Doing the ‘Right Thing’ for the Community
Company Culture Stokes Return on Investment for All
By Jay Gonzales
Nicole Garcia didn’t have to wait long to find out just how HSL Properties builds a culture in which team members are eager to contribute to the company and the community.
Garcia joined HSL as VP of human resources four years ago. Like all HSL team members, she had to go through an orientation process on her first day on the job.
“When I stepped into my first day at HSL, it was in orientation, even as a vice president coming in, I was sitting next to a maintenance technician. We were getting the same information,” Garcia said. “From a human resources standpoint, I loved that everyone was being treated equal. That really stuck out.”
As someone who has worked in other human resources positions, Garcia recognized that she was stepping into an organization that, for 50 years, has had a massive impact on Tucson from a business and community standpoint.
The culture of commitment and accountability is as much a component of the business as the expertise behind building apartment communities and operating hotels over 50 years, Garcia and other team members say. It’s not an accident that HSL continues to succeed.
“Everybody has their titles. Everybody has their entities. But at the end of the day, when a problem needs to be solved, or when somebody needs help, everybody’s door is open,” said Maclyn Wilcox, HSL Properties’ office manager for the last 15 years. “You can reach out to just about anybody to get an answer. At the end of the day, everybody’s educated and trying to solve that problem.”
It’s actually a premise that sounds simple, but maybe isn’t, said Chris Evans, president of HSL Asset Management, the business entity that operates the company’s portfolio of rental properties.
“If there’s one message that kind of streams from Omar, it’s a simple message, but in practice, it’s not always easy,” Evans said, referring to HSL President Omar Mireles. “As a team, as an employer, as an individual, we always do the right thing, which sounds simple, but when you start putting it in practice, sometimes that’s very hard to do.
“Sometimes that’s admitting your failures. Sometimes that’s doing some of the hardest things in your life. But it doesn’t matter how hard or easy it is, at the end of the day, we have to look at each other and always know that we have to do the right thing.”
With so much at stake, hundreds of millions of dollars in properties, over 1,000 team members, countless investors in the various assets HSL holds, and millions of dollars going into the community, maintaining a culture everyone believes in helps foster the return on investment everyone expects, said Jerry Fischer, president of HSL’s hospitality arm, Desert Hospitality Management. The business entity operates all of HSL’s hotel properties.
“One of our responsibilities is to have a return on investment for investors, make sure our associates are happy, etc.,” Fischer said. “But I think of all the important legs of the stool, one of the most important that we always concentrate on, is that we don’t lose sight of the culture. Because if we lose sight of the culture and not build it and not live it every single day, we lose our investors, we lose our guests, we lose our residents. The culture is the foundation for us, and we live it every day.”
While defining a company’s culture can be difficult, or at least inexact, HSL asks new team members what they think it might be. It lends itself to helping team members understand what they are stepping into aside from the specific work requirements.
It’s a conversation that can be “scary” on any team member’s first day, Garcia said. But it’s something the organization sees as important to their success and their acceptance of the responsibility that comes with being on the HSL team. And it helps ensure that knowing the company culture isn’t just for today. It’s for the future of HSL and the community.
“We’ve taken a lot of time in ensuring that we have full on communication,” Garcia said. “Within that onboarding process, even if there is reluctance with the candidate becoming a new hire, they’re already starting to see that HSL is something different.”
Pictured above from left – Nicole Garcia, VP of Human Resources, HSL Asset Management; Maclyn Wilcox, Office Manager, HSL Asset Management; Chris Evans, President, HSL Asset Management. Photo by Brent G. Mathis
READ THE FULL SPECIAL REPORT HERE.
