Peering around the curtains, I began scanning the auditorium. It was quickly filling with around 800-900 Lifetime employees (judging by the seat capacity of 1000). Just a few more minutes until starting time... I told myself. Before I knew it, I felt the stage crew manager tapping my shoulder. “Time to start” he said. I looked at my laptop and queued up our opening video... here we go…
Welcome backstage to a behind the scenes look at Lifetime’s Profit Sharing meeting 2011. If you read this blog 6 months ago, you know that our Profit Sharing meeting is a semi-annual tradition at Lifetime. This January marks the 44th time we’ve gotten together to share company updates, new products, and more often than not, a lovely bonus check for every employee in proportion to our profitability over the past 6 months! Pretty sweet employee perk, if I say so myself...
This year’s Profit Sharing contained a good dose of healthy stress as we all worked to make it perfect. The R&D team assembled backstage to showcase new products, and had rehearsed the night before. President Richard Hendrickson presented some great company updates, and our founder displayed new products—one of our favorite traditions. This year the pressure was on... we are celebrating our 25th anniversary, and excitement was in the air. We used lots of fun old photos-- a glimpse back in time to Lifetime’s early years as a company. Even after limiting the photos to include current employees, we still had more than we could show!
Good news is, we didn’t have to sweat much backstage. Profit Sharing went off without a hitch! The presentations were perfect, and the videos ran flawlessly... somehow we even incorporated a 6’ Chicken… I’ll let you use your imagination on that.
Some highlights:
1- Cool New Products!- We unveiled some sweet new products that you can expect to hear more about very soon, including a paddle board and new 60" Mammoth by Lifetime basketball system, soon to be sold at The Sports Authority, a new 80-Gallon Storage Box soon to be sold at Lowe's, and a new 5-Foot Fold-in-Half Folding Table also coming to Lowe's soon.
2- Safety and Employee Tenure- Our co-workers are Lifetime’s most valuable asset, so we strive to put Safety first and continually give people opportunities. Our Safety Team introduced an impressive goal for 2011, ZERO out-of-house accidents. We presented recent numbers that show that 60% of employees at Lifetime have been with the company for more than 10 years… whoa! No wonder we found so many great old photos…
3- Mission, Vision, Values, and Service- Our President emphasized that our Mission, Vision, and Values statements are what has made us the company we are today—a company that is all about living up to our reputation—both our durability and integrity. The thing that holds our brand and company together, is trust. We also recapped our service project in October, and the company awarded a member of our own communications team, and a blogger on this site, with Lifetime’s Humanitarian of the Year Award. Congratulations, Tonnie!!
I couldn’t think of a better way for Lifetime to enter the new year! Look here for more updates on some of the great new products we are rolling out for the upcoming spring season.
(Click the image below to watch our opening video, and see how Lifetime Products makes it's products at our headquarters in Utah, USA.)
