By Erin Spicer
Lorne Kelly proudly displays his mission statement, holding up a framed and mounted copy which hangs in one of the meetings rooms. It serves to remind employees and reassure clients that Kelly Funeral Homes prides itself on ethics.
Kelly is the owner and founder of Kelly Funeral Homes, and says the key to his business success is to establish trust with clientele.
“Reputation is the decisive factor in choosing a funeral home,” Kelly says.
“You bring in integrity, and ethics, and professionalism, and an overwhelming desire to help these people. That’s what our funeral home is all about,” agrees Greg Beamish, CEO of Kelly Funeral Homes.
Kelly Funeral Homes won the Better Business Bureau Torch award for excellence in business ethics, awarded on Oct. 15.
The Torch awards evaluate businesses practices, and also look to see that they make extra efforts to make sure the marketplace remains fair and honourable.
“It’s a history of doing things honestly,” says Kelly, that helps establish a fostering environment for deeply engrained ethics in his business, and a “psychology of helping.”
Kelly adds all his employees are “part of the Kelly family,” which means they appreciate, respect and protect the Kelly reputation as though it were their business too.
Kelly doesn’t act as a watchdog over his employee’s ethical practices, but rather establishes a trust with them, he says. That trust extends to Kelly’s clients as well.
“I’ve known the Kelly’s for years, and when you’re looking at business ethics, it’s something they aren’t recognized enough for,” says Ken Birchall, a former client who nominated Kelly Funeral Homes for the Torch award.
The Better Business Bureau’s website is a testament to what business they are normally alerted about; “work at home schemes” is one of the first icons a visitor sees.
“Everybody complains about businesses,” says Hilda Wynne, chair of the Ottawa Better Business Bureau.
Wynne says this was a major motivating factor for the Better Business Bureau to seek out, “people who really care about their clients and treat them well.”
“Nobody can appreciate that [recognition] more than someone who works in the field that I am in,” Kelly said softly as he accepted his award, thanking the Better Business Bureau again and again.
Sixty years ago, Kelly worked at his first funeral. He opened the business in 1954, and ran it alone.
Today the business has grown to seven funeral homes, six in the Ottawa area, with one branch located on Somerset St. in Centretown. Kelly employs 56 people, and has served more than 30,000 families.
“For a first generation business to last 50 years, they’re certainly doing something right,” says Beamish.
The funeral business, “is so personal that…most of his business is by word of mouth,” says Birchall.
Birchall went to Kelly Funeral Homes for help with funeral arrangements when his father died. His father was a senior Air Force officer, and Birchall estimates that his family had about 17,000 people visit the funeral home. “We had the use of three rooms,” Birchall marvels.
When they come to Kelly to plan a funeral, “people are at their most sensitive chapter in their life,” says Kelly. He says caring for those vulnerable people is his primary concern. “We don’t sell,” he says, rather, the customer decides and the funeral home helps them. Ethics are “absolutely imperative.”
Kelly’s staff members adhere to a strict, unwritten code of behaviour. Everything from how they act to what they wear matters. “Carelessness in any fashion…would upset things.”
For a business like Kelly Funeral Home, where word-of-mouth advertising accounts for about 90 per cent of business, an award like the Torch award is especially important, Kelly says.
Birchall says he hopes this recognition could bring Kelly even more business.
“When you’re looking for somebody who has ethics, and a group like the Better Business Bureau recognizes that, it helps you make your decision.”