Companies boost morale post-Katrina - New Orleans City Business

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7By Tommy Santora, Associate Editor Albert-Garaudy and Associates 22 2005 Best Places to Work Glenn Garaudy made the task of relocating 100 Metairie employees to Houston during Hurricane Katrina sound simple. Albert-Garaudy and Associates, a multi-disciplined consulting engineering company serving the petroleum, chemical and refining industries, has offices in Metairie and Houston. So when Katrina struck, Garaudy and his partner, Garth Albert, contacted their Metairie employees and asked them to reconvene in Houston, where the company already had a working branch office. “Once we got to Houston, we looked at each individual case to see what we could do for our employees,” Garaudy said. Garaudy said the company immediately rented a block of apartments for its staff, for about $300,000 and set up a new floor of office space in the Houston building to accommodate From left: David Garaudy, electrical and instrumentation specialist, consults with Bradley Bruff, mechanical engineering manager and Jim Myers, project manager.
From left: Walter Stenhouse and Joseph Klimas, mechanical engineers, look over plans with Neal Christoph, project manager, and AGA client Wayne Lolan, engineering manager for Louisiana Offshore Oil Port. ALBERT-GARAUDY AND ASSOCIATES KATRINA HIGHLIGHTS • Continued payroll • Relocation of 100 Metairie employees to its Houston office; rented a block of apartments in Houston at an approximate cost of $300,000 • Houston employees collected pots, pans, clothing and other housing supplies to donate to Metairie staff Source: CityBusiness staff research the Metairie staff. Houston employees collected clothes, pots, pans and other housing supplies to donate to incoming Metairie employees. Garaudy and Albert returned with their Houston IT staff to Metairie, escorted by Causeway Police, to retrieve company servers. They brought the servers to Houston, reinstalled the company data and got everything back up and running in a week’s time. Garaudy said employee payroll continued uninterrupted. Some employees were given raises to equate to what employees in Houston regularly received. “We had some emotional ups and downs but people were just thrilled they had a job to fall back on,” he said. “They were safe and they were healthy.Management always associates its own personal lives with our employees. We say, ‘What would I want done to us? How would we want a business to react to us?’” Through the relocation process, AGA lost one Metairie employee from the original staff. AGA reopened its Metairie office in October. Garaudy estimates about 50 employees have moved back. Plans are in place to move the other 50 back as projects dictate. Apartments in Houston still are on monthly leases, and Garaudy estimates by the time all Metairie employees return, expenses for AGA will come close to $500,000. “It’s worth it to take care of our employees,” Garaudy said. The option of keeping AGA in Houston was never entertained, said Garaudy. “It’s an emotional thing. My partner and I were both born and raised here and have deep roots here,” he said. “And more importantly, clients in Houston and even in New Orleans are always complimentary of the quality of work that comes out of this Metairie office. It was important to us to keep this office and the employees here.” Garaudy said AGA performs routine employee surveys to gauge what’s important to the staff. Their No. 1 response was personal relationships with management, followed by qualifications of staff and experience and qualifications of management staff. “They value that we’re always communicating with them and we have management who they can learn from and keep them challenged in their work,” he said. Garaudy said AGA offers continued training for employees, 3-D design technology programs and memberships in professional trade organizations to keep employees afloat on the latest industry trends and developments. AGA was listed in the Top 10 of the ZweigWhite Hot Firm list and among the top 100 engineering firms in the nation by Consulting-Specifying Engineer, an industry journal.• The Albert-Garaudy and Associates Structural Engineering Department has returned to the Metairie office on Causeway Boulevard. December 19, 2005 23
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Companies boost morale post-Katrina - New Orleans City Business

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