A Shipshape Workplace Reflects Excellence

“Immaculate” is the word Phil and Tara Rand use to describe Yankee Marina & Boatyard. It’s one of the many reasons they bring their Sabre 42 Express all the way from Wenham, Massachusetts, to Yarmouth, Maine.

“Although the orderly appearance of our yard might be considered unimportant to the technical aspects of boat care, our attention to detail is very important when working on our customers’ vessels and we want the integrity of our work to be reflected in everything we do at Yankee Marina,” says owner and president Deborah Delp. “We believe that a clean yard and other practices can be ‘critical non-essentials’ that are important because they affect how customers judge our overall service.”

We frequently work in boat spaces that are not easily visible or accessible to boat owners — we work on enclosed wiring for electronics and on their engine, for example. These jobs can be expensive yet hidden from view. We want customers to know they can trust us. How best to convey our trustworthiness? By modeling a high quality of workmanship in everything we do, from electronics to a nicely swept floor to an organized and tidy workbench.

As a yard that’s actively working on boats all the time, we’ve developed certain protocols to maintain a clean environment. We end each week with “Friday afternoon clean-up.” Every Friday afternoon for about 30 minutes, everyone stops what they’re doing and turns their attention to cleaning and organizing. Employees are assigned to different stations and are responsible for tasks such as sweeping, clearing away debris, organizing their work benches, putting away equipment and checking for safety protocols. All ladders must be stowed at the end of the day. Needless clutter is banned. Management is tasked with keeping an eye on appearance. Delp maintains strict oversight.

“I came in one Saturday and was not happy with some things I saw. So I took photos and printed them off, and at our employee meeting on Monday morning, I handed them out and said, ‘This is what I saw, how can we do this better?’” she says. “However, that was a rare occurrence. Our employees feel just as strongly about this as I do, and we actually keep each other in check.”

For Delp, an organized and clean workplace just makes sense.

“Everything goes back to our mission of caring about our customers and our desire to provide the best product available. Our customers are busy, hard-working people who come to their boats to relax and forget about their stressful lives. We want to do everything we can to make Yankee Marina & Boatyard be the best thing that happened to them that day.”