Career Development at Marco – How It Works [Part 1 of 3]

Here at Marco, we’re pretty big on career development. In fact, we’ve even developed a bit of a catchphrase about the topic: A good place to work and a great place to build a career. I like the way that phrase sounds, and I like what it stands for. Even more than that, I know it to be true. In previous posts, I’ve covered quite a bit about the first part, Marco as a good place to work, but I haven’t focused as much on the second part, Marco as a great place to build a career.

Building a Career at Marco

Perhaps the best place to start is talking about intention. We are intentional about many of the things that make Marco a good place to work, and we are intentional about Marco being a great place to build a career. I believe it’s important to view those as separate things. Sure, they have some degree of overlap, but they can be separate too.

Building a career is a long-term effort made up of the actions and decisions you make on a daily basis. When you’re showing up to work, you might be looking at things on a monthly or quarterly basis, but when you’re showing up to your career, you’re more likely to be looking at things on a yearly and multi-year basis. And that shift in perspective can make all the difference.

Opportunities for Involvement

Here at Marco, we encourage our employees to be involved. Involved in the company, involved in their personal development, involved in their communities and involved in areas that spark their passion. And beyond encouraging, we also provide opportunities and resources for involvement.

Building Culture

Over the course of each year, Marco employees have opportunities for involvement that go beyond their respective roles. We provide budgets for all locations, departments and individual employees to participate in culture-building activities that help strengthen workplace relationships.

Participating in Community

We also encourage employee involvement in numerous community events throughout the many areas we serve. From United Way campaigns and CentraCare Health’s annual Earth Day Run to Polar Plunge participation, we want our employees to have many opportunities to participate in the community for causes they care about.

Plus, Marco employees are encouraged to build professional ties throughout their communities. This can mean joining the local chamber of commerce or becoming a member of an organization’s board of directors. It can also include attending industry events to learn what’s going on in a certain area. All of these efforts are highly encouraged at Marco.

Getting Noticed

Hard work gets noticed at Marco, and it definitely pays off. When people go above and beyond in their job and are unafraid to dig into their work, people take notice. In a growing company, any current role can change, grow or expand at any time. For some people, this looks like finding out what’s going on in different departments and seeing how it might apply to their own work. For others, it might mean volunteering for tasks, campaigns or committees. When you put yourself out there, you get noticed.

Some people might think getting noticed in a company with over 1,200 employees is hard, but the reality is that the employees who work hard and go beyond what’s expected of them become more visible. Leadership starts to remember those new faces as people who are open to change and willing to put themselves out there. In a growing, performance-driven company, those are great qualities to get you noticed.

Growing Leaders

As I mentioned before, Marco is a growing company. We are focused on growing organically and through acquisitions. In the last few years, we have acquired numerous businesses. This has enabled us to grow our geographic footprint and serve more customers in more communities. It has also allowed us to welcome many more team members to Marco.

It would be impossible for us to sustain this level of growth if we didn’t have the people and the processes in place to support it. A large part of sustaining growth is ensuring we have enough leaders throughout the company, and we're committed to growing leaders from within.

As our employees are participating in the community and strengthening Marco’s culture, they do get noticed. A lot of the time, getting noticed leads to getting mentored, which leads to becoming a leader.

When it comes to building a career at Marco, I didn’t have to look very hard to find individuals who had followed their path from new hire to manager or director. Stay tuned for my next two blogs on career development where I’ll be sharing a few of those stories with you.