LJA Engineering lets engineers have fun, make money and make a difference

LJA Engineering, a civil engineering firm based in Houston, Texas, is a Top Workplace for Engineers. The firm provides full service across several sectors. Civil, structural, and electrical engineers are among the company’s more than 2,500 employees.

What makes LJA Engineering so special for engineers?

For one thing, the firm is employee-owned. Each of LJA’s employees owns shares of the company under an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP. The company considers this an important part of its identity. Every employee, down to the interns, receives an annual ESOP contribution in the form of company stock.

“We have some people who are hitting a million dollars in their stock,” Robin Mitchell, LJA Engineering’s employee engagement specialist, told Engineering.com. “We rely heavily on our employees to keep us growing, and we value their input. We want to see them grow, and we also take pride in helping them grow.”

If you’re wondering what an employee engagement specialist is, it’s another reason LJA Engineering made the top workplaces list. Mitchell’s job is to ensure employees are engaged with their work, their teammates, and their communities.

“We have to like where we work. We have to enjoy being with each other,” she said.

LJA Engineering hosts company picnics, holiday parties, and coffee talks with leadership. The company sponsors local sports teams and reserves Pickleball courts for employees to use in the summer. To support personal development, LJA Engineering employs full-time trainers to teach classes on management, collaborative communication and more. The company also has a mentorship program and reimburses tuition for engineers who want to go back to school. There’s also the LJA buddy program, which supports new LJA employees with a dedicated colleague who can help them adjust to the company.

Mitchell ensures that LJA’s culture of employee engagement is consistent across the company’s offices — whether that’s at the headquarters in Houston, where she’s based, or locations elsewhere in Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, or Alabama.

“I have a different activity person in each office to make sure they get all the same resources that we do, all the same events that we do,” Mitchell said.

The prestige event is no doubt the LJA Engineering holiday party. Not only do all employees benefit from a company-wide closure between Christmas and New Year’s, they’re all invited to one of the top hotels in Houston for the annual celebration. The company covers flights and hotel costs for out-of-town employees, plus their guests.

Having fun is one of LJA Engineering’s stated values, but it’s tied to another: Making a difference. The LJA Cares employee volunteer program aims to serve local communities through charity events, including water cleanup efforts, food bank volunteering and donations, school supply drives, toys for tots programs, and science outreach at local schools.

“All of our offices are challenged with giving back to the community, whether we do cleanup days, sponsor different fun runs for them, or we go back and do workshops with the kids within that community,” Mitchell said.

LJA Engineering’s open-door policy is another reason engineers rate it a top workplace. “You can walk into anybody’s office at any time and have a conversation, whether they’re a VP or whether they’re front desk staff, and they’re always willing to help,” Mitchell said.

As for tangible benefits, LJA offers standard healthcare, life insurance, disability, and paid time off. Employees are required to be in the office, but they have a choice of work hours. They can stick with a standard nine-to-five, working eight hours per day, or opt for a so-called 9/80 schedule, in which they work nine hours per day and get every other Friday off. Mitchell prefers the 9/80 schedule (naturally — it’s hard to resist the allure of a biweekly long weekend).

We asked Mitchell why she thought LJA Engineering was rated a top workplace for engineers. Her answer was simple.

“We’re a top workplace because we enjoy our work,” Mitchell said.

If you have that, everything else is gravy.

As seen in Enginnering.com.