Nestlé

Enhancing performance through site-wide engagement

Nestlé is the world's biggest food and beverage company, with sales of some CHF87bn and a global workforce of almost a quarter of a million people. This assignment was undertaken with Nestlé Purina PetCare, one of ten core business areas.

A small unionised UK factory producing dry petfood was losing volume to sister factories and had a number of efficiency, quality and safety issues. Determined to reinvigorate the operation, the recently-appointed factory manager aimed to involve everyone on site in developing its full potential, so that any decisions on its future could be made on its true capability rather than its current performance. This meant gaining inputs from all the relevant stakeholders - those working in the factory as well as for the parent company.

Because this openly collaborative approach was in stark contrast to the previous manager's traditional command-and-control regime, one of the first questions was "how can we really get people excited about the idea of working differently?" Credibility became an important focus.

Wingivers helped to establish a team of volunteers who went on to design a major event for the whole site (120+ people) as the starting-point for a variety of continuous and step-change improvement projects. The design team - a judicious mix of 'bright young things' and time-served sceptics - became the ambassadors for the programme within the business. Enthusiasm grew as people across the site realised that, for the first time, their contributions were not only being listened to but also acted on.

Wingivers co-designed and co-ran the kick-off meeting with their characteristic 'light touch', facilitating the identification of key focus areas and follow-up actions, and subsequently providing remote support for the management team as they adjusted to the continuing involvement of shop-floor personnel in the decision-making process.

Following Wingivers' intervention, the factory succeeded in winning several new volume contracts from other European plants. The workforce also developed the capacity to take on a new product specification and 'productionise' it within just six weeks - a major advance, based on genuinely collaborative working. Beside all this, individual contributions and personal development were seen to have increased significantly across the operation.

In the event, Nestlé decided to close the factory for strategic reasons - yet it continued to achieve the highest performance figures for quality, safety and service of any plant in its product group, right through the period of compulsory redundancies. Following the closure, virtually all the workforce succeeded in finding gainful employment elsewhere in the locality.