company culture

The Difference Company Culture Makes

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Written By

Sonja

We live in a world where profit is king. Business executives, marketing teams, and entry-level employees alike are concerned with the profits of their company, working hard to develop better methods, products, and advertising campaigns to attract more customers. Because of this mono focused view of business, speed, product output, and efficiency are often given more focus than worker safety, inter-department communication, and participation from entry-level workers.

In 1987, Paul O’Neill took his place as CEO of Alcoa, a giant in the world of aluminum manufacturing. Upon his appointment as CEO, O’Neill gave his first speech to the company. Expecting to hear comments on profit margins and revenue projections, his audience was instead surprised with a safety-centered speech.

“If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our safety figures.”

Although Alcoa had relatively low rates of injury compared to other manufacturers in the United States, O’Neill wanted to focus on making them even lower. Shocked and confused by his seeming lack of interest in profit, executives at Alcoa began to have doubts about O’Neill’s competence as CEO.

O’Neill began to request incident reports at the beginning and end of every meeting, requiring detailed answers to the question of why an incident may have occurred. As incidents arose, O’Neill would analyze how frequently similar incidents had occurred, then personally visit the facility in order to make a direct change to the system. In doing this, O’Neill began to slowly disrupt the old habits of Alcoa, improving the overall safety of their facilities and changing the company culture.

Focusing on safety problems and how to solve them worked, and soon, O’Neill had the entire company on his side. Entry-level workers began reporting problems that managers and company executives had previously known nothing about, repeat incidents declined, fewer injury and sick days were taken, and productivity was on the rise.

Thirteen years later, when O’Neill retired from his position as CEO, Alcoa dropped from 1.86 missed workdays per 100 workers due to injury to less than 0.2. With improved safety regulations in place, Alcoa profits quickly began to rise, increasing 5x by the time O’Neill retired. The bottom-up communication system O’Neill had created allowed for extraneous processes to be cut out, money to be saved, worker safety to be improved, and profits to rise.

So what’s the lesson? Creating a common language and a strong company culture that all members of your team can participate in helps productivity, and making sure everyone has the freedom and ability to suggest change allows for a safer, more efficient work environment.

What does your company do to make sure people at every level are working without roadblocks?

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