I took it upon myself to address the whole workforce every four weeks. We set up a Learning Centre, capable of holding about 60-80 seated comfortably. I gave a visual presentation of where we were. New customers, new products, sales, all manner of statistic presented plainly and clearly. Based upon the same information used by directors and managers. I even shared, with all, profit achieved against plan. Good and bad. My fellow shareholders advised me not to share profit information with the workforce. The reaction was far from what I feared and much better than anticipated.
The first reaction; “If we are making a profit of £800,000 a year, how can we be spending £1.1m on new capital equipment?” I had to explain the concept of depreciation and how ‘cash was always king’. Cash was the business lubricant. Run out of that and you are in big trouble. Depreciation was a non-cash item. The second reaction was the realization of how tight the margins were. The business ran on a relative knife-edge, “we thought you took black bin-liners full of cash home every Friday.”
I took every opportunity to walk the shop floor. Usually by personally taking any visitors round. I was seen to be about. The workforce, in truth, likes to see the boss. Many CEOs don’t see the value in this. They are wrong.