The group Semco in Brazil has made billions listening to the workers. Did you know? This strange company is enjoying great economic success. This is one of the largest industrial groups in the country, initially was a steel company in the industry, real industry, in short, not the creative industries on the internet.It was a successful business but the profits were verticalized when Ricardo Semler took the direction of the company. What he did is a structural revolution in the manufacturing system. A revolution that starts from the idea that workers have a great capacity for responsibility, which in private life, such as dedicating themselves to their children.
In holding these adults are treated like children, under the control poison (and expensive for the company) and constraining rules, are not consulted on strategic decisions. Ricardo Semler's revolution began radically changing the image that the employees had the company, with one move: to break the rigid division of time.
It has enabled the departments to manage flexible work time: there are no time requirements. Just to agree with my colleagues: You can enter the factory at any time. Employees decide next month even if they want to work less and earn less, or if they want more work and more money. Then Semler has demolished the symbols of corporate power.
For example, she decided that managers would no longer have a secretary: the copies if they do alone (and it was discovered that it saves a lot of paper because the managers are unwilling to make photocopies ...). The company runs the same without secretaries, even better, especially after they've streamlined the whole bureaucracy and internal control systems.
And new recruits are screened by the assemblies, and this applies to workers as managers. Applicants are interviewed and then if you vote for them or not. Finally, it is reversed as a sock, the career system and strategic decisions. Each year a share of the profits is reinvested in new productive sectors based on the suggestions of workers, and these new corporate branches are then managed with the help of those who have nominated them.
In this way a worker can suddenly become the manager who works in the realization of his idea. This upward mobility based on the ability to have ideas and implemented, has changed the relationship between employees and company. It has also given rise to successful initiatives in several sectors, from computers to agriculture, food.
The company helps employees inside the company to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. And this has been a very big deal for the company that no longer has its center in the steel, but in a galaxy of activities are extremely diversified. And, again, I'm not talking about dreams of anarchists, but chosen of success, Semco, with its 5,000 employees, has reached annual growth levels to embarrass the Chinese, since over 30% per annum.
Nor is it just a method that works. No! I am 20 years that Ricardo Semler runs the company in this way! And shareholders are enthusiastic hundred thousand dollars invested in Semco 20 years ago today are now more than $ 5 million. It was not easy, in the 90's Brazil faced a severe recession and Semco workers have accepted wage cuts, but have been rewarded with 39% of the profits, while managers' salaries have been reduced by 40% and employees have had the right to approve each item of expenditure.
Semler says that he won his bet because he likes rock and roll and has a 30% increase in the holding of trust in humans. One of his favorite slogans is: "All people want to achieve excellence." The Semco has made school and today there are hundreds of companies that follow the path of empowerment and Semler teaches in several major U.S.
universities. Employee involvement seems to me the heart of the matter Fiat managers do not think that the workers are a global resource for the company, see them as only trained monkeys are able to perform basic actions. I believe that Italy will be released from the crisis when most entrepreneurs understand that if you are facing a big problem should seek advice from the workers.
They know what would be the car capable of doing crazy consumers, other than those approved in the marketing! The people have unlimited resources. Managers do not. POSTSCRIPT. This text is part of a series of four articles devoted to the Fiat. The former, the energy efficiency of Fiat compared to that of Volkswagen, find it here: Dear Marchionne, that's € 100 million ...
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