The Greif Legacy: How Employee-Focused Leadership Creates Enduring Customer Trust
Customer Relationships Sustain a Century and a Half of Success
For nearly 150 years, Greif has been a leader in the industrial packaging industry, thriving in an extremely challenging business environment. This success comes from a commitment to cultivating long-term relationships -- with some lasting 50 years and counting.
Over the past seven years, Greif has enhanced the employee experience through engagement to elevate its customer experiences, producing undeniable results.
For leaders, the takeaway from Greif's experience is clear: prioritize employee engagement, empower managers and create an environment where employees thrive -- because when employees thrive, customer relationships flourish.
Uniting 15,000 People Around a Shared Vision of Success
Greif's aim was to align its workforce with a shared purpose and strategic mission, translating that experience into impeccable performance.
Establish a Framework Built on Communication, Trust and Development
Greif invested in its purpose-driven culture by implementing various clear, accessible initiatives while delivering measurable business results. Key elements of this framework include:
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1Employee Engagement
Greif leadership believes that engaging employees becomes more challenging the more a company succeeds at it. As a result, they developed a relentless focus on building trust and participation in their engagement programs, holding leaders accountable for their success. Specialized reporting to HR, action planning and teaching engagement best practices helped the programs win employees' trust.
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2Leadership Development
Greif teaches managers and leaders the principles of servant leadership, which prioritizes employees' welfare over the strict demands of profit and pursues organizational success through the development of individuals.
Leadership development programs -- known internally as "Lead to Last" -- equip managers with the skills to effectively lead and inspire their teams, recognizing leadership's pivotal role in driving engagement and shaping the employee experience.
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3Management Involvement
Recognizing that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, Greif invests heavily in its managers. Greif managers have team engagement conversations, quarterly check-ins and frequent one-on-one discussions to maintain meaningful employee connections.
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4Transparent Communication
Greif fosters a culture of open communication and transparency with regular global town halls, newsletters, an internal intranet and a continuous dialogue between leaders and employees. Under this philosophy, leadership consistently communicates the organization's highest priority goals, victories and challenges.
Leadership also promotes ongoing dialogue between leaders and employees. Along with the informal communication between managers and their teams, Greif has established formal feedback channels to ensure employees can share their opinions and concerns. This approach makes sure that every employee voice is heard during times of organizational change.
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5Recognition Systems
Greif implemented structured systems for recognizing and rewarding employees to promote engagement, encourage desired behaviors and show appreciation. Programs such as the Greif Champions Program, which recognizes global colleagues quarterly aligned to demonstrate our values, ties employee recognition to its culture, fostering employee performance, pride and loyalty.
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6Learning and Development
Greif University, the company's course library, offers over 21,000 courses, helping employees continually develop and advance their careers. This resource provides knowledge on career pathing, engagement offerings for leaders and individual contributors, and key content ranging from Lean Six Sigma to company-specific topics.
"When every leader talks and walks engagement, employees feel it, understand it, and live it out."-- Bala Sathyanarayanan, Chief Human Resources Officer at Greif
Transformative Outcomes for Engaged Teams
Over seven years, Greif has transformed critical business outcomes. Compared with their less engaged counterparts, highly engaged teams at Greif achieved:
Additionally, productivity measures soared, with 46% lower unplanned downtime and a 73% reduction in labor costs per unit.
With a Net Promoter Score of 70 -- one of the highest in the manufacturing sector -- Greif's employee-centric culture drives unmatched customer loyalty.
Engagement Isn't Purely an HR Initiative
It's a strategic method for unlocking untapped potential in a workforce. When employees feel cared for, connected, and purposeful, their enthusiasm becomes contagious, influencing colleagues, customers, and the bottom line.
