Zimmer Biomet Observes 96th Year With Founders Day Celebration
Zimmer Biomet Observes 96th Year With Founders Day Celebration
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Zimmer Biomet Observes 96th Year With Founders Day CelebrationZimmer Biomet is marking its 96th year this week, including a big Founders Day Celebration on Tuesday.
The orthopedic company - founded on May 2, 1927, in Warsaw - treated all of its Warsaw team members in all shifts to a lunch under tents at four of its buildings, starting at 1 a.m. Tuesday. They also held a food drive for Combined Community Services and partnered with about 32 local businesses to encourage and support Zimmer Biomet (ZB) team members to spend locally this week. The 96th anniversary celebration was a teaser of what’s to come for the 100th anniversary in 2027.
By 11 a.m. Tuesday, there already was a “great outpouring” of support for CCS, according to Heather Chalfant, ZB internal communications senior manager. The collection was being held at each of ZB’s buildings. When the meals ended at about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, the donations were taken into the buildings so team members could continue to donate throughout the week. The large donation will then be given to CCS next week, Chalfant said.
The 32 Warsaw and Winona Lake companies partnering with ZB gave ZB team members special discounts May 1-5 if they showed their ZB badge. “We wanted to encourage our team members to spend locally with this great opportunity to highlight Warsaw as our hometown,” she said.
Shawn Fergison, ZB vice president of operations for Warsaw, said, “We’re celebrating our Founders Day, which is exciting. It’s when J.O. Zimmer started the company, so we’re bringing everybody together to serve some food, enjoy some time together and celebrate that.”
While the weather wasn’t fully cooperative, he said it was a good opportunity “to get everybody together and talk about all the things we’ve got going on.”
He said ZB continues to see a “very strong demand” for its products.
“So we’re actually making quite a bit of investment here, touching almost the entire footprint of Warsaw with investment in new machinery, additional volumes. So we expect our foundry to be growing, and all of our major implant manufacturing is actually going to be growing in the next two years, so expanding, hiring and growing. It’s a great time. So, it’s interesting it comes together at the same time as Founders Day that we’re doing all this kind of stuff,” Fergison said.
Overall, that positive investment and commitment to Warsaw is the strongest it’s been, he stated, and he’s been with the company for 18 years.
“I think it’s a good place for us right now,” Fergison said.
If anyone has any concerns about ZB picking up and moving out of Warsaw, Fergison said that’s “clearly not the case right now because the volume investment that I’ve seen over the last 12 to 18 months is higher than I’ve seen in the 18 years that I’ve been here. So, that shows me that the company is committed to doing things in Warsaw. I’m a local guy. It’s exciting to see those things happen, and it shows that there’s a strong commitment to all the folks here in the community.”
He said the things that ZB are doing are fundamental and almost capstone to the business.
“We’re going to double the size of our foundry, which makes a pretty strong commitment to continue to do it in Warsaw,” Fergison said.
While the celebration Tuesday was a big event, ZB does get its employees together throughout the year.
“We do a lot of, what I would say are small group meetings throughout the month, throughout the year. We do these type of things once or twice a year. Last year, right before the Fourth of July holiday, we did an employee appreciation day, which was even bigger than this. It helps with the weather being nicer in the summer,” Fergison said.
All of ZB’s leadership was at Tuesday’s celebration, including CEO Bryan Hanson. The leadership served the meals to team members.
“So it’s a great event, and it also gets that personal connection, too. We’re getting the food out there, we’re serving each other, we’re celebrating together,” Fergison said.
With the 100th celebration just four years away, he said that’s still in the planning stages, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was bigger and better than the 96th.
“In that 100-year mark, all of those expansions that we’re doing are going to be pretty close to being done, so the workforce is going to be bigger,” Fergison said. With nearly 5,000 employees in the Warsaw area, he said they expect to grow that number over the next four years.
He reiterated that the organization is committed to making an investment in Warsaw.
“You can see that with what we’re doing with the growth in the factory. We’ve added over 400 team members to our workforce in the last 12 months,” Fergison said. “The other side of it is, we just implemented an engagement team where we’re not only engaging our team here, but we’re going to engage outwardly: How do we make sure that we’re visible in the community and things like that so that pride for the factory is felt by all of Warsaw?”
Having over 18,000 employees worldwide, including about 4,800 in the Warsaw area, ZB is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Lori Winkler, ZB senior vice president and chief human resource officer, said, “I think diversity is very important - it’s actually diversity, equity and inclusion (D, E & I) for the organization as a whole. So, globally, it’s very important that we’re focused on those diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including belonging, which is that strong sense of inclusion.”
Several employee resource groups (ERGs) have existed at ZB for several years, with some being more recent than others.
“For the most part, we’ve been committed to ERGs for several years,” Winkler said, noting there’s about seven of them currently.
Winkler has been with ZB just over three years, coming from Johnson & Johnson, and knows that diversity, equity and inclusion within an organization helps it overall.
“I would say that diversity, equity and inclusion have become increasingly more important as we look to globalize the organization and further diversify our talent. I wouldn’t say it’s something just specific to the folks in Warsaw, I think it’s more of a global focus on D, E & I, but clearly, in order for us to have a differentiated brand as an organization, and also for us to innovate, you have to have diversity of experience, diversity of style, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of geography,” she said.
“We tend to think of diversity historically in the context of race and gender, but really diversity comes in many different forms. It comes in demographics, it comes in the generations of the workforce, it comes in diversity of thought, diversity of how folks think, diversity of how folks behave, diversity of experiences. Everybody has a different orientation for all of that, and if you have too much homogenity - folks that are too much alike - it doesn’t really lend itself to creative abrasion where if you’ve got folks that have different points of view that come from different parts of the United States, different parts of the world, you’re going to have different points of view and perspectives and that’s what helps to generate some of that great innovation,” she stated.
Winker said ZB has a pretty robust D, E & I strategy and it’s committed to staying on the path it’s going on.
“The focus on diversity, equity and inclusion will continue to be an important focus, along with many other things that we’re focused on as an organization. We’re really excited about the direction the company is going. We just had a great quarter, and we feel really, really good about how we’re doing as an organization. So, it isn’t just about D, E & I, there’s a lot of different things we’re focused on. We’re focused on holistic well-being. We’re focused on folks feeling a shared and committed purpose and passion for the organization. We’re focused on personal and professional growth. We’re focused on assuring our team members feel a deep connection to the work that they do, to their team members, to their managers and to the greater purpose and vision of the organization,” she said.
