Nucor
How would you describe the culture of Nucor?
Nucor seems to possess a secret in the business world, a lost art regarding to how to treat employees. To think that engineers and supervisors alike would sacrifice their weekends to help out a sister plant with a failing grid and not one person was asked by their direct manager to assist is an amazing healthy team culture. A performance driven company with a team building component that rewards the whole versus the minority only when they have been profitable is a rarity in corporate America today. By flattening the hierarchy and giving the power to the front lines of the company, Nucor has created a culture that fosters and encourages owner-operators. In a sense they have developed a belief system in their employees to make decisions and win or lose by them as a company. Even the CEO’s compensation is affected based on this strategy, he will only earn his full salary and structured bonuses if and only if the company performs well. Based on my readings I would classify Nucor as an organic business model with a strong emphasis on team building because they focused on maximizing employee satisfaction, which in turn increased their client’s satisfaction and generated profitable sales.
Why is the type of executive pay practice at Nucor not found in many other companies?
In my opinion, there is a flaw in corporate America’s executive compensation plans. The mischief and deceit was easily cloaked behind a warped understanding of capitalism and a falsified risk/reward system. It took the likes of Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Anderson to bring this truth to light and ultimately expose the heart of the issue, a high percentage of executive pay being solely based upon lucrative stock options. Unfortunately, almost a decade later and America was faced with another form of corporate greed when companies like Bear Sterns, Country Wide, and almost every financial institution bundled debt commodities and sold them as
Nucor seems to possess a secret in the business world, a lost art regarding to how to treat employees. To think that engineers and supervisors alike would sacrifice their weekends to help out a sister plant with a failing grid and not one person was asked by their direct manager to assist is an amazing healthy team culture. A performance driven company with a team building component that rewards the whole versus the minority only when they have been profitable is a rarity in corporate America today. By flattening the hierarchy and giving the power to the front lines of the company, Nucor has created a culture that fosters and encourages owner-operators. In a sense they have developed a belief system in their employees to make decisions and win or lose by them as a company. Even the CEO’s compensation is affected based on this strategy, he will only earn his full salary and structured bonuses if and only if the company performs well. Based on my readings I would classify Nucor as an organic business model with a strong emphasis on team building because they focused on maximizing employee satisfaction, which in turn increased their client’s satisfaction and generated profitable sales.
Why is the type of executive pay practice at Nucor not found in many other companies?
In my opinion, there is a flaw in corporate America’s executive compensation plans. The mischief and deceit was easily cloaked behind a warped understanding of capitalism and a falsified risk/reward system. It took the likes of Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Anderson to bring this truth to light and ultimately expose the heart of the issue, a high percentage of executive pay being solely based upon lucrative stock options. Unfortunately, almost a decade later and America was faced with another form of corporate greed when companies like Bear Sterns, Country Wide, and almost every financial institution bundled debt commodities and sold them as