At Home Doing the Right Thing
National Homebuilder Pledges to Enhance Lives and Give Back...with CARE
![Raleigh Division President Ryan Wells stands outside of a model home in Encore at 12 Oaks in the Holly Springs community.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/S17-FS2-At-Home-Doing-the-Right-Thing/S17_NC_FS2_Interior1_530x370.png)
Raleigh Division President Ryan Wells stands outside of a model home in Encore at 12 Oaks in the Holly Springs community.
![The Formosa model home in Briar Chapel – The Franklin Collection.](storyassets/carolinas/feature_stories/S17-FS2-At-Home-Doing-the-Right-Thing/S17_NC_FS2_Interior2_520x370.png)
The Formosa model home in Briar Chapel – The Franklin Collection.
Building dreams and enhancing lives. This is the lofty promise of David Weekley Homes, a privately owned, national homebuilder operating in 22 markets across the United States. But what does this pledge mean - and how is it achieved, on the ground, in divisions across the country? According to Ryan Wells, Raleigh Division President of David Weekley Homes, the answer is simple.
“For most people, buying a home is one of the most expensive purchases they’ll ever make,” explains Wells, who heads up division operations in Raleigh, N.C., “so we want to leave our customers better than when they came to us; we really want to change their lives.”
New homebuyers pick from a variety of plans and custom choices when working with David Weekley Homes. The company’s team of professionals provides full front-to-end service, supporting everything from deciding on a homesite in a new community and choosing a floor plan that suits their needs, to offering assistance in selecting options at any of its design centers. After constructing a home, David Weekley Homes even organizes proactive warranty appointments—ultimately ensuring a smooth process from the moment the customer walks into the company’s community sales office to the day they move into their new home.
Each client is assigned a personal builder and a warranty representative. These experts lead a series of partnership meetings with the customer—before, during and after construction. “We make sure our customers are fully engaged and aware of what’s going on,” says Wells. “We set high expectations for ourselves as a company, and work hard to exceed them in order to provide our customers with exceptional homes and outstanding service.”
Empowering Team Members
Wells is quick to add that the promise to build dreams and enhance lives does not begin and end with the customer. It also applies to how the management team at David Weekley Homes treats their staff, and to its company-wide approach to career management.
One of David Weekley Homes’ top priorities is to help its team members achieve their personal and professional goals. The management staff is trained to nurture the professional talents of each team member and to give them the training, knowledge and education they need to excel. The company is led by a simple mantra: “Do the right thing.” For David Weekley Homes, this involves showing great empathy, kindness and consideration to every colleague and client.
Division presidents discuss this mantra with all prospective employees, and candidates undergo multiple interviews and assessments to ensure that they share the same values and beliefs as the company. Leadership seeks out candidates who have demonstrated integrity in their work in previous job experiences. Once hired, significant effort goes into empowering employees to act on those values.
“It’s really a day-to-day, decision-making process. Being empowered by our mantra to ‘do the right thing’ typically allows you to put yourself in a customer’s situation,” explains Wells.
Take Anthony Procaccini, a builder who was hired by the Raleigh division in the summer of 2015. While working closely with a family to build their new home, he learned they were excitedly looking forward to having a hot tub installed and ready for use by the time construction was completed. The family had selected a custom screened-in porch specifically to accommodate the jacuzzi.
But on move-in day, the hot tub delivery company refused to carry out the installation, claiming that the soil around the house was too soft to carry the tub around to the backyard safely. The delivery team told the family that they would have to work out some other way to get the tub into the garden—at their own expense.
Although David Weekley Homes was not responsible for the delivery, Procaccini felt that this disappointment would negatively affect the family’s experience of moving into their new home. He took it upon himself to brainstorm several solutions.
First, he tried to secure a crane to swing the hot tub over the home, and when that wasn’t feasible, David Weekley Homes found a specialist moving company to construct a series of walkboards to reinforce the path around the house. Once the tub was safely delivered, Procaccini arranged for a portion of the porch to be disassembled to make it easier to install the unit.
“Yes, it cost us a bit of money. But the gratitude from the homebuyers and their excitement to see a small dream of theirs realized was well worth the price,” says Procaccini.
Privately Owned, Independently Run David Weekley launched the building company in 1976. Along with CEO and President John Johnson, Weekley oversees the business from their corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas. The headquarters location is where the Home Services Team (HST) is based, which includes a staff of 218. The Home Services Team supports the ongoing efforts of divisions across the country, which overall consists of nearly 1,600 team members.
David Weekley Homes is one of the largest homebuilders in the country, but is different compared to many other major builders. That is because after 40 years it is still privately owned—and for good reason. Private ownership allows the company to maintain the principles of integrity that have driven the business over the past four decades. More specifically, it means never compromising the company’s core values.
“Every builder has goals to meet on a monthly or quarterly basis, but for us, it’s far more important that we complete our homes correctly,” says Wells. “Numbers are important, but doing it right from a perspective based on quality is what reigns supreme for us. It’s what makes us who we are.”
The Raleigh branch opened in 1995 and currently has a staff of 40. The team includes experts in land acquisition and land planning, land development, purchasing and procurement, materials, trade partner relations, and construction management. The branch also employs sales representatives, builders, warranty service experts, and customer care program managers.
Since opening, the division has worked with developers to build five communities, with plans to continue growing.
Making a Difference in the Community
Another way that David Weekley Homes lives out its core promise to build dreams and enhance lives is through volunteering and philanthropic work. Employees have a number of opportunities to give back to their communities through a program called CARE, which stands for being committed, active and responsible to the greater community, and for finding ways to enhance it.
Charitable efforts that span across the company’s offices nationwide include back-to-school supplies drives, Thanksgiving food drives, and others; but there are also opportunities for each division to pick and choose causes at the local level. Each division has a local CARE council—a cross-section of people from all levels of the company who work together to determine projects to enhance lives.
Last year, after North Carolina experienced tremendous flooding, the Raleigh office chose to donate to the food banks in central and eastern North Carolina, areas hit hardest by the flood. People in those communities were struggling to manage without power or basic resources. In some cases, families had lost their homes completely. Collecting donations from business partners, colleagues, and current and past customers, the branch was able to deliver 2,000 pounds of turkey and 1,300 pounds of nonperishable items, as well as hundreds of dollars in donations to food banks in those affected areas.
“We chose to make our CARE program something that was personally meaningful to our team,” says Wells. “Typically when you’re concerned about meeting the needs of others, that comes full circle in helping you become a successful organization.”
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