Building a Culture of Empowerment at BM Silo

Join our Free webinar and a virtual visit to meet Dorte Martinsen and some of the BM Silo workforce

A unique opportunity for in-depth exploration of a unique company

How do you empower your employees to create a customer-focused organisation?

In 2009 Dorte Zacho Martinsen had no background in management when she took over as CEO of family-owned BM Silo, a Danish SME producing agricultural products. The company was in crisis, halving its workforce due to the economic climate, and its future looked uncertain. Dorte’s one stipulation was that she should run the company in her own way. Her vision was for BM Silo to compete through innovation led by its people.

Every member of her largely unskilled workforce was encouraged and enabled to take up vocational education and development opportunities. She introduced employee-led working groups to create smarter ways of working, more responsive to “what the customer would like”. Self-organised teams manage their own rosters to reflect each member’s family circumstances – with the result that machine utilisation actually increased! Multi-skilling ensures that everyone is flexible across the whole production process, while self-organised teamworking releases management to focus on building the business.

All this prepared the way for the arrival of the robots. Workforce fears of job loss gradually disappeared when Dorte encouraged people to take up programming courses and “play with the robots”. They played, and found ways in which the new technologies enhanced their jobs, minimising heavy and repetitive work.

In Dorte’s words, BM Silo recruits people in the labour market “that nobody else wants”, not just the unskilled but people with learning difficulties. She sees the potential, and invests in realising it.

The result: a return to pre-2009 levels of employment, a remarkable throughput time of 3 hours from order to completion, and a profitable increase in exports from 50 – 90%.