A look at Telamon’s past, present and future as a family-run company

By Lauren Caggiano

Great companies aren’t often built overnight but entrepreneurs who have a certain stick-to-it-ness have been known to rise to greatness. Such is the case for Telamon, a multi-million dollar company in Indiana founded by Taiwanese immigrant Albert Chen in 1985.

The products have evolved over the years, but the company has always been dedicated to providing technology solutions. In 1985, its primary focus was providing turnkey telecommunication network solutions in the areas of field services, supply chain management, and rack integration. Since then, Telamon has expanded its footprint to serve 5 business units: telecom, industrial, business process, energy and medical. The company has been no stranger to recognition either, winning numerous Diverse Supplier of the Year and Quality Achievement awards from its Fortune 500 customers, including AT&T, Verizon, Cummins, and Nortel (Ciena).

But Telamon’s story starts long before the mid-1980s. Flashback to late 1968, which Chen moved to the United States to attend college at Portland State University. Upon finishing his master’s in mathematics, he had intended to pursue business school. But English wasn’t his forte, so he decided to table those plans.

“I thought I’d only study numbers and it would be easier” he said about his faculty for math.

Eventually his career path led him to an analyst job with GTE in Washington state. It was his job to help senior managers schedule airplane flights. He was promoted a few times and in 1979 he was offered a management position which presented an opportunity to move to the Midwest. He accepted and was responsible for managing 700 people who worked on the line.

1984 is the year his trajectory changed. That was when management asked him to reduce workforce—a call he didn’t feel comfortable making. Rather than make an “unfair decision,” as he called it, he decided to take a different path. He parted ways with the company, unsure of what the future held. As he admits, he was not “business savvy” at the time, but he was confident in his ability to find or create a job for himself. And he did just that. He founded Telamon in 1985 with his wife Margaret.

Since 1985, Telamon has grown into an $800 million business with 1,400 employees and 13 locations. They currently have locations in both China and Mexico and have plans to establish a location in eastern Europe. International business is now the norm—although it took some time to make that progression.

“It is very normal for us to do business internationally as long as we understand their lifestyle and values,” Chen said. “I’ve always had the philosophy of leveraging U.S. companies first and then expanding internationally.”

An international presence is a win, but Chen is not too proud to admit his own shortcomings. He said in the beginning he was naïve about the technical side of the business as well as operation issues, like cash management. As he puts it, it was a “learning process.”

That learning is part of growing a business, and Chen is quick to point out one particular strength: the company’s approach to the interpersonal aspect of business.

“Our tolerance level is much higher (than most companies),” he said. “It makes us easier to work with.”

Speaking of relationships, Chen said knowing what he knows now, he would not have comingled his business affairs with his wife, Margaret, for the sake of their children. Regardless, his children Stephanie Fuhrmann and Stan Chen have taken an active role in the company today, as COO and CEO, respectively.

Although executives, Chen said neither were handed anything on a silver platter. Both joined the company out of their “own desire” and had to build their credibility over the years. They had to work various entry level jobs “just like any other employee,” Chen noted.

The trajectory for both children was steady by design. Chen wanted to make sure the company was in good hands before his retirement as CEO, which was announced last fall. The conversation about transition was initiated about 10 years. In Stan’s words, “We’ve been working on this for quite some time.”

Such a high-stakes decision was not made on a whim. After consulting with external experts, it was determined Albert and Fuhrmann were ready for such leadership. Both have been in the executive positions since September 2015, following their father’s retirement.

So what lies ahead for Telamon? According to Fuhrmann, the company has a “pretty aggressive growth trajectory” and she plans to maintain that momentum with a strategic perspective. This approach calls for both drive and keen insight. An effective leader has the ability to “understand not just the business and the marketplace – but how they can fit into that puzzle, or how they grow that piece of pie,” she said.

There is also a need to constantly want to evolve and improve. To that end, Fuhrmann says they would like to “revitalize the energy of Telamon and bring in a more updated aesthetic.” That calls for a refresh of appearance and work style to better foster the team camaraderie and healthy competition between groups. Another goal is to make Telamon one of the Best Places to Work in Indiana and have it be synonymous with a great workplace in Indiana. From a financial perspective, she said they want to bring Telamon to the $1 billion mark in revenue.

In her words, “Status quo can only go so far. Constant evolution within the industry and marketplace and the right person to lead that strategy within the organization is necessary to lead a company to continued, successful growth.”

Relationship building is essential to that growth, as Fuhrmann suggests. “Understanding the customer and having the ability to build rapport with not only the team that supports you but also with the customer whom you service is also key,” she said.

Fuhrmann and her brother have a good working relationship, and said he’s confident in the direction the company is taking. Diversification of products is the name of the game. However, as Stan argues, there’s much more to the business than merely its product line.

The executive team has a 100-year timeline in mind when making decisions. Honoring the family business roots is also a value they hold closely when evaluating opportunities. “You see a desire to keep this going in perpetuity,” he said.

Some would consider this task a tall order and Stan is far from naïve about what it all entails. “The idea of being able to establish a multi-generational firm is a fascinating one, because it requires not only significant commercial and financial success, which are hard enough to come by, but then another layer of emotional and relational success – which are even harder to come by!” he said.

The future of the company hinges on the day-to-day decisions. Stan offers an analogy that has influenced his business philosophy: “This isn’t a 12-person basketball team where one or two people carry the team…this is a 1,500-person organization where no one person, even the CEO, carries the team,” he said. “And I’ve had the privilege of hearing that perspective from Albert my entire life, and it’s just kind of seeped into my brain and my philosophy.”

That mindset calls for an intentional approach. “How can we continue to be a support?,” he asks. And it’s no coincidence that Stan used that word. Telamon means “supporting pillar” in Greek.

Fuhrmann echoed Stan’s comments: “Our role as we see it is, is to understand how (Telamon) has morphed over time,” she said. “How can we mitigate and promote it in the industries we serve?”

That forward-looking approach also extends to the company’s philanthropic efforts. The Telamon Foundation places special emphasis on non-profit organizations that specialize in arts and education where its employee base is best served. The Foundation has a single funding round annually.

“The Telamon Foundation is happy to support these seven organizations whose programs align with the foundation’s pillars of arts and education,” said Fuhrmann, in a statement. “We are happy to provide support for programs that give youth the opportunity to experience the arts no matter their socio-economic condition while also promoting educational readiness.”

By Kelly Patrick Slone

Human resources. The very mention of this department could cause even the most confident employees to break a sweat. Am I in trouble? Is there an issue with our benefits? How much paperwork will I have to fill out this time?

In this issue’s cover story, three Indiana human resources professionals share their experiences from inside the HR ranks, directly addressing the stigma associated with their roles and all the ways in which their duties extend beyond the bad.

Readers will also find insight from other HR practitioners throughout this issue, as they address the new roles of technology in recruitment and interviewing, the keys to getting a resume through HR and into the hands of a hiring manager and, of course, the dirty side of HR, including how to cut ties when it’s time to terminate an employee. Employee engagement and family leave policy issues round out a suite of stories aimed at showing the many faces of HR.

By Kelly Patrick Slone

If you’ve been interviewed for a job, gotten paid for your work or attended a meeting about company health benefits, you’ve worked with someone performing human resources functions.

HR functions are associated with many different job titles — payroll manager, recruiting manager, employee relations director, compensation and benefits manager and training and development specialist, just to name a few — and HR tasks, like cutting paychecks, can fall under the umbrella of many departments, such as accounting or finance, that aren’t specifically dedicated to human resources work.

Since HR functions are wrapped up in so many parts of business, the HR market fluctuates with the economy. Keisha Underwood, vice president of membership with IndySHRM — the Indianapolis affiliate of the national Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) — said changes in a company’s bottom line are sometimes first reflected in HR.

“When company budgets start getting tight, HR is the area where you might cut back,” she said. “Instead of having two or three people doing HR tasks, you might ask one or two people to take on a bigger workload and cut down the headcount.”

Outsourcing HR functions is another way companies try to control costs.

“Sometimes you’ll see the expense of outsourcing is less than doing it in house,” Underwood said. “A lot of times you’ll see that with recruiting, like using a staffing agency. Another place you’ll maybe see outsourcing is in payroll or benefits administration. One area of HR that’s sticky is employee relations. That’s when there are performance issues or someone needs to be terminated. Those are often-times better handled in-house, just because of the understanding of the business and the dynamics of operations.”

While lean times could call for leaner HR departments, the same philosophy works in times of feast, not just times of famine. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for human resources managers and human resources specialists, “employment growth largely depends on the performance and growth of individual companies. As new companies form and organizations expand their operations, they will need more human resources managers to oversee and administer their programs.”

With the U.S. in the midst of an economic recovery, BLS says, employment of human resources managers is projected to grow 9 percent from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations, and employment of human resources specialists is projected to grow 5 percent from 2014 to 2024, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

MANY HATS

But professionals within HR say their roles aren’t quite so straightforward and often go much deeper.

For Steven Jones, a human resources VP with health care giant IU Health, HR entails looking at the big picture.

“HR in my mind is really about, what kind of legacy are you going to leave? How do you help prepare the next generation of workers to come into your organization?”

But at the same time, the vision for the future can’t overshadow what’s right in front of you, Jones says.

“Building relationships is critical to the success of any HR professional. If the only thing I know about a team member is what they do for eight to 12 hours a day (at work), I’ve missed out on an opportunity. If I can’t talk to them about their son who has an interest in going to Purdue, or their daughter who has an interest in becoming an opera singer, I missed it,” Jones said, recalling an adage he once heard from a colleague about the importance of relationship-building within HR. “He said, ‘People join an organization, but they leave a supervisor.’ That has resonated with me for years.”

Amanda Decker, HR business partner for the operations division of Roche Diagnostics, also emphasized the importance of relationship-building when describing her experiences in HR.

“You have to build relationships quickly with leaders and build that trust,” and that trust has to extend not just to company leaders, but also to employees, she said.

“We’re kind of like the mediator between employees and the company. We’re an employee advocate, but we also have to support the business and help our leaders guide and coach their employees,” she said. “We definitely play both parts.”

Decker said one way she’s heard HR professionals described is a mixture between an attorney and a psychologist. Underwood said, with a laugh, she’s even seen that description on T-shirts.

“I would totally agree with that characterization,” she said.

Jones said being an HR leader sometimes entails doing tasks that are nowhere near the job description, as extensive as that description may be.

“As HR leaders, we have to set the example,” Jones says. “If you’re in one of the (IU Health) facilities, it really is about picking up the piece of paper that’s on the floor. It’s about redirecting the patient who is looking for radiology and, in many cases, because this is such a large place, you may need to walk them to radiology and really set the example of what good team members do.”

A TYPICAL DAY

The only thing typical about a day in HR is that no two days are the same, but while some people might find that tiring or frustrating, Underwood says that’s one benefit of the field.

“I love that it’s different. I feel like I’m an organized person, but I get very little organization out of my job. That can be stressful, but I like it,” she said. “You learn something every day. You have these laws in place, but they can sometimes be applied differently, depending on how things are interpreted. Learning through experience is something I enjoy.”

Even for Jones, with his roughly three decades of HR experience, curveballs come daily.

“You begin to hope you’ve seen a bit of everything and there’s nothing new coming, but each day seems to offer a new challenge, because there’s a different twist,” Jones said. “Even though you might quickly try to draw the conclusion that this is the same scenario you dealt with a couple weeks ago, you typically find a little twist in there that makes it different. So you have to fully process the situation and be thoughtful about how you respond.”

Decker said for anyone considering a career in HR, it’s imperative to be able to go with the flow.

“You definitely have to be adaptable. Every day in HR is a different day,” Decker said. “I can come into work and have my day planned out, meetings planned, and then there’s an employee relation issue that I have to investigate. And it really means dropping everything that I have for that day and focusing my attention on the investigation.”

Especially working in the hospital setting, Jones says, you’ve got to prepare daily for a possible rollercoaster.

“You know there are going to be days you hear the bells chime — which means a baby was born — but you’re also going to hear the code blue,” he said. “So mentally, you have to prepare yourself from the standpoint of, if I’m working in a hospital setting, I’ve got to balance both of those situations and hope that as a health care professional, individuals who are called in on a code blue are learning something that allows them to better serve the next patient that presents with the same symptoms.”

Underwood explained those kinds of day-to-day fluctuations also happen on a much larger scale with HR as a whole. Changes in legislation, like the Affordable Care Act, for example, can significantly alter certain HR functions.

Underwood said federal legislation currently on the table could reclassify salaried employees making $51,000 or less as hourly employees, throwing overtime into an equation where it was previously not a factor.

“It doesn’t affect (HR) directly, because we’re basically the messengers to the company and to managers for their budget, but things like that definitely put a strain on operations, because employers do look to HR to be the subject-matter expert on things like that,” she said.

Policy changes can also come from within the HR profession itself, such as a recent shift in how HR practitioners handle certifications. Underwood said along with SHRM, the Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI) is another well-known HR association. The two organizations used to collaborate, but that’s no longer the case.

“There are two HRCI certifications: a PHR, which is a professional in human resources, and SPHR, which is senior professional in human resources,” Underwood explained. “SHRM developed what they call the SHRM Learning System to prepare for the HR certification, and it was provided to HRCI. About two years ago, SHRM pulled the plug.”

Underwood said SHRM has since created its own certifications — the SHRM CP, which is certified professional, and the SHRM SCP, which is senior certified professional — and has switched from a collaborator to a competitor of HRCI.

“This has been a huge deal for the HR community, because the PHR and the SPHR were the only certifications that existed on a general level. There was a reputation behind those certifications, SHRM was behind it, HRCI is a reputable institution,” Underwood explained. “One of the big topics right now in the world of HR is, if you want to become HR certified, which one do you sit for?”

Even everyday things most people would take for granted, like the surge in smartphone ownership, can pose unique challenges to HR.

“I joke with some professionals in HR about, what did we do before pagers and iPhones? Now, the expectation is that you’ll be available,” Jones said. “Organizations need to create that right level of personal and professional balance. Burnout is easy to achieve, so we need to set some realistic expectations about response time.”

Underwood shared similar insight about smartphones.

“If you’re an hourly employee, by law your employer has to pay you for any time that you work. Most people can get online and get their work email on their phone,” she said. “If I get an email for an hourly employee and I see they were checking email at 3 a.m. … you’re not supposed to be working, because it’s not preapproved, and I have to pay you for that.”

A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

On top of everything else, HR professionals often find themselves in a precarious position, balancing between the needs and wants of the company and the employees. Because of that, human resources as a whole tends to have a less-than-stellar reputation.

“A lot of times, HR is at the bottom of the list of departments people want to call, right there with IT,” Jones says. “I think they look at us as the great barrier builder, always finding some way to say no.”

Underwood said HR workers are often seen as the bearers of bad news.

“We just fire people, that’s what everybody thinks,” Underwood said. “I think HR has come a long way as far as our reputation. I think managers and companies are understanding better the role that HR plays. We are definitely advocates for the employee, but clearly we’re advocates for the company as well. It can be a tightrope to walk sometimes.”

Underwood said fighting the stigma and getting across to employees that HR is there to help takes deliberate effort.

“I do think we have a role as HR professionals to set that tone and let people understand that we’re here good, bad, indifferent. A lot of times that means inserting yourself, being visible and not just coming around when something is wrong,” she said.

Decker said HR is in the midst of a transition, which will hopefully help with the gloomy opinion many people have about the profession.

“In some cases in the past, HR maybe has been seen as the police officers or the people ensuring compliance, and the paper pushers. But really HR is transforming to having more involvement with the business, having more of a seat at the table to help advise and coach leaders, to be more thoughtful of employees, of engagement of those employees,” she said.

Jones said dealing with the negative perceptions associated with HR comes down to having a clear conscience and treating people fairly.

“For those of us who have a conscience, you don’t get too bothered by it, because you know within your spirit that you’ve done the right thing,” he said. “In my years in HR, the one thing I’ve always attempted to do is make sure I can go home and sleep at night, not feeling like I took advantage of or did not give a person a fair shake. When you do what’s best for employees and for the organization at large, that’s what it’s all about.”

WHY HR?

Despite the bad rap and the many demands, Jones and Decker both say they find satisfaction in their careers.

“I get the most joy out of seeing employees and leaders grow and for that leader to take my advice, take what coaching I’ve given to them and actually implement it,” Decker said. “It makes me feel like I did my job, like I am changing the lives of our leaders and employees and helping them get from good to great.”

Jones enjoys finding special ways to let employees know they’re valued, even if that method is way out of the realm of a typical HR duty.

“I can still remember this as if it was yesterday. My HR associate and I would get our coats on early and go outside to clean off the cars of the team members, so that would be one less thing they’d have to worry about,” he said.

Even something as seemingly small as writing a thank you note can speak volumes, Jones said.

“One of the things we utilize here at IU Health are thank you notes that are sent to the homes of team members who have gone above and beyond on a particular project or in a particular situation. It really does set the tone for who we are as an organization,” he said. “And for that thank you note to be received at the home, and the child or spouse has the opportunity to see that team member read the note, I think it helps to solidify the relationship, and it helps the child and spouse to understand that’s why mommy or that’s why daddy was a little late getting home the other night.”

Above all else, Jones said, HR is about reaching back and pulling other along with you.

“When you think about the impact that you can have on an individual in preparing them, coaching them, helping them to develop and become the very best person they can become, the very best team member, the very best associate, where they then have the opportunity to provide not only for themselves but also for their family, that is the most rewarding thing I think anybody can do from an HR perspective.

“The more you can reach back and help pull somebody along, the more our society will become a better place.”