With the average American employee working over 2,000 hours a year, ensuring those hours are spent with people you enjoy and in a culture that reflects your values is an important part of achieving a satisfying career and work/life balance.
When Ray and Nancy Nunn first started Nunn Construction in 1983, they focused on instilling lasting values and establishing a good culture that would create a family feel for their new business. Having just left a job from burn out, Ray knew first-hand how demanding the construction industry is. With two small children at home, Nancy knew that long-hours, weekend work and high-stress often comes with the job which can be just as hard on families as it is for an employee. While some of the stresses that go along with the day-to-day challenges operations teams face in the effort to build a complex building, Ray and Nancy kept to the golden rule whenever possible: to treat employees like they would themselves and extend that compassion to their employee’s families.
There were more than a few times, especially in those early days, when there were only a few employees and Nancy remembers that they felt like a big extended family. “Sometimes a superintendent’s young kids joined our kids for a “playdate” on a Saturday because their dad needed to work onsite.” The Nunn’s were also known to open their home for dinners and even Tyson recalls the practical jokes some of the Superintendents would play on him and his sister growing up at the dinner table.
Attracting Talent & Offering Support
After more than 40 years, there are many more related surnames who work together in this family business. Superintendent Thomas Vinci quickly realized after joining the team that Nunn Construction is all about family. He had grown up down the street from Vinnie Mattivi (now Vice President of Pueblo Operations) in a tight-knit and faith-based family and had heard all about Nunn and their culture from Vinnie who was hired as a Project Engineer a few years before. Coming from Vinnie, Thomas knew he was hearing was not just a bill of goods, so he took the opportunity to apply for an internship. “Ray, Nancy, and Tyson were instilling in all their employees’ similar values to the way I was raised. They treat everyone as their own and go out of their way to get to know all employees, caring for their well-being and taking an extra-step to make you feel you are welcome. They have created a team where you always have someone to rely on.”
These family values have continued to attract people to join Nunn who are looking for these qualities in their work life and we’re proud that we have multiple employees who work side-by-side with their family members. Bre Sailas, a Project Engineer came to work with us not too long after her sister, Ashley Sakos, was hired on as a Project Manager. “I loved hearing about the opportunities that Ashley had. It made me want to join a company that cares about their people’s growth.”
Family is with you through thick and thin. Whether it’s offering support, advice, or simply wanting you to succeed, that same quality is what Bre has come to know while working at Nunn. “In my family, no matter what family member is around, I can always count on them for guidance or advice. Nunn is the same way where the company is one big resource. I can always reach out to any project manager, project engineer, superintendent, you name it.” Ashley Sakos, her older sister added, “In both my family and Nunn, strength, teamwork, and trust are fundamental values. These principles create a supportive environment where everyone can thrive, and Nunn’s culture is a prime example of that.”
Building a Successful Team
Brandon and Cole Albright are Project Managers and brothers who came to work at Nunn and love that when working with family, there’s an undercurrent of competition (who has the bigger project, or is more ahead of schedule or under budget) but also a brotherly camaraderie that fosters conversations and a mentality that there’s always an open door to reach out with questions that will either end in advice from having experienced it first-hand or a willingness to work through a solution together. Cole noted, “That is the same mentality throughout the entire company. We all communicate if something comes up and sure enough someone has faced it before. This speaks to Nunn’s mindset of teamwork and that we are all in this together to build something that we as individuals are proud of.”
Tim Vinci, Thomas’ dad joined our team after 46 years in the industry and working for multiple companies who claimed they had family values but fell short in truly investing in their employees’ futures. Tim got the opportunity to train and work with his son on his first project and appreciated the time and effort he saw the team spent in building everything with pride and integrity. “As a father, I’m successful if my children are well-prepared for their future. This is the same focus that Nunn Leadership holds with achieving success when employees are appreciated and have the tools and resources, they need to be successful.”
