To put it simply, the Southern Site Contractors company culture is one of family. We’re all very passionate people when it comes to what we do for a living. Sometimes, we’ll debate about what we believe is right for any given job, but at the end of the day, we trust that all of our people are going to make the right decisions.
We always have each other’s backs, which sometimes means being flexible enough to drop what you’re doing and go help somebody else out for a day or two. That will occasionally even mean helping out with things that aren’t even part of our typical operations. A great example of this was the recent tornadoes in Tennessee.
When Ryan started Southern Site, he came from Goodall Homes. The Stonebridge neighborhood of Lebanon, Tennessee, is a project Goodall Homes has been working on for over a decade. When the tornadoes came through, they really hit Stonebridge hard. Even though that’s a development we don’t actually work on for Goodall, the very next morning we took equipment off of our jobs and headed up there to help clean up the debris.
That’s a good example of how our people at Southern Site treat everybody. We try to maintain that mutually beneficial family atmosphere, not just with our employees and our customers, but also in our communities. We want our people to treat everyone with compassion and respect, and the ones that don’t usually don’t last very long here. It’s an ‘all hands on deck, do whatever it takes’ mentality.
We’re not afraid to say the things that are on our mind, and fight for what we think is important. Everyone here knows that their opinions are respected and that we will listen to their perspectives, no matter what the issue is. In a way, that results in more opportunities for advancement and growth at Southern Site than you would typically see at other construction companies.
We strongly believe in giving people every chance to learn and to do things right, even if that means failing along the way in the short term. We can make mistakes and come back from them. It’s the repeated errors that you can’t always come back from. Everyone here has the freedom to be successful in their own roles, and that comes with a lot of faith in our people from the top down.
As we look to the future, we have to focus on maintaining our company culture as we continue to grow and expand our business. In that context, hiring the right people is vital. When we bring new people into the company, we need to provide them with the necessary tools to succeed and make sure they understand the processes we like to follow.
We also need to never lose sight of our role in the community. A lot of larger companies lose touch with the communities they serve, but as Southern Site grows, we want to make sure we set up every job site to put our best foot forward for the community.