As a brand new graduate ready to start my career as a mechanical engineer, I walked through Burns & McDonnell’s Kansas City office doors for the first time on January 2, 1991. The early 90s job market was tough, and I was thankful for the job opportunity even though it took me from my Minnesota home. I’m not sure I heard, nevertheless understood, I would be joining an employee-owned firm when I went through the interview process. Within my first year of employment, the underpinnings of the ESOP became apparent. Despite being only six years into the firm’s ESOP journey, the collaboration level among each of the 800 professionals spanning dozens markets culturally apparent across the entire enterprise. Over the following years, I elevated my own commitment to the success of my fellow employee owners in the spirit of a rising tide raises all ships. This effort afforded me opportunities to grow quickly in the organization and benefit from the financial successes of Burns & McDonnell. Every year, the ESOP contribution gifted to me built a sense of pride and the fact I was truly an owner in our firm.  

In 1998, the draw of my Minnesota roots had me leave Burns & McDonnell and return home. For the next nine years, I aspired to successfully continue my professional journey. Yet, something was missing. I thirsted for the same commitment, collaboration, and entrepreneurial spirit I had come to know in those early formative years. I further came to differentiate between “100% employee owned” versus the Burns & McDonnell model of being “owned by 100% of the employees.” In 2007, I reengaged with my colleagues in Kansas City and committed to putting a plan together to plant a Burns & McDonnell flag in Minnesota. The growth-minded leaders at Burns & McDonnell saw this as an opportunity to support clients in the upper Midwest more responsively and introduce the brand of employee-ownership to a talent pool in the Twin Cities.  

Since the 2007 Minneapolis-St. Paul office opening, I’ve had the honor of creating employee owners out of 120+ teammates. They each take pride in the successes collectively achieved by our nearly 8,000 Burns & McDonnell team members and the ownership stakes that have been earned.  We don’t refer to one another as “coworkers”, we appropriately address one another as “fellow employee-owners”, underscoring our mutuality in the common goals of success for our clients and success for our firm.

As we near our firm’s 40th anniversary of becoming an employee-owned firm, our growth has been nearly ten-fold over this period. Our employee turnover has been less than half of industry average. We’ve been strong advocates of the employee-owner model across our industry, our client’s industries and across the country. Our ESOP structure, established by the vision of key corporate leaders in 1985, has been heralded as a model for many organizations across our nation.

Our employee owners have built financial security into their futures resulting from the sharing of successes. Equally as important, however, is the response we hear from our clients; the commitment demonstrated by our professionals can only be attributed to the fact our clients deal with owners of our firm. Now as a corporate officer at Burns & McDonell, I can reflect on my 30 year professional journey and objectively credit employee ownership as an ideology allowing me and so many others to exploit our talents to the fullest.

~ Gene Sieve, Burns & McDonnell