Sid Jones, president and CEO of Home State Bank in Jefferson, was named the Outstanding Leader in the Small Companies category of the Des Moines Register’s 2016 Top Workplaces Award program.
The leadership award is in addition to Home State Bank being rated the seventh best workplace among small companies (those with 85 or fewer employees) in Iowa.
According to Jones, the leadership award reflects more on the culture at the bank than on him.
The Top Workplaces Award is administered for the Des Moines Register by Workplace Dynamics, LLC, a leading research firm that specializes in organizational health and workplace improvement. Participation is voluntary; this is the first year Home State Bank participated.
Employees of companies in the program responded to statements about their workplace on a 7-point scale, with a range of “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Benchmarks are determined in various business sectors such as financial services and insurance, healthcare, or education, and each company is compared to the benchmarks.
All 35 employees at the bank responded to statements that together show how they perceive the bank in terms of ethics, direction, and internal communication, and how they perceive their value as employees, both in their careers and personally.
Home State Bank employees’ responses were consistently higher than the benchmarks, including the statements evaluators used to determine the leadership award.
“Those answers weren’t solely because of what I’ve done,” Jones said. “They reflect a culture that all of us at Home State Bank have worked to develop over the past few years.”
The “culture” at Home State Bank is based on nurturing and expanding relationships with customers, with fellow employees, with the community, and finally with stockholders, Jones said.
Developing a culture of relationships is key to the success of the bank. “I believe culture drives success. If you put the right culture in place, it drives the right result in the end” Jones said.
“Everyone is part of building and expanding relationships and creating the culture we want, which is why the ratings were strong on the survey,” Jones explained. “It’s the great staff here that makes me look good.”
Jones has been with Home State Bank since 1983 and was elected as president and CEO in 2009.
