CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Emerson’s “Culture Week” brought together over 150 salaried, non-exempt company employees who have been hired within the last year — with 120 of them attending in person in Marshalltown, many of them from other locations across North America — to engage in a wide range of team-building activities over a three-day period earlier this week.

Emerson is widely known as one of the longest-standing and largest employers in the Marshalltown area, but the company’s reach extends across the country and the world with over 170 locations in total.

Once a year, leaders at the downtown Marshalltown facilities host “Culture Week” to bring together about 120 salaried, exempt employees from all over North America — including offices in Canada and Mexico — who have been hired within the last year and engage in a wide range of team building activities over a three-day period. Another 36 attended virtually, and just shy of half of the in-person attendees came from locations other than Marshalltown.

Diane Eddie, who serves as the company’s North America business analyst for materials and is based in Marshalltown, called Culture Week “an event” and a great opportunity for the employees to learn what Emerson is all about and hopefully make some new friends in the process. As she pointed to a “Minute to Win It” team bonding activity happening in the Center Street parking lot on Wednesday with food trucks in the background and loud music playing, Eddie described it as a chance for staff from different locations to “sit together, be silly and get to know each other.”

“For some of these people who are not going to travel as much for their job, this is one of the few chances they get to come out to Marshalltown and really see what the Emerson Flow Controls epicenter is about,” Eddie said. “It’s a chance for them to see what we’ve got here, but also, we have people from Massachusetts who are not used to Iowa farmland. So coming in through the Des Moines airport and driving across, one person told me this is the furthest west they’ve ever been. So it really just is a wide variety of people and a lot of opportunity.”

Alicia Sears, who also works out of Marshalltown and serves as the senior manager of intelligent automation and business analytics, sees it as a recruiting tool for future employees.

“We really put a big focus on the Emerson culture and promoting how we really represent ourselves as a family together, and this is just one way that demonstrates that. So I think, as more and more people see what we’re all about and how we function, I think it really does help with the recruiting process,” she said.

Kathy Barberi, a New York City native who works at the Emerson location in Mansfield, Mass., had never been to Iowa before this week and said she loved the “hometown atmosphere” and places like The Flying Elbow. Sydney Gratopp, who was sitting at the same table, works in Marshalltown and enjoyed the chance to meet colleagues from Texas, Massachusetts and Canada.

“The whole point of this Culture Week, a big point of it is networking. And so this has been a great opportunity to meet people from all over the country and the world and just being able to find similarities and differences and being able to grow through that,” Gratopp said. “It’s been great to meet this team, work together and just get to experience life and new things together.”

Kusum Mishra of the Sherman, Texas plant described the atmosphere as “One Emerson” and said it was a great feeling to make connections while upgrading her knowledge in the process.

Kevin Meyer, Emerson’s president of flow controls, defined culture as “what you do and how you do it with each other every day,” and he felt that bringing people together to showcase the rich history of Emerson and Fisher Controls right here in Marshalltown is a special opportunity.

“It helps continue that, and it’s all about relationships, so you bring in an event like this and people get to know each other, get to see each other and it facilitates that,” he said. “It’s a global business, so all the people in Marshalltown have to work with people all over the world to make things work. So people seeing other people’s worldview and their culture helps those interactions stay positive when they go back to their local sites because it’s easier to see from that person’s perspective and get to a positive outlook.”

And those who do visit from other places, he added, almost universally leave with a positive view of Marshalltown, the legendary home of Fisher Controls.

“We try to expose them to all the facilities here in town,” Meyer said.

Along with Eddie and Sears, the North America Talent Council of Noemi Calderon, Matt Contreras, Andrew Fish, Anna Groenewal, Andrea Henson, Bethany Jablonski, Cody Kirkland, Nathan Kjolsing, Zach Mailahn, Hisham Naeem, Audri Rhone, Fernanda Santoyo and Violina Veselinova along with executive sponsors Matt Estabrook and Stephanie Sobotka all played a role in planning Culture Week. VP/GM for the Americas Joshua Wilford is the executive responsible for driving Culture Week and the Talent Council.