“We’ve had to make tough decisions like furloughs and “shared pain” pay cuts, but we’ve done our best to be transparent and honest with our team members about how we’re thinking about this unprecedented crisis and what we need to do to get through it.” Our Chairman & CEO, Mark Fukunaga, took a brief moment to have a candid talk story with Hawaii Business Magazine as part of its “Coping with COVID-19” virtual interview series.
How are you maintaining your company culture?
In times like this, we lean even more heavily on our Core Values, which really do define how we do things and treat each other. We have four (Respect, Service, Teamwork, and Continuous Innovation), and we’ve ranked our values in order of importance. Respect has been guiding us the most during this time. We’ve had to make tough decisions like furloughs and “shared pain” pay cuts, but we’ve done our best to be transparent and honest with our team members about how we’re thinking about this unprecedented crisis and what we need to do to get through it. I can also tell you that in a situation that literally changes by the hour, we’ve already made quite a few mistakes. Luckily at Servco, egos aren’t a big thing and we haven’t lost our sense of humor, and we’ve told everyone that while we’ll make more mistakes (sad to say, no one was shocked), we promise to fix them as quickly as we can. During times of crisis and uncertainty, trust is incredibly important. We think we have a reservoir of trust from our past actions that should help now, but we have to earn that trust every day.
In the spirt of Teamwork, we’ve been focusing on maintaining clear lines of communication with team members and customers. Last year, we stood up an internal communications app that’s available to team members on desktop, iOS and Android. It was perfect timing, especially given the social distancing now required. Our Executive Committee has been holding (at minimum) weekly All-Hands live streams on the app with all 1,200 Hawai‘i-based team members to provide updates and answer questions, in addition to “walking the floors” to hear firsthand any concerns. Daily, we’ve also provided resources and information to ensure our team members are informed about what’s going on within and outside of Servco.