Happy New Year! This January let's look back at 2020 and find the bright spots we've had at DMC.
2020 gave the world the opportunity to look at everything from different angles. At DMC, we asked ourselves some new questions. How do we provide expert solutions to our customers with stay-at-home orders in place? What adjustments can we make to keep everyone safe? How do we maintain our great company culture without our regular bonding events?
While we're still finding and improving the answers to these questions, it's good to pat ourselves on the back for the bright spots. Below are some accomplishments reached throughout a year that pushed so many boundaries.
Customer Relationships
DMC would like to thank all of our clients for their continued business. It's our privilege to continue serving you and collaborating on solutions during this unprecedented time.
New Service Offerings
DMC has always helped clients with expert software development solutions. 2020 allowed us to include more turnkey services to our DMC offerings. We've taken part in the historical efforts to improve COVID Testing efforts. We started offering remote connect boxes giving clients the ability to connect to their systems without the need for onsite travel. We also started expanding our control panel design services.
DMC's Remote Connect Box
Our DMC Family Grew
We made some adjustments at the beginning of the pandemic, but our DMC family did grow throughout the year. Not only did we onboard 22 new employees in 2020, but some teammates grew their own families. While we were quarantined at home we were able to see pictures and virtually celebrate weddings, the adoption of so many new pets, and the arrival of six new DMC babies!
Adjusting Well to Working from Home
We learned that we are well equipped to work remotely. This transition to WFH was rather smooth all things considered. We had the internal organization and communication tools already in place to make collaborating simple. We already had a Slack channel that made crowdsourcing answers on any subject simple. We were already well versed in Teams and Zoom video calls so we were ahead of the crowd and seemed very smart when Zooming with our family members throughout quarantine. By incorporating a WFH allowance, we modified our at-home offices to our personal productivity needs. Check out our top tips for working remotely with Microsoft Teams.
We experimented with ways to stay connected throughout the year, from beer tasting, trivia night, and pumpkin carving on Zoom to sending gifts to colleagues around the country!
Focus on Physical Safety
Safety has always been important for DMC. We have safety highlights in our weekly status meetings and yearly factory safety training. Yet COVID forced us to consider more safety measures. From the beginning of the pandemic, DMC took large steps to make the employees feel safe. By putting in place an "encouraged work from home" status early, we were able to get settled at home and working efficiently.
But what about assisting our clients onsite? DMC is committed to quality solutions for our customers which means our engineers needed to continue onsite commissioning. When we felt it was safe to send our engineers onsite, DMC put as many safety measures in place as we could think of. We put out a survey asking what safety measures would make everyone feel safer. Then DMC created policies for onsite safety that we included in each of our proposals. DMC has also empowered engineers to speak up if they felt a client was not practicing good COVID safety regulations. We're thankful knowing if we ever feel unsafe, management has our best interests in mind.
Highlighting the Importance of Mental Health
As Jason Mayes, Director of our Houston office, said in our November Monthly Company Meeting, "The people have always been and always will be the best part of DMC."
This is why DMC took steps to help our employees have the necessary resources to take care of their mental health needs. Not only did our HR department make a point to emphasize the mental health resources offered through our insurance, but we also made a point to offer other outlets for connecting with our coworkers while working remotely. We've put together our top tips for working from home including adding "water cooler" moments added to meeting agendas to encourage small talk and reiterating the benefits of our mentor program to gain another coworker’s perspective.
Continued DEI Training
In March of 2019, we launched our DEI Initiative and our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force. This task force has been focused on evaluating and improving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at DMC. Throughout 2020, members of this task force, Anjali Bharadwa and Becca Stussman, brought us monthly presentations focused on DEI.
We had three large presentations including talking with guest speaker Reginald Champagne, Senior Counsel for Beam Suntory. The topics included Being Open to Discussion where we explored how being open to the discussion is the first step to making a change and familiarized ourselves with certain terms to help discussions, What is Systemic Racism where we discussed some of the ways that systemic racism is prevalent in our society, and Becoming an Anti-Racist where we learned about our natural unconscious biases and how to combat them. With our monthly "DEI Tips" section of our monthly company meeting, we are making efforts to make DMC a more inclusive environment for all.
Adaptive, Innovative, and Driven Coworkers
We're so thankful to be a company full of wonderfully talented smart people who work hard to bring the best quality service to our clients and each other. With an IT team of only two people, they have been able to troubleshoot, solve, and improve all of our network issues and have worked countless hours to keep us connected. Our Administrative team has stretched in new ways to reconfigured internal roles and systems to streamline processes. Our Accounting team and Project Coordinators have expanded to cover new service offerings while still staying consistent with their everyday workload. Our Marketing team has explored new markets and strategies to continue reaching vital customers. DMC's engineers have continued to offer expert solutions and customer service through long hours and extensive onsite visits.
Telling It Like it is – Transparency Throughout Hard Times
2020 definitely highlighted the importance of our core value of Tell It Like It Is. Management's transparency throughout the hectic and ever-changing situations is commendable. With weekly management wikis available for us to read on our own and monthly "Let me be Frank" segments in our all-company meetings, we're truly thankful for being informed when decisions and policies change. It is rare to have an upper management department be very willing to give explanations and have open conversations.
Despite it being a stressful year, DMC accomplished so much in 2020. We're ready to take on whatever 2021 has to throw at us. Let's raise a glass of something sparkling and toast to a year well done and a future that looks brighter.
Learn more about DMC's company culture.