A Celebration of Barbara's Work

by Jesse Freese

 

You might find it strange to think you can celebrate work. But for Barbara, work was strongly connected to her love, her family and many of her best friends. She also delighted in her work, at least most of the time. For Barbara it wasn't so important what she did, but who she worked with and the relationships she built at work.

 

I knew Barbara as a friend and colleague for over 30 years. We met at work and worked closely together for the last 18 years at Fissure. I want to share with you a few stories about Barbara in this celebration of her work.

 

I was hired right out of college to work for Sperry Univac in Atlantic City, NJ. Ed Tilford was my first supervisor and he also worked closely with Brian Toren in managing all of us working at the site. Brian and Ed were looking for a new secretary and they had narrowed their selection down to two potential candidates. Barbara was one of them. Ed wanted to hire the other candidate and Brian wanted to hire Barbara. It is a good thing for Ed, that Brian had the final say in that decision. It wasn't too long before they fell in love.

 

Barbara worked there for Ed until she and Ed moved to Minnesota a few years later. She went back to school and completed her B.A. degree in Business Administration Management from the College of St. Catherine. After graduation she began her career in Human Resources with her position at a new plant that was built. She was responsible for helping to hire the necessary people and then to work with them as a manager of human resources. That plant and Barbara's role would soon become one of her crowning work related achievements, and not surprising it had everything to do with people and relationships.

 

When her company and another (with their own plant) merged to become a new company, management decided that in the long run they didn't need two identical plants. They decided to close Barbara's plant over the next two years and Barbara was asked to put together and execute the plan. This would include laying off the right people in the right amounts over the time period while meeting declining orders and eventually losing her own job. She really cared about the people she had hired in the previous five years and was devastated and thinking it would be impossible for her to perform this task. She went home and told her husband, Ed the sad news. Ed's response was typical Ed, "Barbara, you need to look at this from a positive perspective". Of course she slapped him across the face (kidding). But Barbara knew she needed to find the ideal way to close the plant and perform work that was positive and energy building. She accomplished both of these by changing her assignment from laying off everyone to finding jobs for everyone (who still wanted one). Looking at the closing from this positive perspective allowed her to put together an extraordinary plan to help everyone who wanted a job to find a new job and to keep the right people working in the right amounts as the plant met all their declining orders for the next two years.

 

Barbara's plan was approved and she did everything to help anyone who wanted a job, to find one. She turned her network for finding employees into a network for finding jobs for the employees. She provided training, retention bonuses, helped with resumes and preparations for interviews. She convinced management to be very open about what was going on and in doing all of this earned the trust and respect of everyone in the plant. Every Friday she organized a celebration for everyone who found a job that week. Her energy was high and the energy and morale in the plant was high to the end. In fact, the productivity of the plant rose throughout the two year period, which would not have been possible without Barbara's positive approach to the closing. I joke about it, but feel part of that productivity was the employees of the plant sending one last message back to management - "We may have lost our jobs, but you idiots closed the wrong plant." The increase in productivity would not have occurred had the plant closing been done in the typical fashion.

 

Once the plant closed, Barbara went on to manage the Human Resource function for several business areas within Ecolab. She developed an excellent reputation within Ecolab and again built many close relationships with people at all levels of the corporation. She further developed her human resources skills and knowledge, all of which was to become valuable in the next phase of her work life.

 

Working with Ed and Ed Jr., Barbara used all of her human resources skills and knowledge to help start Fissure. She filed all the paper work and worked with the attorney to create Fissure. She taught herself how to be a bookkeeper and learned about corporate taxes so we could all stay out of jail as we built the company. Fissure would not have been successful without the special guidance that Barbara brought to the team. Barbara's official title may have been Chief Financial Officer but her real job was taking care of Fissure and its people.

 

When Barbara retired from Fissure it was to spend her remaining years focusing on her love, her family and her friends. She left the company in perfect shape. We were completely debt free and had our best year ever. Everything was in place for us to continue our success - all because Barbara cared and made sure the transition went smoothly. But even in "retirement" she did not let go of the human resource responsibilities. She continued to care for the Fissure people and make sure we were insured and building adequate retirement funds for the future.

 

Thank you Barbara.

 

 

by Jesse Freese