Lucky leaders get to have conversations about how great their team is—lucky leaders, that is, of thriving organizations who work exceptionally hard and succeed in building a culture of excellence.
Axiom Material Handling Solutions is one such company. Axiom brings all major trades together, including fabrication, millwrighting, piping, material handling, and project management. Renowned for having much of its team crisscross Canada, the United States, and Mexico to provide exceptional mechanical installations for large material-handling projects in e-fulfillment and distribution, this market leader knows better than most that fostering a happy team leads to inevitable growth.
As a specialist in mechanics, Axiom is also known for supporting its customers, such as municipalities, with engineering, permitting, fabrication, and other services that help these organizations operate optimally. Despite COVID-19 having thankfully been consigned to the past, the company notes that manufacturing delays still occur due to ongoing pandemic-related backlogs, and this is where Axiom’s creativity and strong problem-solving skills shine.
In search of the best
Axiom’s approach of developing staff and promoting from within remains fruitful, with many of its best people choosing to stay and grow with the company for the long term. In fact, one of the company’s secrets to successful team management came from one of its homegrown managers; by turning conflict into an opportunity to find where systems can be improved, situations are transformed into positive outcomes, proving that healthy management is worth the patience and investment.
The company’s balance between fostering robust growth and nurturing a satisfying work environment has made it into an increasingly popular employer. And, as more and more young people realize what a good living millwrighting, a licensed red seal trade, offers in Canada, more are looking to enter the industry, boding well for the company’s long-term workforce needs.
Rolling out in North America
At home in Cambridge, Ontario, Axiom has been expanding its presence in Quebec and British Columbia as of late. “We’re trying to double down on our growth in Quebec because we’re seeing that the growth there is pretty phenomenal. We want to get a bigger slice of the pie,” shares Mark McGuire, Program Manager of the company’s new staff rollout.
By employing Québécois, the team hopes to forge a closer bond with its clientele, building on its legacy as a company. Axiom is also developing a reputation as a tenacious company that provides spectacular support to its customers, wherever they are in North America. “We’ve hired team members in BC, as well as getting more licensing in the Vancouver metropolitan area,” McGuire adds.
The company’s popularity is also growing in Calgary, Alberta, where its material handling services are favoured by big names like FedEx, Amazon, and the region’s vertical farming outfits. In fact, the Alberta region is currently one of Axiom’s strongest, with strong new growth also evident in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Business is so good there that the company has decided to set up a service to its customers in the Halifax area from dedicated floorspace within a sister company facility.
Axiom’s presence in the United States has also been expanding for the past two years. At present, the company’s strategy involves identifying which states are its most potentially lucrative locations and where the company should focus on obtaining full licensing to expand its offering. By making existing staff members guarantors on its behalf, the company is also providing people with a sense of belonging, which, in turn, improves tenure.
McGuire is positive about how Axiom’s North American expansion strategies can improve the company’s status as a high-value employer and service provider. “It’s an opportunity as well to refocus our skills, meet people in the industry, and to see the growth that’s actually happening and shaping North America,” he says.
Prioritizing people
A key element of Axiom’s healthy company culture is its commitment to providing staff with robust health and safety standards. One of these Canadian initiatives, the Certificate of Recognition (COR), commonly known as the Partners Program, recognizes companies that go above and beyond what is legally required in providing workers with a safe and healthy work environment.
Moreover, COR certification helps the company attain and maintain its safety standards, keeping it on track and ensuring no effort is spared in its mission to protect customers and keep its staff safe. “COR isn’t automatically going to make our team safer, but it is going to give us a framework to measure ourselves by,” McGuire says of the practical, measurable outcomes the program provides.
By maintaining annual internal and external audits, the COR program helps the company meet its standards in a realistic and achievable manner. “The certificate of recognition helps to keep everybody accountable and honest,” McGuire says. With the entire team buying into the program, keeping PPE in proper use and up to standards while keeping its facilities safe has become the new norm and a full team effort at Axiom.
The initiative has also helped Axiom improve the quality of its regular communication. With regular discussions on course requirements, the quality of PPE, mentorship, and more, the company supports an ideal environment for personal as well as professional growth. It also invites its leaders to reflect on the efficacy of their approaches and methodologies. At the same time, this process allows for continuous assessment of staff members in their roles, allowing the company to help its people flourish by ensuring each person’s role is right for them—and adapting or changing it when it is not.
“The team is incredibly communicative. I think part of that comes down to the autonomy within the environment established by our CEO, Joe Sferrazza,” McGuire tells us. Managers are given the space they need to establish routines and traditions that work for their team, he says. From weekly project meetings and biweekly sales gatherings to monthly safety meetings with supervisors, Axiom’s leaders believe in creating optimal ecospheres of connection where efficiency and communication drive the company’s future.
A competitive market
With Southern Ontario becoming a competitive labour and millwrighting market, Axiom’s team is spoiled for choice. “People are starting to see that there’s relevant pay and compensation that’s coming from working in millwrighting, which is fantastic,” says McGuire.
A competitive market naturally means high standards, and so Axiom enjoys collaborating with competitors from time to time. It also means that millwrights are free to move where they can find the best opportunities, improving the market even further. As the company works across Canada and beyond, staff who prefer travelling and those who prefer staying in one place are happily accommodated accordingly.
“The goal is to double down on these investments and create opportunities for team members so that we have the kind of reach where we can support customers on all types of projects,” McGuire adds.
Best of the best
With an entire team of tremendously hardworking, passionate people to take the company forward, a few stand out at Axiom. By leveraging the opportunities available to them, these notable team members have transformed themselves and the company through their commitment.
They include Val Rose, for her incredible talent for systems; Jeremy Baron, for the indelible legacy he left in the company’s culture; and Sahil, Rohit, Sergio, Austin, and Christian, amongst others, for the rave reviews they have received from clients in recent months. Not to be missed, says McGuire, are Gurmeet Singh and Mark Fulcher for their outstanding contributions to the strength of the team.
By maintaining a wholesome work environment and a culture of excellence and inclusion, Axiom knows that continued, responsible growth is absolutely within reach. “We won’t grow responsibly as a company if we simply chase volume. We have to balance quality, safety, and trust within that,” McGuire says.
“Holistically, the more trust that we earn from our clients—one project, one partnership, one leader at a time—the bigger the opportunity to grow the company over the next two years.”
