age discrimination and good diversity. Thats because workers act like the owners theyve become. Our community is ready to answer.
They are condescending and demeaning. But guess what? Positive atmosphere, mostly happy employees. Selling to an ESOP. They are very rigid in their work processes, no wiggle room allowed for new employees. no training on very rigid, overly complex processes, Great Company with good pay, benefits, health insurance.
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When that happens, employees arent laid off; instead theyre trained to run the machines. Management tries to be very positive. Day to day is pretty busy since they run pretty lean teams. I've never been denied an opportunity to learn something new. What does an ESOP bring to SEL? SEL makes a virtue of its location, aggressively recruiting engineers from Schweitzers alma mater, WSU; students there get a goodly share of the more than 150 internships SEL has at any one time, and the company winds up hiring more WSU electrical engineering grads than any other employer. Dignity of work is one of our values., How does an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, work? Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL), a manufacturer of sophisticated equipment for utilities and other power systems, is looking to hire scores of electrical engineers right now. Benefits are pretty good. Free Friday lunch, benefits, pay, health insurance, training. Not an environment conducive to expanding your skills or understanding. Work environment pretty bad.
A culture that encourages a healthy workforce: SEL has an onsite medical clinic with nurse practitioners and a physician; a Life Quality Center that includes workout facilities, personal training and nutrition counseling; reimbursement for external gym memberships. Great company to work for. Everyone there hates working there. Talk about raising the degree of difficulty. Dos Schweitzer do random drug testing, and if so, how often? Luis DAcosta, who succeeded Schweitzer as CEO of SEL last year after 10 years at the company, says the devotion to R&D and to a long-term outlook distinguishes the company. Today, SEL employs about 3,800, more than 2,000 of them in the Pullman area, and its customers are found all over the world. The company offers financial support to workers studying for undergraduate and graduate degrees, and also for coursework as varied as knitting or a second language. Employment is a very serious matter, he says. Ideas percolate up. He notes a program that allows front-line supervisors to commit relatively small funds and amounts of worker time to improvement projects. The support network is very large. What is the most stressful part about working at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? Health insurance premiums are low and there is a employee stock ownership plan available to all employees. Good luck with that, most recruiters would say, given that SEL is competing against the likes of Google and Facebook, each of which, on any given day, is trying to hire hundreds of electrical engineers, and offering top dollar and the prestige of working at one of the worlds hottest technology companies. He was soon wondering whether these large mechanical devices couldnt be made digital and therefore more reliable and precise.
Accessibility, Disability and Accommodation. She is also author of leading blog on ESOPs and middle market M&A. If you are a hard worker, show up on time, friendly and work well with others, you will have great success with SEL. Theres money to investigate new ideas, as SEL invests more than 10% of annual revenue (expected to surpass $1 billion within five years) in R&D. The Boeing Company: University Relations Grant. The place is very inclusive, and the job is pretty interesting. They have great customer satisfaction and warrants all products for ever! Thanks in part to the support and advocacy of the Schweitzers and SEL, Voiland Colleges School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has experienced dramatic growth. My supervisor helped push me. Would absolutely work there again, if given the chance. It just figures that one smart and motivated person will be related to more such potential hires. How SEL applies Schweitzers philosophy will account for the bulk of this article because in the SEL experience there are lessons for organizations or all sizes and across industries.
Shed run a tiny home cleaning service for 10 years, barely scraping by.
The culture on the production floor is good, people are eager to help eachother. In subsequent years, he sold additional amounts to the ESOP, taking it to 49 percent. Thats because federal legislation intended to encourage employee ownership allows the owner of a C-Corporation, selling to an ESOP, to defer capital gains taxes, potentially forever, by reinvesting the proceeds in qualifying securities, namely stocks or some bonds. Enjoy working there while I did. Despite a shortage of engineers, SEL will fill the 66 engineering jobs listed on its website, as of this writing, and the hundreds more it is likely to post in the years to come. Had a great 2 years and would love to go back some day. Waste is avoided. That saves the seller having to pay combined federal and state capital gains of about 23.5% of sales proceeds, depending on the state. Free lunch on Friday, Great Health Insurance, Employee owned. 4.0 out of 5 stars for Compensation/Benefits, 3.7 out of 5 stars for Job Security/Advancement, The most useful review selected by Indeed.
Belief in training and education extends beyond SELs facilities. Retirement 10 years ago. Prepare to be learning the entire time you were there. Great company with long term viability in the market place. The work is pretty simple. Opportunity for advancement is better for certain demographic groups. Job security at SEL is great, there have never been any layoffs. Its not a fair work place and they dont care about your mental state. Oh, and Griffin was promoted, in part because of this sharp thinking. By Mary Josephs. These transactions, in some cases, bring the absolute highest pre-tax price for a business because the acquirer often cuts costs deeply at the combined companies. Conflict is reduced. Productivity, for one thing. The products we make are very serious. The company has beaten the S&P 500 since the ESOPs founding. And founders who sell to an ESOP can participate in this favorable upside; most do so by partially financing the sale of the company, taking back seller notes that also come with stock warrants. Great company to work for when I worked there. Well, there is no secret; Ed Schweitzer, founder and president of the fast-growing company, which has annual sales of more than $600 million, gladly shares his HR philosophy and the details of its application: We try to run the business the way our moms would want us to, Schweitzer tells me in an interview. Whats more, excluding employees relations just wouldnt work, given SELs size relative to its headquarters city. This company has been very welcoming to new interns still in school. Opportunities for advancement seem to lean towards the younger generation. Here are details of the HR policies that drive SELs success: One of Arar and her teams constant projects is to upgrade the manufacturing process from simple hand assembly to more rapid and reliable automated work.
High levels of employee engagement also allow the company to implement new ideas more swiftly; employees arent as defensive and its a safer environment because of the policy to redeploy workers who might be displaced by automation and by gains in efficiency. Training was not a priority. Lots of room to grow in the company, internal job openings on a weekly basis.
Selling to a private equity fund, also known as a financial buyer. The products built are outstandingbut the company wasn't ready to expand. Retirement was my choice. SEL treats its workforce as a giant networking resource and willingly hires spouses, adult children and other relations of existing employees.
Its granted to them gradually through the ESOP. Women rate the female-friendliness of their workplaces on. Friday lunch is always a treat, Friday lunch, benifits, pto, employee owned, Close proximity to coworkers, pay could be better. How did you feel about telling people you worked at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? Thats a big factor in keeping SEL employees around.
Management is very well organized, and work very hard. People are awesome and work towards a common goal. I helped create many projects that are still being used today. Whats it like working at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories?
Ten out of ten. I was 64 when they put me to work.
An ESOP also brings significant financial rewards for workers. Enrollment in the school has also doubled to more than 1,000 undergraduates and nearly 200 graduates each year.
Lunch is catered and everyone at SEL locations across the country and internationally stops working to participate and learn. From everyone. This is a great company with a bright future. Unlike so many U.S. companies, which want to only hire workers already at the top of their game, SEL also looks for raw talent people it can train and watch grow into more significant roles at the company. Annual research expenditures in the school have more than doubled in the past six years, to $7.6 million annually, with about $4 million of that increase in power engineering research. Since the business was operated out of Ed Schweitzers basement, there has been a Friday Lunch (originally at the familys kitchen table), where new projects, products and people are discussed. You can reach her at CEO@verit.com. The companies that draw top talent to these places tend to be remarkable organizations, Visokey adds.
Sara Arar came to SEL six years ago with what many employers would regard as a work history ill suited to cutting-edge manufacturing.
They typically dont pay for the stock they receive. I just wish they allowed fully remote work. The company is well ran and honest with all its employees. His mantra may be warm and fuzzy, but Schweitzer is a hardcore engineer, with a PhD from WSU, where he first encountered the study of large-scale electrical systems. We have research facilities you just dont see in other private companies, DAcosta says. After becoming an ESOP, if a company is an S-Corporation, it pays no federal income tax. Worked there over a year, and cannot remember having a single bad day at work. And then in 2009, Schweitzer sold his remaining stake, making SEL 100 percent employee-owned. They have a tendency to criticize instead of giving clear design expectations up front. Opportunities for advancement are earned and not handed out based on seniority. Ask a question about working or interviewing at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. The pay is amazing for the type of work. This means that, in the interim, ESOP-owned companies can enjoy superior after-tax cash flow to pay down acquisition debt, invest in plant and equipment or make acquisitions. excellent employee owners retirement program. An amazing work culture. This route can often bring the seller a better after-tax return than selling to a private equity fund. These policies alone might very well have kept SEL competitive in hiring and in its business, but Schweitzer early on decided to take a more dramatic step: he organized an employee stock ownership plan and in 1994 sold 30 percent of SEL to the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Article published part of the September/October 2015, Sourcing & Contracts Management Specialist. True to his engineers mind, Schweitzer had been thinking about the best ownership format for SEL to succeed long-term.
And that produces sales growth and healthy profits. I found that employees who had been there a long time tended to fudge their compliance to the processes but expected new people to follow them to the letter. First, though, a few words about Ed Schweitzer.
Your job/ culture depends lot on your team/division. What questions did they ask during your interview at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories? When you factor out the WSU students, SEL employs more than one-in-ten permanent Pullman residents. Previously stored by number, Griffin suggested the most-frequently-used ones be kept closest to the action, and that the heaviest ones be stored at waist height to avoid back strain.