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© Season Group
Electronics Production |

Engaged & happy employees - clear drivers of growth & health for Season Group

EMS provider Season Group, is flagging a major change in its organisation, both operational and somewhat philosophical. Randy Ziegenhagel, previously VP Business Development, is moving to the new position of Global Culture Officer and taking the responsibility of ensuring the Group’s Organisational Health.

Ok, I’ll be the first to say it; I had not a single clue what a Global Culture Officer was, did or added to a company. But I guess that when you have over 2,000 employees spread out across operations in Mexico, the US, the UK, China, Hong Kong and Malaysia, not everyone will be rocking to the same tunes; nor do they really have to; but it will sound better if they are at least stomping to the same beat and rhythm. Carl Hung, CEO of Season Group, might have put it a bit more eloquently in a press release; “As the company continues to grow internationally, we need to ensure that we have a healthy organisation with a team that is fully aligned with the goals of the business.” When looking into the term Organisational Health I can’t help but to draw parallels to the concept of harmony in music. If melodies are the horizontal side of music, then harmony would be the vertical aspect, the sum total of what is happening. In short it has to do with how chords and the construction and progression play with and against each other – how they connect, so to say. And if we really boil it down, it means “teamwork over talent”. Carl emphasises that this new role does not have anything to do with an HR role; “This role is specifically targeted to help Season Group unleash the only remaining untapped competitive advantage in the world right now, which is organizational health. For those who’ve met Randy, you will know that he eats, sleeps and breathes our Core Values,” he says in the press release. But there is still no real definition of what organisational health really boils down to. So in a phone conversations with Randy Ziegenhagel, we set out to straighten out some of these question marks. It is an abstract subject, much like “Lean” is when you take away all the definitions. But just like lean, this is a philosophy as much as it is a strategy. The key difference between the two strategies however are that while Lean revolves around systematically minimizing waste or Muda, Organisational health aims to rather amplify something than remove it. And what exactly are we talking about amplifying? Well, initially it’s actually something as fundamental as self worth, actually having employees understand their importance within the organisation.
Randy Ziegenhagel © Season Group
“Every member of our production team needs to feel valued. They are actually the ones making the products, not the “higher ups”, and we want to instil an ownership attitude – from every level,” Randy says and continues to explain that both accountability and responsibility needs to be acknowledged in order to instil a sense of pride and mindset of: “This is my company” at every level. And while the concept of Organisational Health, just like Lean, has some core principles, these will vary greatly from company to company, because they are determined by what makes your company function the best while providing the harmonies. However, communication will always be paramount. An interesting thing to note is that this new venture that Season Group is launching is an investment without an end goal, there is no finish line, just a constant awareness to improve. But there isn’t even a goal of performing “better”, in fact the company has stripped away all performance reviews as they can generate stress and don’t always paint an accurate representation of reality. The goal isn’t necessarily better, it’s smoother, happier and prouder. Usually when hearing the word “health” in a corporate sense, our mind goes to financial health, or possibly operational health when talking about uptime and downtime. But Season Group is applying the word “health” in a more common way; aiming for success by improving motivation, job satisfaction as well as the overall well-being of its employees. The idea is actually quite simple; invest in something that is inherently good in order to see positive effects. Randy explains that one of the key ways of reaching this is to replace the “us and them” mentality that might exist, and replacing this with a more unified “us”. He also underpins that one of the cornerstones in Season Group’s strategy to organisational health is that people need to have fun at the job. Our conversation underscored Randy’s quote from the press release: “It definitely is a differentiator – especially for an EMS manufacturer. I have also seen how quickly a company’s organizational health becomes ill and dies when it no longer is a focus.” So let me just drive this home to anyone who hasn’t caught on to why this is important. What might have been a key reasons that your favourite band broke up – talent took precedence over teamwork, ego was too important. The job for Randy now is going to all the Group’s different units to help the management and leadership teams to implement the company’s new core values: Be kind; be open; be cool (not the California kind, but rather keep your composure); be innovative; do what’s right; and don’t forget to have fun. And while the investment in itself doesn’t have an end goal, Randy has. “I want to work myself out of a job. If I do my job correctly, then we won’t have a need for this role in the company anymore. That is my goal. If everything is ingrained with every single employee, at every single level, then there is no need for me to do this.” “It’s undeniable the impact a healthy organization has on the bottom line. Study after study has proven that companies see a 10% increase in operating profit driven by their investments in culture,” Randy concludes. Let me leave you with a final thought. Picture this; you are taking a customer through your manufacturing facility and can either display a military style operation – or to a group of friends working together to take over the world; tell me, which one do you want to do business with?

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March 15 2024 2:25 pm V22.4.5-2
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