Reflexite Corporation had been doing brisk business outfitting the world with traffic control and safety materials since its founding in 1970. "It was all focused on one market, and business grew like gangbusters. But in the late '90s that started to plateau," CEO Mike Foley says.
The organization then turned its optical engineering, microreplication and polymer processing to new, differentiated products for global markets. Reflexite's Director of Marketing and Global Specifications, Brook Jerzyk, explains that this "wider optics net" attracted more diverse talent, broadening their position in a market of uniquely engineered optical microstructures. Products made from various plastic substrates included a variety of new optics, such as a high-end lens that focuses sunlight into a solar cell.
| Watch more Top Small Workplaces videos on YouTube – click here. |
"Our product right now is in the World Record system for solar efficiency," boasts Foley, adding that, "The world's moving in the direction of solid state technologies, which is an area where we can have a lot of impact." Increased material costs have forced operations to become more efficient (the company currently reclaims or reuses nearly all plastic waste), but he argues that it's their recent advances in product efficiency that will have the greatest green impact on the future.
"We think it makes good business sense, and it just makes you feel even better that it makes good environmental sense as well," Foley says.
Yet, while Reflexite's learning and development curve in terms of the market and the resulting financial soundness of the firm elevated it as one to watch among the 2007 Top Small Workplaces applicant pool, it was their concurrent commitment to also ramping up its people practices that pegged it as one of the 15 winners.
Take, for instance, employee ownership. Back in 1985, the founding brothers, Hugh and Bill Rowland, proposed an ESOP to transfer stock from their hands to the employees, establishing what would soon become the largest shareholder in the company. The owners wanted to avoid selling the company, but Foley says people were a bit skeptical about it because "They essentially replaced a defined pension plan with a new ESOP program."
The founders felt the key to fostering this new ownership would be to provide information to their people, getting them involved in decision making and then sharing the rewards. "This combination helped to create and reinforce a vision that everyone could buy into," says Jerzyk.
An ESOP allocation of at least 3 percent of total pay is currently paired with another 3 percent slice of total pay that is placed into each employee's Safe Harbor 401(k) plan. Employees love this arrangement, especially since they still have the option of a traditional 401(k) plan (with company match) and – just as important – "The amount of information provided to the entire workforce on a monthly basis is remarkable," according to Bill Ludwig, Casting Team Leader. Ludwig also likes the practice because it's both a motivator in good times and a strategy tool in tough times.
The key, argues Foley, is creating a culture of ownership which extends beyond the ESOP and rests heavily on training and communication. All employee-owners are educated on how to read balance sheets and income statements, learning how their daily activities influence the bottom line. Outside of the financials, Town Hall meetings are vitally important at Reflexite, especially when major issues are being considered.
Perhaps the best example of Reflexite's culture of ownership in action is the "Reflexite Quality System," which was developed to give employees a common language to express their ownership of the firm. The system encompasses the official rules of operation given to each employee, the training to judge what makes sense from a financial standpoint and the freedom, know-how and accountability for "doing anything people think makes sense," Foley says.
With this much focus on ownership, it may come as little surprise that Reflexite's over 500 employees logged an average of 720 formal training and development hours last year. They attended technical seminars as well as those focused on mentorship, leadership development and succession planning.
Like many of the other 2007 Top Small Workplaces, Reflexite is also known for a highly evolved recruiting process, which Foley says includes 16 steps. He says that investment in staff, and the creation of a comfortable work environment, lead to longer tenures.
Employees have an annual dialogue with their supervisors on their career development plans. This dialogue addresses their strengths and weaknesses and what they can work on in the next year to improve themselves.
"Our employees have come to demand it," Foley says. "They want to know where they stand."
And it appears that while communication is a two-way street at Reflexite, it is one that has no endpoint. "We always find we can do more," Foley says. Comprehensive third-party employee surveys routinely receive response rates of over 90 percent. This year they mentioned an increased desire for more non-compensation-based recognition and even better communication.
Citing a staff full of personalities never satisfied with the status quo, Foley faces the challenge of giving feedback to a very proactive, knowledge-hungry team. As such, he says Reflexite has found live video and audio feeds to be a fantastic tool for keeping in touch with his global staff.
"When we had a handful of locations in the Northeast U.S., I could fly in one day and everyone would hear the presentation straight from me," Foley says. "But now we have people all over the world. Even sales people in a remote office on the West Coast can feel like they don't know what's going on, so we're always trying to make sure communication is improving."
Join us on May 21 when Mike Foley presents a webinar for Winning Workplaces, on developing an ownership mentality among employees, along with Bill Marshall, the CEO of 2007 Top Small Workplace Phelps County Bank.
Company: Reflexite Corporation
Web site: www.reflexite.com
Industry: Manufacturing
Location: Avon, CT
Number of Employees: 515
Sales: $85 million
Read more in our Manufacturing Success Stories archive.