Bob Perkins

Take us back to when you started with Walsworth – how you found this position and how that came about.

I’m coming up on my four-year anniversary. February 24 of 2020 was my hire date. I started right when the pandemic hit.

How did you learn about the position? Were you familiar with Walsworth?

I’ve always known about Walsworth. I went to school at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, called Northeast Missouri State at the time. I grew up an hour north of here, so kind of Walsworth country I guess you could say. I was contacted by a recruiter for this position, which was open due to (previous EVP of HR) Ed Kennedy’s retirement.

Once you had been contacted and you started to learn more, what was it about the job that appealed to you?

Well, Walsworth has always had a great name in the industry, is a reputable company. I had been out of the printing world for a couple of years, and I wanted to get back into printing. This was my opportunity to do that.

Where were some of your career stops before Walsworth?

After I graduated from Truman, I had an Industrial Technology/Graphic Arts degree. And I started working in North Kansas City at a company called the Clark Printing Company, which was part of the Banta Corporation.

We focused on special interest magazines. I started out as a customer service assistant. Then over the years was promoted to an account manager. Then I was a pricing estimator for a couple of years, before moving back to be a customer service team leader. I sort of accidentally got into HR; I think it was around 2005. Our HR manager got a promotion to corporate, and so I moved into that role at our Liberty, Missouri operations.

Ultimately after almost 20 years, RR Donnelly purchased us. I worked for them a couple of years and figured out that really wasn’t for me. I stayed in the printing industry, but I switched product lines. I moved to a company called Plastic Packaging Technologies in Kansas City, Kansas. They’re a flexo printer, that prints flexible packaging. They manufacture roll stock and stand-up pouches for food, pet food industries, pharmaceutical, various other industries. They were a rapidly growing company and needed somebody to manage their product support team.

Shortly after I got there, the HR person left and they’re like, “Hey can you help out in HR and do both jobs for a while?” And then eventually they were like, “Can you just stay in HR?” (laughs) I was there nine years, and I’ve been in HR ever since.

It’s like there were a couple times in your career where HR just kept coming back to you.

Yeah, it’s like the mafia. It sucks you back in, you know. (laughs) Actually after that I was contacted for a position at Heico Construction Group, which is out by KCI airport. That interested me, to change industries completely. I wanted something different, and I also wanted to gain experience at a large multi-site corporate headquarter environment. This company did concrete structures for sporting stadiums. When I was there, they did the Minnesota Vikings new stadium, all the concrete work in the actual stadium. I was responsible for supporting Corporate Shared Services talent functions for eight companies, 31 business units and 3,500 employees nationwide.

After a couple years, I was contacted by that recruiter for Walsworth and now I’m here.

We’ve joked about how HR just sort of pulled you back in a couple times in your career, but is there something specific that makes HR a calling for some people?

On most personality profiles, my empathy scores off the chart. It just skyrockets, higher than most normal people. I’m not normal, I guess. But I’ve always tried to support people. I’ve always enjoyed watching others succeed, whether that’s somebody who worked in my department or a customer who was starting out. I’ve always enjoyed that.

That’s really a huge part of HR to me. There really wasn’t ever much difference between my customer service leadership role and an HR leadership role. The audience was just different. Instead of supporting clients, I support employees.

I would imagine working in HR, you’ve had some memorable employee interactions over the years, maybe even some pretty humorous stories.

Oh, I’ve got some HR stories. I don’t know how humorous all of them are. These are not Walsworth stories, they’re from earlier in my career. But I’ve been involved in things I never thought I would be involved in, throughout my career in HR.

I got to hire an undercover agent and plant them on one of the shifts, because of an issue. Every morning, I would come into work and get an email from this agent who was working nights. It was almost like a soap opera, reading what was going on, who the culprits were.

Lots of different crazy things over the years.

When you came to Walsworth, it was a bit of a crazy time since the pandemic was just hitting. What were some of the challenges you had to deal with and how were you able to navigate through those times?

It was chaotic, because people were looking to me for advice and solutions on what to do. Nobody knew what to do because it was changing every day. That was probably the hardest thing.

And on top of everything, I couldn’t leave my office. I couldn’t walk around and get to know people, or travel to the locations and meet people face to face. We started Zooming and things like that, but it wasn’t really as much as we do now. It was a lot of phone calls. People would call me and say hi, nice to meet you. And I was always like, now, where are you, what city are you in? I would always ask that question because I didn’t have a reference as to the location or the benefit of having met them face to face. I’m a very visual person so that was hard.

That’s why my wife and I get along so well. She remembers everybody’s name and I remember everybody’s face, so together we can usually get it.

Now that you’ve been part of Walsworth for a few years, what do you feel helps make the company successful?

I’ve worked a few places, but Walsworth has a feeling of being part of a team who cares, where people truly want everyone to be successful. Let me tell you, when I worked for the largest printer in the world, it was very rough. It wasn’t about making the employees or customers happy; it was about making the shareholders happy. I believe that happy employees create happy customers, which creates a great business that will be around a long time.

The Employer of Choice initiative has become a main focus for the company, and you obviously play a key role in it. Can you tell us a little about that?

I was excited, because when I first got here I created a PowerPoint about us needing to become the employer of choice. It’s such a big project. It wasn’t just a Bob project, or an HR project, it really needed to be the entire company.

So, I was very happy whenever we launched our initiatives, and it was one of them. I think it’s important because without being the employer of choice in our communities, it would be a struggle.

Having a great culture at work is super important because we spend so much time at work. Everybody can work really hard. But they can also have a fun time doing it.

What is it about the printing industry that appeals to you?

I’ve always enjoyed that, at the end of the day, there’s a product. We create this from… files. It’s initially just some electronic files and it goes through the process. We create something and then we ship it and mail it. I love having a product. I love the manufacturing process. That whole process of creation is cool. Some people, all they have is a service and they don’t have anything tangible at the end of the day. I’m a creative person in my head and I’ve always liked having a product at the end of the day.

Can you tell us a little bit about your family and life outside of work?

I grew up about an hour north of Marceline in a town called Unionville, Missouri. I always tease and say that I was raised like a 1950s sitcom, Leave it to Beaver. I was the Beav. My parents were like Ward and June Cleaver. I’m very lucky!

My parents bought a boat the same year I was born, and they had us at Lake Thunderhead in Unionville for all of our free time. That made me a lake guy who enjoys his family time.

I have an awesome wife of 33 years, Leigh. One of my former co-workers once told me after they met my wife, “she makes you seem so much cooler than you really are.” (laughs) We have three great kids. Morgan is our oldest daughter. And then 23 months later we had boy/girl twins, Grant and Sydney. They were eight weeks premature, so they were in the hospital for six weeks, but luckily all they had to do was grow. Everything was good.

And now all three are getting married within 14 months of each other. So, we’ve been busy. They’ve all selected great spouses.

What do the kids do for their careers?

My oldest daughter, Morgan, is finishing her doctoral degree in education. She is currently a middle school math teacher in Liberty, Missouri. Sydney is a nurse in Columbia, Missouri. She works for Columbia Orthopedics. And then my son got a construction management degree, and he works at Centric and leads job sites throughout the Kansas City area.

And for your family, it sounds like there was a lot of lake life when the kids were growing up.

Yeah, just a few years ago, bought a lake house at Lake of the Ozarks. It was a total fixer up; not really livable. We gutted the place. We’ve basically turned it from a little cabin type getaway where there really wasn’t much there into our lake get-a-way. There’s a lot of sweat equity in that house.

So, our summers are spent at the lake on the boat, on the dock, hanging out.

But we did it all ourselves. Our kids and Leigh and I went down there from January to Memorial Day a few years ago and spent every weekend working on that thing, ripping and tearing it apart and putting it back together. That was a fun experience.

Beyond the lake, and spending time with family, do you have other hobbies?

I used to refinish furniture. I’d get something off marketplace for $20 and turn it into something. That’s how I furnished the kids’ apartments in college. They still have some of that furniture.

What’s a fun fact about you that people might not know?

That’s a tough one for me because I’m a pretty open book. Having kids in the hospital for six weeks was quite the experience. I don’t talk much about that. I do tell people that if they know anybody that has twins, go help them because they need the help. Whether they’re saying so or not, they definitely could some use some rest or help doing laundry or something.

I think some people might be surprised by how down to earth you are once they meet you. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a stigma around HR.

Yeah, I mean HR is a scary thing for a lot of people because they associate it with something bad. But the way I look at it, it’s more of a service to the employees. We’re here to help.

If you had a personalized coffee mug, what would it say?

I’ll quote my kindergarten teacher from my kindergarten report card: “has a tendency to be bossy.” And my wife would agree.

Do you have a favorite book?

I’m not really a reader. But as far as a book that I’ve shared a lot at work, it’s called Gung Ho. It’s about leadership styles.

What about favorite movie?

Shawshank Redemption. Anytime that’s on, I will stop and watch it. I also like the Bourne series and stupid humor, like Talladega Nights and The Hangover.

Do you have a favorite meal?

Anything sweet. I would eat cookies over a steak any day. Here’s a story. When I was three or four years old, I refused to eat anything except for ice cream sandwiches from our local ice cream shop. It was called the Dairy Lane. I have older siblings and I remember my sister would order… they were called Tally Hos. She would order 10 Tally Hos and that’s all I would eat that entire summer. My mom even took me to the doctor. The doctor said he’ll eat when he’s hungry. So, I ate ice cream sandwiches when I was a child for an entire summer. (laughs)

Sounds pretty awesome. Do you still like ice cream sandwiches?

Love them. I always say I don’t have a sweet tooth. I have a whole set.

Do you have a favorite memory of your time at Walsworth or something you’re most proud of that HR has been able to accomplish?

When I think about that, the thing I think about are the people. There’s a lot of great people throughout the company that I’ve been able to get to know and work with. That’s the first thing I think of. On the HR side, the team has really stepped up and done a ton of work because we’ve updated a lot of different things. I should really thank them for all the hard work they’ve done to get us where we are today.