When an employee starts their career at Counselor Top 40 supplier PCNA’s (asi/66887) drinkware subsidiary ETS Express (asi/51197), they get a 360-degree view of everything happening around the company. They tour the factory and watch how products are imprinted, even if their day-to-day job has nothing to do with these processes. A whole is more than the sum of its parts, and ETS’ leaders believe giving employees visibility into each department helps them understand the bottom line clearly.

“We invest a lot of time in each employee that we bring on,” says Janee De Lira, director of customer experience. “We really focus on saturating them with as much knowledge as we can so that when a challenging request comes through that we’re trying to pull off for one of our customers, everybody understands what it takes to make it happen.”

ETS Express’ (asi/51197) California production team at their end-of-year lunch celebration.

There’s a culture of continuous learning at ETS, and it’s part of the reason employees like De Lira have been with the company for more than 10 years.

As a supplier with so many teams and moving parts, it’s not uncommon for people to transition to different parts of the business during their time there.

Team bonding after ETS’ national sales meeting.

“Somebody might say, ‘I’ve really enjoyed working in customer experience, and now I want to learn a little bit more about sales,’ or someone who works in the production office now might decide they want to try out customer service,” De Lira explains. “We encourage and support that, and I think it’s part of what has helped our team members feel confident growing within the company.”

There’s a sense of curiosity, too, that permeates the ETS office and factory floors.

“Something that has served us well is being willing to look at areas that we’re struggling in or look at areas that we’re doing well in and ask ourselves, ‘Why is this? What’s happening there? And what can we learn from that?’” says Chris Butler, director of operations.

Butler, who’s on his 14th year with the company, adds that this level of curiosity has opened doors for better communication between colleagues and teams.

ETS employees wait in line at an In-N-Out food truck outside the office.

“We’ll often meet together and talk with each other about what was going on in our departments or what we’re seeing within the company as a whole and then ask ourselves what role we can play in finding ways to make improvements or make things more efficient,” he explains.