Bart Wear pulled off the ultimate customer service coup. His biggest client bought Wear’s company, then stepped down and named him president – the first non-family member to lead Casey Industrial. It was a deal built on mutual admiration: "I worked with Vern Casey for years as a subcontractor," Mr. Wear says. "He was a mentor to me in many ways." Wear returned the favor later, putting together a partnership to purchase the Casey family business and complete Mr. Casey’s exit strategy.
Mr. Wear says the company is "profitable but not extremely profitable . . . We haven’t made a killing." Some of that may be modesty and some of it reflects the cost of growing the business. And Casey Industrial works in an industry that has seen plenty of canceled jobs and bad debts in the new century.
But another factor cuts into the bottom line: "Some of our decisions are made on a basis that is other than strictly bottom line," Wear says.
Casey management calls employees
… the key element to any company’s success. Because our employees are so important, Casey is very proactive in providing them with outstanding benefits. We believe that there should never be any question as to what we as a company are doing to provide for the team.
Beyond competitive pay and benefits, Casey funds an Employee Assistance Program to help in hard times. "We understand our people can face issues in their personal and professional lives that are so big they need help from the company," Mr. Wear says. "Our decisions are not made in the abstract: they have faces attached. We came together as a group of people trying to make a living. We have a lot of long term employees – 30+ years."
Bart Wear’s commitment to his Casey Industrial family is built on his evolving biblical worldview. "It’s been a huge, growing process over the years," he says, "like it is for everyone. The last ten years or so, I’ve been more intentional about applying my worldview in the business. They were compartmentalized for a long time and, while I intended for them to be together, I didn’t see how intentional I needed to be to bring them together.
"One day I was reading in the book of Joshua where, before leading the people into the promised land, he said, ‘Choose this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ I had read that before but that day it struck me that my house was more than the five people under my roof. The idea of a household for Joshua would have included servants, slaves, children, spouse, animals – that was his house. In Joshua’s mind, leading a household wasn’t about an ownership thing but about a big area of responsibility – and I realized in my business I have a big responsibility.
"Caring for the house and loving them, creates loyalty that goes in both directions. Making decisions for hundreds of people working with us – it’s a bigger-group thought. Our decision will affect hundreds of people not just a handful of shareholders. We do all this because of a humanness factor. We just honestly feel there are a whole lot of things in our business more important than profit. As a company that’s part of our responsibility."
Monday morning, 8:15 a.m. in the Casey conference room, a group of employees are praying. This is as close as anything at the company comes to looking conventionally religious. There is an open invitation. "It started when I was talking with two guys at work and we agreed to meet the next Monday morning to pray together. These days an email goes out to tell people that, at 8:15 Monday morning, we pray for our company, our country and each other. Everyone is welcome. Some come; a lot don’t.
"Nobody’s getting hammered on or ‘talked to.’ Sometimes people do come to me in a bad spot and ask me to pray with them. But I’m not gonna run up and down the halls preaching. It’s not my job to do God’s work in the company, it’s my job to make space for God to work…and that that is what I try to do as a leader. I’m creating space. It needs to be acceptable if an individual wants to honor God with his work; I want him to be able to do that.
"We would never call ourselves a ‘Christian company.’ I was talking with someone outside the business who said, ‘wouldn’t it be great to just work with Christians?’ I don’t think so. I said, ‘I like being able to work out in the world. It really gives me a chance to demonstrate the love of Jesus with people.’
"Pastors believe they are called to be pastors. I think I was called into work and this construction company is my opportunity to glorify God in my work. We get to work with people who come from a lot of different stories and places and doing the work together is more important than making a huge amount money. We work with people’s desire to serve and help other people. We use the fact that we are together as the context of our service. We have the opportunity every day to work together and serve each other and make a difference in people’s lives."
