Kenton Brothers promotes four technicians into a brand new foreman position.

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By Ryan Kaullen, Field Services Manager at Kenton Brothers

Kenton Brothers was established in 1897 here in Kansas City, Missouri and is still owned and operated by the same family. The company traces its roots to mechanical locksmithing, but has adapted with the times and offers a full range of services including locksmithing, access control, commercial video surveillance, intrusion detection, metal detectors, and much more.

Throughout the company’s 123 years in existence, there have been many traditions established, many forms of promotions, and many paths for its employees to grow. In that spirit, Kenton Brothers has established a new foreman position for technicians to grow into as their skills and experience mature.

Kenton Brothers: Congratulations to our four new foremen!

The foreman position is all about leadership, management, and accountability.

Our foremen are assigned jobs where they will be responsible for coordinating all job needs. Foremen will work directly with our customers on site. They’re in charge of leading our technical crews and directly driving the success of job implementation. This role, and the success of its jobs, play a vital role in Kenton Brothers’ success and growth.

Earlier this year, we held our first round of interviews and promoted a total of four existing technicians into the new foreman role. Those technicians are Zack Holden who has 5 years with Kenton Brothers, Terry McCurdy who has 3 years with Kenton Brothers, Charlie Merrill who has 1 and a half years with Kenton Brothers, and Josh Ast who has 1 year with Kenton Brothers. They each were chosen for various reasons: their skill sets, showing leadership in the field, and earning the trust from our other technicians who trust them and value their skills highly.

Kenton Brothers: Congratulations to our four new foremen!

Watching our employees grow, not only in their careers but in their personal lives as well, is something we hold dear. Our company culture embodies family. Seeing our family culture grow and thrive is essential not only to our business but the daily lives of our employees. Please join us in congratulating our new foremen Zack, Terry, Charlie, & Josh on their new roles as they advance their careers here at Kenton Brothers!

The 2019 MacGyver Award goes to… Chris Skinner!

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By Gina Stuelke, CEO of Kenton Brothers.

We relived a part of our 123 year history last month in thinking of Bill Kenton. Some of you had the privilege of knowing him. Bill was the 2nd generation founding Kenton involved in the company from the time he was 12 years old until he passed away at 91 in 2010.

In the early years of KB, he ran the field services team and became known for his response when a tech would call in to the office express frustration on a job. He would say, “Well, IT DIDN’T GROW THERE… figure it out!”

Chris SkinnerSo in his honor, in 2015 we created an award to pay tribute to the KB security professional who has the tenacity and creative problem solving skills to get the job done while overcoming any adversity they may encounter. We liken this ability to the famous TV show and character from the 1980’s – MacGyver – who could pretty much solve any predicament with some ingenuity and the use of a paper clip or multi-tool Swiss Army knife! The definition of ‘to MacGyver’ something at KB is to fix something in a resourceful and improvisational way.

The 2019 prestigious ‘MacGyver award’ goes to Chris Skinner!

Chris exemplifies the KB Way and is a great contributor to our company. We appreciate his hard work, determination and work ethic! Chris has a great wife, Kathy and three spunky children: Wyatt, Griffen and Sofiya.

We appreciate Chris as a leader and role model for our technical services team. Congratulations Chris!

2019 MacGyver Award - Chris Skinner 2019 MacGyver Award - Chris Skinner

KB is CSEIP certified to design access control systems for the Federal Government.

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By Neal Bellamy, IT Director at Kenton Brothers.

We sent team members to Washington for CSEIP CertificationSpecial access control requirements require special access control people.

Our most complex access control customer is any federal government customer. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has a set of memorandums that outline requirements for any government office access control system. This allows the federal government system to authenticate who a person is as well as allow a person access to a building.

Certainly, this falls under “Special requirements” that spans way past allowing or denying access through a door.

Understanding the requirements itself is a challenge. But two of our guys, Ryan Nance and Chris Skinner, have stepped up to that challenge. Both of them went to D.C. for training that involves the latest in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), CAC / PIV Cards, and Biometrics. Both have been involved in multiple installations of government facilities across Kansas City for many years.

KB has CSEIP CertificationsCSEIP Certified

Ryan and Chris are both CSEIP certified to design and install physical access control systems (PACS as it’s known to the Feds) that meet OMB requirements.

Kenton Brothers has been helping the federal government for decades with their locks, keys, safes, containers and maintenance of their cameras and access control. This new certification means that Kenton Brothers is ready to serve the federal facilities in the Midwest region for their new PACS installations.

If your facility is ready for the latest and greatest in access control, let us know how we can help!

Invest in training your people… and reap the rewards.

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By Kristen Harper, Controller and HR Manager and Kassie Lyons, Accounting Specialist at Kenton Brothers.

This year at Kenton Brothers, we’re investing in our employees to become better humans. That’s a lofty goal so we’re breaking it down a bite at a time

Joe CalhoonAt the beginning of 2019, the staff at Kenton Brothers starting a 10-month training program with Joe Calhoon with a focus on customer service and leadership. Joe has worked directly with Stephen Covey, author of teaching “7 Habits” and “Principle-Centered Leadership” and specializes in working with businesses of all sizes to build their customer service skills and teach a community servant mentality to all organizations.

Strengths Assessment

We starting the training with every employee taking a Clifton Strengths assessment. Joe helped us understand how our strengths make everyone uniquely qualified to serve. We also learned how understanding our coworkers’ strengths will help us communicate better with each other internally.

People who focus on using their strengths are three times as likely to have an excellent quality of life and six times as likely to be engaged in their work.

One of the key attributes that Joe has been teaching Kenton Brothers is that in ‘doing service’ people are happier. By giving remarkable service to our customer, our customer is happier and is better able to serve their customer. We reap the benefits of knowing we have done our job well.

The Power of Training

By doing this training, Kenton Brothers is not only wanting our staff to work better with our customers, but also to be able to have better positive relationships with everyone in our lives both inside and outside of the workplace. Joe taught us through personal stories and illustrations that have made him relatable to our entire team.

Additionally, our management team is working through Emotional Intelligence evaluations.  This specifically helps each individual understand where they need to improve upon different emotional strengths and how to help them better evaluate problem solving, lead staff and support the organization as a whole.

Kenton Brothers is deeming this insightful training of our people our best investment ever as it is creating a stronger culture, forcing us all to look deeper into the meaning of what we do and how we communicate with each other for the overall goal of proving the best experience possible to our customers.

Thank you to Joe, as he is a living example of what he teaches and we’re a better team thanks to him!