Work Culture

Employees as decision-makers

A people focused organization, BWIR centers all its decisions on how any new initiative will impact its employees. By Renuka Vembu

Headquartered in St Louis, Missouri, with primary operations in India, Barry-Wehmiller International Resources (BWIR) provides innovative business and technology solutions to the mid-market manufacturing domain.

BWIR has a set of principles called the Guiding Principles of Leadership that form the base of its unique culture. “Our value statement is ‘We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people’,” said Senthil Kumar, Vice-President & Senior Partner-Operations, BWIR.

The one aspect that makes them proud of the organization is that all policies, procedures, etc., are created around people. Whenever any new initiative is brought to the table, the first question that is asked is “How will it impact our people?” “Even during the downturn, we are proud to say that we have not retrenched any of our associates,” added Kumar.

At BWIR, any decision impacting the employees will have a representative forum discussing it, or in extreme cases go through an organization-wide referendum before the decision can be taken. “In more than one instance, we have had the employee referendum guiding our decision path. Be it cost cutting decisions or deciding a preferred location for our new office, employees have called the shots,” pointed out Kumar.

BWIR’s value system is embodied in the 10 principles called the Guiding Principles of Leadership (GPL), which forms a part of its ecosystem.

HR initiatives

Some of the key initiatives that make its work culture unique are:

• L3 – Living Legacy of Leadership: L3 is the Lean concept at BWIR, called Lean with a people face. In the normal industry parlance, Lean is a concept associated with ‘thin’ staffing and talks about using lesser resources to get your work done. Here the aim to get more out of existing resources, and not look at cutting resources.
• GPL Programs: Every associate is made to sit through a series of lectures, role plays, structure training, unstructured informal meetings, video discussions, etc., to understand and inculcate the Guiding Principles of Leadership. Each associate gets exposed to these programs within the first six months of joining BWIR, and thereafter becomes an evangelist of this culture and starts mentoring the new joinees.
• Star Club: The Star Club is a group of high performers at BWIR that has an annual rolling membership. To remain in the club for the second consecutive year, the associate will have to retain his performance level for that period. Star Club members get preference in organization level initiatives, representation of BWIR at national and international conferences, access to training, higher education sponsorships, etc.
• BW University: This is the corporate varsity at BWIR that offers various non-technical courses of the highest standard to associates of BWIR. The courses are backed by the best curriculum formulated by professors and industry experts and are very practical oriented programs ranging from L3, leadership and sales skills.

Evaluation of employees

The evaluation process is a very transparent one. It is a simple appraisee, appraiser, reviewer evaluation process, but the emphasis is on the involvement of the appraisee in each of these stages. Rather than being a one sided feedback session, BWIR encourages a two-way feedback and a joint appraisal to be conducted.

“Specifically at the senior management level, the appraisal includes a peer level review by all the other leadership team members,” stated Kumar. All evaluations give a large weightage to the adherence and demonstration of application of the Guiding Principles of Leadership in their roles and their contribution to the larger organization goals than just their KRAs.

Career development

“While people form the pinnacle of BWIR’s philosophies, we also clearly know that BWIR should form a similar place in our associates’ mind. While we have taken the time to choose our associates, we are pretty sure our associates have also taken the time to choose BWIR and feel we are responsible to provide them the best career progression,” said Kumar. BWIR charts out very clear paths of progression from each role to the other. An employee knows clearly the role that he is in currently and the progression in terms of future roles in the organization. Movement across functions is also offered to employees as part of internal job postings.

Corporate social responsibility

BWIR has been involved in CSR activities by donating stationeries, book, clothes, etc., to many charitable organizations Every year when the organization replenishes its computers, part of the replenished units are donated to schools. “One lead design engineer in Chennai has been sharing a part of his life and earnings with Aashna Children’s Home (governed by GR Memorial Trust, a non-profit organization) in Coimbatore established by him,” informed Kumar.

BWIR professionals are regularly giving their support and contributing in whatever way they can in various CSR initiatives.