Hunter Douglas University aims to boost workers’ skills

BROOMFIELD — Committed to employee education and advancement, the Hunter Douglas Window Fashions Inc. in Broomfield provides an in-house university for its employees and their families.

Built on the top floor of one of four buildings at its site, the Hunter Douglas University Center is a facility for a medium-sized division of 1,000 employees, and consists of two classrooms, a computer laboratory, two conference rooms, a library and a catering kitchen. It provides career-planning services in addition to training.

The concept of a training center just for the division was initiated by the employees, according to Teri Floyd, the human resource person in charge of training. “About three years ago, we held an Appreciative Inquiry program in our company. The object was to discover what the organization was doing really well and build on it, rather than problem solve by looking at what might be wrong,” Floyd said. “We used off-site strategic planning and interviews to find out what was important to the employees. They wanted the company to provide more educational opportunities.”

The division had education programs and decided to expand them in a central location under one person, Floyd said. The owners of Hunter Douglas, a private company in 80 countries worldwide with international headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands, approved the university center, supported and encouraged by Richard Pellett, the general manager in the Hunter Douglas corporate office.

“A seven-member committee led by Mike Burns got the center implemented,” Floyd said. Once the committee clearly understood what the employees meant by an educational center and what it would look like, they started a virtual university until a physical location for the university was found and approved. “The owners, wondering what those crazy Americans were up to this time said, ‘Give up office space for what?’ ” Floyd said.

Rather than limit its employees to business-related education, Hunter Douglas provides classes in its windows fashions division for personal development, child-rearing and financial planning. “An employee is also not restricted to taking classes that only relate to his or her current job, either,” Floyd said. “The company’s philosophy is that if it is done anywhere in the organization, an employee is welcome to take that class,” she said. That way, anyone can aspire to any job or career in the firm, according to Floyd.

Hunter Douglas, a merger of Hunter Engineering and Douglas Machinery Co., was founded in 1946 as a manufacturing firm for machinery, plastic tape and “Flexalum,” hardware for the first aluminum venetian blind. Joe Hunter had started a machine shop in 1932 that later became Hunter Engineering. Henry Sonnenberg, who began a machine tool trading company in Germany in 1919, picked the Anglo-Saxon name “Douglas” from a telephone book when he started Douglas Machinery Co. in New York in the 1930s. In 1986, the Hunter Douglas Windows Fashions Division Inc. was created and moved to offices in Broomfield. Three years later, a 112,00-square-foot facility was built for the expanding windows fashions division.

Tim Willyard, a dock lead worker in the receiving department, has taken technical and management classes at the employee university. “The more classes you can take helps you move up in the company,” he said. The Interaction Management course he attended taught him corporate values, hands-on management and how to be a better leader. “We can take any course we want, almost anytime we want,” Willyard said.

Co-workers handle duties while other employees are in class. If an area is short-handed, then the company asks employees to stay on the job but reschedules them for the very next class. Technical classes offered include Microsoft Office classes every other week and SAP – an operating system used by Hunter Douglas to track production, materials and costing of their shades products. “The educational benefits at Hunter Douglas are fabulous,” Willyard said.

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