In a recent Great Place To Work (GPTW) survey of the Average American Workplace, only 35% of manufacturing employees report that their leaders involve them in decisions that impact them or seek out their ideas. Stryker bucks that trend. As a global manufacturing and production company, Stryker has developed an employee experience that engages its workforce, drives an innovative spirit, and fuels the company’s growth. In particular, Stryker actively works to engage its frontline managers which, according to GPTW research, are a difficult employee population for companies to reach. They are also one of the most important groups to build a strong engagement culture—they interact daily with line employees that make the company’s products and can cultivate or hinder an employee’s experience.
One-way Stryker works to build an innovative spirit is by listening to its employees’ suggestions at all levels of the organization and taking action on their ideas. For frontline managers, Stryker has created both formal and informal methods to gather feedback—from big idea fairs to engagement councils—that have improved Stryker’s workplace and products. Katy Fink, Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer, share in this presentation the key approaches Stryker has used to drive innovation in unexpected places and ultimately become one of the World’s Best Workplaces and the #1 Best Workplace in Manufacturing and Production.
