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Article: Best office to share ideas.(Shearer's Foods Inc.)
- Article from:
- Inside Business
- Article date:
- September 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Great Lakes Publishing Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Bob Shearer issued a big challenge to his company last August: Find a way to cut costs at Shearer's Foods Inc. and everyone will get a raise. Otherwise, Shearer told them, they will have to forgo salary increases for 2008.
"We put the ball back in their court to come up with ideas," Shearer says. "They saw that they were the ones who were going to share in the cost savings. And they were motivated by it."
He gave them 30 days to turn in suggestions. By the end of four weeks, Shearer had 1,000 ideas from his 850 employees.
"A handful of those we did immediately," he says. "They were so simple."
The ideas focused on efficiency and ...