Scania Group: Continuous improvement is what drives us and makes us succesful
Social innovation acts as a flywheel for improving an organisation. Betsie Grube, HR & Communications Manager at Scania Production, supports this point of view. “We have operated under the LEAN system for 15 years. We constantly involve our employees in the strengthening of our organisation. It makes us more and more effective and ensures that our trucks are always of the highest quality.”
The key to quality
With its 1600 employees, Scania Production manufactures trucks for more than 60 countries.
“We want to be the best truck manufacturer in Europe. We will achieve this by focusing on our core values: we put our customers first, we have respect for our employees in all areas and we cherish our culture of continuous improvement. We want to keep on encouraging our employees to put forward any suggestions they may have for improvement and then go on to actually do something with them. If we keep these elements high on our priority list, we will certainly succeed in our ambitions”, says Grube passionately.
Pride in the organisation
“We work with the very latest techniques. We are an organisation that uses very professional working methods in a professional work environment, and yet our culture resembles that of a family business. This makes our people immensely proud, loyal and committed. Our employees are closely connected with the product. In terms of technology, they want to be ahead of the field and be among the best. They are proud of the product as well as the way they manufacture it. I often hear the children of our employees say that they know exactly which trucks were made by their mum or dad. Each year, we get more than 10,000 visitors to our company wanting to learn about our working methods. To us, this is further confirmation that we are doing things right.”
Good employership is about much more than pay
“We offer our employees a trusted and safe work environment. We reward them properly and now and then give them a little extra. We want people to enjoy going to work and be able to improve all the time. This is what we make possible and it is how we keep the best people loyal to us for a longer period.”
“We have respect for our employees in all areas and we cherish our culture of continuous improvement”
Sustainable employability is clearly a key theme at Scania. “We have respect for our employees and that means more than just pay. We help them remain fit for duty; for example, by supporting them extensively in improving and changing. We help them through various programmes that maintain their physical and mental strength. Through these programmes we pay a great deal of attention to food, drink and other behavioural patterns that help, or sometimes don’t help them, to keep healthy.”
Continuous improvement as a success factor
“We want to continually monitor what our employees think about our organisation. This is a major part of our strategy. The employee survey makes this possible. Every three or four months, we gauge how our employees feel about their job, which means we are always aware of the potential for improvement and are able to take rapid action. This makes people enthusiastic and has been of great benefit to us, with our employee satisfaction levels having risen sharply over recent years.”