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Loyalty and integrity: Jon Christensen President and CEO of Kleinschmidt (Best Firm #34 Multi-Discipline for 2018), a 140-person environmental consulting firm.
By LIISA ANDREASSEN Correspondent
C hristensen has been with Kleinschmidt for more than 30 years. He began as a licensing project manager and worked his way up to CFO. After 10 years in that role, he was promoted to CEO. “Our core values include integrity and creating loyal rela- tionships with our employees,” Christensen says. “Integrity relative to loyalty means we often take extraordinary steps to help long-time employees succeed.” A CONVERSATION WITH JON CHRISTENSEN. The Zweig Letter: Do you tie compensation to perfor- mance for your top leaders? Jon Christensen: For most employees, we target salary around the 60th-75th percentile of the industry and pay routine bonuses. For leaders, however, we are closer to me- dian salaries, but with the chance to reach 75 percent of to- tal compensation when we perform well. As a team, this motivates us to perform as well as or better than peers. We individually and collectively define measurable goals, and measure against those with a clear understanding of how that can affect our total compensation.
TZL: Do you share base salary or bonus amounts with your entire staff? JC: We publish salary ranges and detailed job advancement charts that define both the technical skills and the behav- iors (e.g. project delivery, management, leadership) we ex- pect from employees at each level. Staff can work with their supervisor to chart a progression that works for them. We also publish and communicate the key factors that affect in- dividual bonuses (company profits first, of course), and pro- vide a range of what folks can expect based on their level within the organization and their personal performance. TZL: What actions do you take to address a geographic office or specific discipline in the event of non-perfor- mance? JC: Our core values include integrity and creating loyal re- lationships with our employees. Integrity relative to loyalty means we often take extraordinary steps to help long-time employees succeed. For example, we separated with a prin- cipal in 2018, but only after we moved him into two differ- ent senior level positions, offered executive coaching, and
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