Question

A Manufacturer with Human-Focused Leadership

Barry-Wehmiller, which earns annual revenues of $1.7 billion from a variety of manufacturing, technology, and consulting industries, takes the belief that leadership should be more about people than the supply chain. Barry-Wehmiller’s Guiding Principles of Leadership describes how it is a people-centered organization: “We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.” The company believes leaders and companies need to learn how to care about the people that work for them, and not see them merely as “functions” to a corporate goal. For example, the company discontinued the use of timecards after discovering factory workers felt mistrusted because, unlike office workers, they could not make phone calls, get coffee, or perform other normal daily non-work tasks without punching in and out. The approach seems to have made a real difference. Whereas studies generally find that about 80 percent of employees feel their organizations do not care about them, an independent survey of Barry-Wehmiller employees found the exact opposite: 79 percent believed the company did care.

Why has Barry-Wehmiller’s “Truly Human Leadership” approach been successful?

Do you feel that this type of approach is suitable for a manufacturing company?

How do you think this approach contributes to the company’s success?

Answer 1

Why has Barry-Wehmiller’s “Truly Human Leadership” approach been successful?

- Such approach makes people more responsible, as they know that their company cares about them thus they want to return in favour by giving better output & by taking more responsibility of their work.

- People will have less stressful time in company, thus will lead to less mental fatigue, which further results in better output from these people.

- With such approach, employees will become financially more stable & their standard of living will also improve, so they will try to have longer association with the employer which results in lesser attrition rate thus will help company to get better productivity as they need to spend less on training & hiring of employees.

- It will also help to improve the brand image of the company as more employees would be interested to work in such culture, which further helps company to grow.

Do you feel that this type of approach is suitable for a manufacturing company?

Yes such approach is suitable in manufacturing company:

- In such company, number of employees are large who works on the shop-floor, such works are monotonous & creates fatigue after some time, thus "Truly human leadership approach" helps them to cope up.

- In operations of such company, less educated people works who doesn't fancy great favors from the employer, thus if such people are taken care with love & affection, then they tend to work with more enthusiasm, which will further increase the output & efficiency.

- With such approach, employees will be more loyal towards the company as they will feel more connected to the organization, thus will lead to less failure in operations & finance.

How do you think this approach contributes to the company’s success?

- It will improve the company's brand image.

- With less attrition, company will have loyal & longer working employees, thus faster decision making & lesser suck cost.

- Operations will be faster & smoother as people will be more connected, so will try to give better output.

- Efficiency of the company will improve.

- Hiring & training cost will be less.

- Expansion plans will be easy to execute as company will have better trained & loyal employees.