Byrne Construction, Bank of Texas, and D/FW Airport are the 2021 winners of Mayor Betsy Price’s Best Place for Working Parents Innovator awards.
Price announced the winners of the second-annual competition during her final State of the City speech Thursday. Byrne won for family-friendly events; Bank of Texas, policies; and D/FW, resources. The Best Place initiative awarded 166 companies with the Best Place for Working Parents designation for 2021, based on their responses to an online assessment that highlights “the top 10 family-friendly policies that benefit working parents and businesses’ bottom lines.” The awards committee chose the overall winners from those 166. Workplaces can take the assessment year-around, to gauge their family-friendliness.
“In a year like no other, businesses around the country need to look no further than Fort Worth for how to make a real difference for working parents and their profitability,” Price said in a statement. “Fort Worth employers continue to show that our city is not only open for business, but is also willing to support the kids and families that are tied to the success of our city.”
Byrne, Bank of Texas and D/FW “are proving that family-friendly is business-friendly,” Price said. “I applaud them in their efforts that continue to establish our city as a national leader in family-friendly business practices.”
Byrne employees and family members, in the Tarrant County Heart Walk
Byrne Construction
The awards committee lauded Byrne for the way it used events – before COVID-19 – to foster esprit de corps. The company, based in Fort Worth, has a morale, wellness, and recreation committee that puts on family events such as picnics, Halloween trunk or treat, and office barbecues.
“Our goal is to keep the family close,” the company, whose chairman, John Avila, is a retired U.S. National Guard brigadier general and likens the morale team to ones the military uses, said in its entry. “With having the children’s events, they get to know each other, play with each other, and develop relationships…The kids have a blast as well as the parents.”
In addition to the events, the awards committee lauded Byrne for supporting working parents during COVID by making its office available during the summer to accommodate their children who didn’t have the usual summer programming. The children played board games and video games, and watched movies.
Additionally, “the personal birthday cards, gift cards, Christmas acknowledgment of exceptional employees and the food sent to bereaved families/those with COVID and the tenured employees who have worked for decades at the company all speak to the incredible loyalty and retention that Byrne fosters through these family-friendly events,” the awards committee said.
CEO Matt Avila traces the 100-year-old Byrne’s contemporary culture to his father, John, who bought the company in 1995, leaving a major commercial contractor and bringing close colleagues and friends into what was then a fading brand. Today, Byrne, which has 105 employees, has built strong businesses in aviation, municipal, healthcare, historic restoration, education, and luxury residential.
“He’s a people person; relationships are important to him,” Avila said in an interview. “It was kind of like a startup. They took care of each other. Our culture derives from him and his genuine desire to take care of people and treat them like family.”
Byrne’s information technology director was a guest at the Avilas’ family ranch near Hamilton when his gall bladder “erupted,” Avila said. He was rushed to a hospital in Hamilton, then transferred to Fort Worth by ambulance. “We immediately intervened. There was no question. I had our HR director make sure that ambulance bill doesn’t come to them.”
Byrne employees and family members at trunk or treat
The company’s gifts to retiring employees “are very specific to the individuals and their interests and their hobbies.” And for one newlywed receptionist who was having a baby and moving into a new home, the company bought a washer and drier for the family.
“We know our employees really well,” Avila said. “We know spouses, we know children, we know grandchildren.”
After the pandemic shut gyms down, Byrne, recognizing “we have a bunch of people who work out,” built a gym inside the company’s warehouse, and put in a recumbent bicycle, treadmill, elliptical, weights, yoga mats, bands, and TVs. “They just use it all the time,” Avila said.
On construction sites, Byrne installed hand-washing stations, developed morning check-in routines with temperature and symptom checks, and set up shifts to reduce the numbers of employees on-site.
Avila’s first line of work before he came into the family construction business in 2005 was as a scientist. “I did genetic epidemiology research,” said Avila, who wrote the company’s COVID protocols. “Who would have known that 15 years later, some of that would come in handy?” He’s also a lawyer, which meant he could easily interpret orders. “I was uniquely positioned.”
Bank of Texas employees stuff and deliver "comfort dogs" to children at Cook Children's Medical Center
Bank of Texas
The initiative applauded Bank of Texas for its “array of family-friendly policies” offered to employees who have children. Those include two hours per month of paid tutoring for children, a $750 technology voucher for virtual school support, child care assistance for employees making under $70,000, and discounts to local attractions.
“One of the things we talk about quite a bit is we want team members to have a life outside of work,” Mark Nurdin, president and CEO of Bank of Texas’ Fort Worth region, said in an interview. “We want them to be able to achieve work-life harmony. We believe any employee who is able to achieve that work-life harmony is going to be a better team leader who is going to deliver a better experience to our customers.”
Bank of Texas employees, at a Trinity Habitat for Humanity build day
That’s important in the financial services business. “We recognize the business we’re in is a people business,” Nurdin said. “People do business with people, not with institutions.”
When COVID hit, Bank of Texas moved most of its employees to work by remote, something it had already set the company up for following recent major storms in its market areas. “We pivoted very quickly” following COVID, Nurdin said. Today, 70% of the bank’s 180 Tarrant County employees works remotely, up from virtually none before the pandemic started.
“We’ve been talking a remote work environment for the better part of my career, but we’ve never proven to ourselves that it can work,” Nurdin said. “We’ve now proven to ourselves it can work.”
Going forward, “I think we’re going to be able to provide our team members with some more flexible work arrangements, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
Some jobs can’t be performed by remote, but the bank has made adjustments. At its remittance offices in Grapevine, where employees process checks, the bank split teams into two and placed them in different areas, reducing COVID risk. And at its six consumer branches, the company initially closed its lobbies and opened only its drive-throughs. Today, “we have the lobbies open, but monitoring the number of people who are in the lobbies at one particular time.”
Bank of Texas employees, at the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo
The company, whose Fort Worth headquarters is in the 777 Main building downtown, has begun discussions about whether COVID changes the bank’s real estate needs. Nurdin said he expects the downtown headquarters footprint for one, will remain the same, but the bank take the opportunity to establish greater social distancing among employees.
The bank has established virtual social hours led by moderators “not to talk about business, but just to talk about life,” Nurdin said. “I think our teams are missing out on the camaraderie.”
One of the bank’s biggest challenges amid COVID has been developing relationships with new banking prospects, Nurdin said. “I still people like to get eyeball to eyeball with their advisers,” he said. “I think that’s the tradeoff in this whole work-from-home paradigm.”
D/FW Airport
The awards committee said it was “specifically impressed by the wide array of family-friendly resources” the airport offers to employees. Those include comprehensive benefits; LiveWell wellness program that encompasses sports leagues, fitness classes, and 18 wellness centers on the airport property; onsite health clinic; financial incentives for participation in health assessments, lifestyle challenges and other programs; weekly farmers’ market before COVID); and its ranking as one of the healthiest employers in North Texas.
The airport has built its employee culture in recent years around LiveWell, the name of the program and the big fitness center it operates for employees on the airport property. It includes health clinic; basketball and racquetball courts; fitness facility; crossfit training, boot camps, Zumba and yoga; jogging tracks; and indoor and outdoor tennis courts. Its basketball, volleyball, badminton, tennis and ping pong leagues – suspended since COVID – will return after the pandemic, Ollie Malone, the airport’s vice president of human resources, said in an interview.
D/FW happened into the LiveWell building several years ago, when the operator of the facility and adjoining Bear Creek golf course – both owned by the airport – decided to step away from management. “The person who was expressing interest in running the golf course was not interested” in the building that became LiveWell, Malone said. The airport board had long been interested in doing more with employee programs. “It was serendipity.”
The airport’s senior executives routinely participate in the sports leagues, Malone said. “Like all of us, they’re trying to manage their weight and live good, healthy lives. That’s pretty cool that employees can be in the same league as the CEO. It contributes to quality of life, it contributes to breaking down barriers.”
The airport has more than 2,000 employees. Its satellite fitness centers include a state-of-the-art one at the airport’s public safety center, available exclusively for the use of the 600 police, fire, and security employees. Others include workout centers in the administration building and parking operations.
The airport offers 12-week learning experiences at Bear Creek for employees who want to learn golf or improve their games. The airport teams up with the golf course operator on instruction and offers employees significant discounts on green fees. “A lot of people participate in the golf challenge,” Malone said.