Author: GAWDA MEDIA

By Mike Marks, Indian River Consulting Group Employees don’t want to be worker bees – they want to feel like they are part of something important. Great leadership and communication play key roles in employee engagement. Although many top executives love to talk about their “open-door” communication policies, how many follow through?  According to one Gartner survey, only 13% of employees are completely satisfied with their workplace experience. In addition, McKinsey & Company also found that a third of employees who recently left a job quit because they didn’t have caring leaders. Another third left due to a lack of career development and advancement…

By Paul Bernier, ASP One of the more common safety items we see in almost all construction images is a worker wearing a hard hat. This is because they are required by OSHA in every setting where an object might fall from above onto a worker’s head, anytime there is a potential for a worker to bump their head against a fixed object, such as pipes and beams, and if there is a possibility of head contact with an electrical hazard. So, this obviously includes a huge portion of our industrial customers. Now comes the question on whether you want…

by Thomas J. Armitage, site-seeker, inc. If your business has a physical storefront, there’s a huge opportunity to get in front of more buyers by leveraging your digital properties. You’ve probably noticed by now, Google’s algorithm and its approach to search have changed dramatically over the years. It’s gotten smarter and a lot more sophisticated. For local businesses, that means being able to be found more often by users, but only if positioned properly. That’s why it’s important to think through your business’s approach to local search engine optimization (SEO) and how you can be found more often for relevant…

By Ken Thompson What is the common thread in mentoring our family-owned business successors  and responding to forces seeking their disintermediation from the supply chain? Disintermediation – what a mouth full of syllables – and, once we get it past the lips, do we know what it means? You bet! It means someone wants to remove you  from your place in the supply chain and take your piece of the pie for themselves. Sound like “fighting words” to you? Disruption comes in many flavors. And every time a new one surfaces, it forces us to look at ourselves in the…

by Randy MacLean, President of WayPoint Analytics I’m not kidding. If you’re at the top of your company (or your department), your very job is all about change. That’s the principle functional difference between leaders and those who are led – leaders are responsible for finding new and better directions and guiding their teams to better results.  It’s your job If you look around your organization and you see policies and processes that haven’t changed in years, you need to worry. If the consensus is you’re “under margin pressure” and “customer loyalty” has evaporated, those are warning bells alerting you…

Ask Your Board is a feature that runs in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Quarter Issues of Welding & Gases Today. The purpose of Ask Your Board is to ask common business questions that all GAWDA members might be dealing with and to see how GAWDA’s Board of Directors are dealing with these issues within their own companies. To submit a question for GAWDA’s Board Members to consider, please email [email protected]  THE QUESTION The theme for this year’s GAWDA Annual Convention is “Building a Bridge for Future Leaders.” How does your company do a good job of identifying and preparing…

The GAWDA Consultant Program is a GAWDA member benefit that is included as part of your member dues to the association. It is consistently rated as one of the most valuable member benefits that GAWDA provides. Between the four of them, GAWDA’s consultants bring more than 100 years of industry-specific experience to the association. In the first three issues of 2022, we spoke with the consultants about a variety of topics that impacted businesses in 2022. From recently passed or upcoming legislation, to the continued impact of COVID, to an increased frequency of inspections. For our final issue of 2022,…

During World War II, Leonard Hein trained American pilots to fly and fight. Due to his German descent, he wasn’t allowed to fight during the war, but he was able to contribute to the Allied cause by helping to train other pilots. Following the war, Leonard and his wife, Trudy, decided to open a boat and welding supply business. For a long time, Leonard and Trudy were the sole employees of the company that would become Bemidji Welders Supply. Seven days per week, the two would do all of the sales, service, pickups,  and deliveries themselves. Eventually, the company sold…