The Miracle Workers of KA: A look at Kraus-Anderson’s Administrative department
by Brenden Nickels, Senior Office Assistant
At Kraus-Anderson, we have many employees with many different roles. Usually, the Project Managers and Project Coordinators are the representatives of the company, other employees do a lot of work behind the scenes. This would be the Administrative department.
Keeping our offices up and running during the pandemic
During the height of the pandemic when the majority of our team members were working from home, KA’s Administrative department found ways to keep the workflow moving efficiently when keeping the office safe for everyone that comes into the building. The workrooms were kept full of necessary supplies, surfaces were kept wiped down and masks became a very important part of our work tools. PM and PC teams working from home could rely on the essential employees back at the office to scan or run plans and spec books, prep and ship them out to our architect partners, subcontractors and owners, and send them to employees’ homes if necessary, thus keeping costs down from having to send these documents to a third-party print service. Also, the office team would routinely retrieve items from a teammate’s desk and run it out to the curb for pickup or sent to the employee’s home via courier. We also had instances when the employees working from home could not open or print documents. The solution for that was to e-mail the documents to the office for assistance in opening and printing documents, scanning, and then returning the documents back to home offices via email.
“Anytime there were any plan changes for my projects I would send the plan to (Senior Office Assistant, and the author of this article) Brenden (Nickels) to print and send out to my superintendent on site. He also printed spec books, plan sets, meeting minutes and anything else I sent him with no question and done immediately.” said Project Coordinator Nancy Miller. “If I needed something delivered to someone in the office, he would take care of it right away, something sent by UPS he would let (Receptionist) Kathy (James) know to send and Kathy would email me that it was taken care of. They were great communicators and willing to help with anything needed! Very much appreciated!”
Project Coordinator Brendan Ward agreed. He said, “I’ve be so thankful for the front desk staff. They would receive samples and communicate to our project teams when they come to the office. It’s a vital part of our project to get samples approved and without them being there during the pandemic it would have been incredibly challenging.”
Reimagining Office Traditions
Our usual office traditions, of course, needed to be adapted for the pandemic as well. We were able to make our annual office seminar available via WebEx and spread out over a couple of days. When the holidays came around, a few essential employees went ahead and made gift baskets for everyone back at home. In honor of National Employee Appreciation Day, we sent out cards for a bingo game where you could win a $100 voucher to our Employee Recognition Store. And, when employees returned to the office, we welcomed them back with a gift bag, and again, essential employees joined together to help assemble these gift bags and drop them off at everyone’s desks. KA Executive Assistant Tonya Kostick was the one that was responsible for leading this team, and she said, “Throughout this COVID pandemic, I always could count on (Office Manager) Lori Charlesworth, her team, and many others throughout KA whenever I had an engagement product to put together!!”
Meanwhile, KA’s Benefits and Wellness Specialist, Bre Ostrom, came up with an innovative way for KA’ers to team up while working at home, a special tournament known as the “Q-Cup”. Employees were randomly assigned to teams, and each team had to think up a name and decide who will be the captain. From January to May, employees could participate in virtual events that would earn points for their team. These included reenacting certain scenes from movies or television or taking pictures of snowmen that the employees’ families may have built or going on a walk on National Walking Day. The team with the most points won the Q-Cup trophy. “The Q-Cup was a fun way to get KAers engaged with each other at a time when we couldn’t be physically together.” Ostrom said. “It was so fun watching everyone work together to come up with creative ideas, earn points and get to know each other.”
KA Realty Covid Task Force
Meanwhile, the Realty department created a COVID-19 task force, which helped out their tenants with financial assistance. To do so, they had to restructure their tenants’ leases in a few different ways. One way to abate a tenant’s rent, which means that the tenant didn’t have to pay them for a certain amount of time. Normally, when this was the case, they just added the term on the back end. Another way was to defer a tenant’s rent. This means that the due date for the tenant to pay their rent was moved to a later date. Most of the deferred rent was pushed back to 2021, and 98% of that rent was collected then. Two important workers in that KA department included Realty Administrative Assistant Jen Spanton, who handled all of the legal documents, more specifically, obtaining original and digital signatures, making sure that these documents could be easily be stored and that the record keeping was accurate, and Treasury Management Specialist Jody Foster, who routed, copied, scanned, and notarized these legal documents.
Maintaining culture at KA Insurance
At the Insurance office in Burnsville, the agency leadership tried to make the employees that were working at home during the pandemic feel like they were still at the office in a few different ways, so they looked to their Administrative team to assist them in creating and holding some fun events. On Mondays and Friday they would set up Coffee Chats over Microsoft Teams, a virtual meeting app like Zoom, which were based on certain topics that you could choose to attend. In addition, there were also virtual happy hours taking place near the end of the workday (also over Microsoft Teams), where employees could connect, plus there were some fun special guests and activities as well. In addition, in lieu of a celebratory lunch, Dennis and Jon Diessner sent out treat bags to each employee’s home, and when it was their anniversary, sent them cakes from SendaCake, a company which specializes in sending out boxes of cakes for special occasions, like birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries, as well a few surprises, too.
“The Leadership team made us feel connected throughout the pandemic and as we navigate the new hybrid workplace by putting together virtual events such as check-in team calls, games, coffee chats, and happy hours.” said Insurance Executive Administrative Assistant Ashley Miller. “We are always connecting with one another, and Dennis and Jon made it clear that the strength of our culture would endure whether we are in the office or not.”
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