A message from our President/CEO, Jessica Nickloy.
In the beginning, Etica Group felt like a family. Our employees knew each other and genuinely cared for each other. It is one of the things that really set us apart. We were smaller – about 20 employees, so it wasn’t hard to stay connected with each other and foster that closeness. In 2017, we acquired a local engineering firm and quadrupled our workforce virtually overnight, expanding from two offices to four. Not long after, Covid hit and we found ourselves working mostly in the virtual arena, yet still experiencing growth. Which is great, but due to constraints, we seemed to be working as single divisions rather than one company. To right the ship, in 2021 we sat down and developed strategic goals that would drive us as a company toward a vision of One Etica.
Our mission is to deliver quality adaptive solutions to our partners resulting in improved infrastructure and community investment. Our vision is to be a regional industry leader in infrastructure development, building long-lasting careers for our family of employees, attracting and retaining premier talent and expanding market reach. How do we do that? We foster a culture born out of living out our core values: Empower, Talent, Integrity, Community and Accountability.
Over the last year, as we evaluated our progress and began to realize we were just too spread out, too everywhere and had grown too big too fast in some areas to really be strategic. We were functioning out of being reactive rather than proactive and obviously, that’s not the way we wanted to operate. It began to affect our culture. We realized we had a lot of opportunities for positive change that would drive us toward our goals.
Change is difficult and often messy and painful. That’s why most people don’t like it and try to avoid it at all costs. It doesn’t always turn out like you thought it would. Paths change and opportunities present themselves in ways you couldn’t imagine in the beginning. We were fortunate to have found opportunities in restructuring our company that would allow us to continue to grow and live out our core values.
Our most important asset is our staff. We have expectations that the people who work here will be accountable and work with integrity. Our company name literally means ethics. We expect our employees to make mistakes, own them and move on. A lack of accountability and integrity creates fear and doubt, which does nothing to build trust and is devastating to a culture when left unchecked.
As we move forward, we are hiring for cultural fit rather than to just fill a position. There are some things that can be learned and taught, but if the person doesn’t fit our culture, that’s just difficult to fix. You must be able to communicate like normal human beings. You must trust that what you say won’t be weaponized. We are also intentionally working together as a company, cross utilizing work and employees across our departments, instead of in silos. We are developing career paths and training programs. We are connecting our employees. We are all in this together. One Etica.
I am optimistic about the future. It’s an exciting and interesting time to be a part of the team. There is an energy here that has been missing and it is beginning to have that family feel again. It will be fun to see how the changes we have made grow us stronger in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Jessica Nickloy, President/CEO