Westone Employee Highlight: Randy Poll

One of the most veteran employees in the company, Randy Poll has now been a loyal Westonian for the past 37 years. Although he initially thought Westone would just be a short pit-stop during his college days before seeking out a fulltime job in the electrical engineering field, Randy quickly found a home here with us and has never looked back since first coming on-board back in 1982.

A Coloradan through and through, Randy grew up in Colorado Springs and naturally developed a strong love for his home state, as well as his favorite hobby: baseball. Randy has always loved all things baseball, as he even had a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates after graduating from high school, however he ultimately decided to attend a few different colleges closer to home in Colorado Springs until eventually earning his tech degree. While earning his degree, and like most college students, Randy felt he could use a few extra dollars in his pocket, and just so happened to see an ad in the local paper for a small, family-owned business that was hiring.

“I was going to UCCS (University of Colorado Colorado Springs), and I just needed a job.” Randy said while explaining how he first started at Westone. “My mom saw an ad in the classified ads of either the Sun or the Gazette, so I filled out an application, interviewed with Randy Morgan, got hired on the spot and started the next day.”

Like so many other Westonians, Randy started off at Westone as a lab tech in one of our earmold production labs before diligently working his way up to a variety of different roles within the company. Today, Randy is a key member of our data entry department, and we don’t know where we’d be in there without him!

“What I’m doing now is the best job I’ve had. I also enjoy helping out other employees because I have to pass on my knowledge where I can. I’m actually one of the few people here who has worked in data entry as well as one of the labs.”

After working here for more than 30 years, Randy has certainly become an expert on all things Westone, as we can’t thank him enough for his willingness to pass on all of his helpful knowledge and experience to his less-experienced coworkers.That experience and knowledge is especially valuable when considering all the different changes, improvements and new enhancements that Randy has helped implement during his time here. For example, Randy played a key role in helping to develop our very first filtered hearing protection earpieces, such as our Style 47 earpiece, which was originally designed for one specific employee here at Westone, but quickly became a staple of our earpiece offering to the public.        

It’s pretty interesting to talk to Randy about all the things he’s seen throughout his time at Westone, especially when considering he himself never imagined being at Westone for more than a few years!

“Absolutely not,” Randy said when asked if he ever envisioned himself working at Westone for 37 years, “I expected to be doing something in engineering, but honestly I didn’t find jobs in that field all that interesting. I kept changing my major while I was in school, and the (job) security here at Westone was better than that of the electronics industry.”

While there’s been plenty of change swirling around him throughout his time at Westone, one thing that certainly hasn’t changed for Randy is his love for baseball. The sport remains one of his favorite hobbies to this day, regardless of whether he’s actually out on the field playing or just at home watching his beloved Rockies. Baseball isn’t Randy’s sole passion or hobby these days however, as he’s also become an avid photographer who loves going up into the mountains to capture pictures of all the natural beauty Colorado has to offer.

We appreciate everything that Randy continues to do for the  company, and should we ever decide to bring our company softball team back out of retirement, you already know who’s going to be our power hitter batting cleanup!