Translations

COSUCRA staff, decisions makers of the Belgian company’s direction

1. Organizational Governance

Strategy and organization

Sector Food-processing

Year 2016

Country France

Transmitter

Context

Belgian family company created in 1854, COSUCRA is the world leader in vegetable protein production from peas and fibers extracted from chicory. COSUCRA has 250 employees and transforms more than 200 000 tons of agricultural products exported to 45 countries. Based on its expansion, COSUCRA chose to reinvent its internal organization by placing employees at the center of decisions making through implementing collaborative management.

Objectives

Involve all of the staff in order to promote taking initiative and creativity
To be transparent regarding decided measures and to make information accessible to all
Decentralize decision making, more towards the bottom
Increase and diversity projects to grow performance
Work on a common goal

APPROACH

In 2014, COSUCRA, asked itself how it would manage difficulties more efficiently when it came to the production and distribution of its products in more than 40 countries.

Thus, in February 2015, under the influence of Frederic Laloux, « Reinventing Organizations », COSUCRA announced its will to give its staff power and decentralize the majority of decisions.

Many work groups were created as a result in order to :

• Define values that will guide upcoming decisions

• Redesign a new organization where each member will be the actor of his or her proposal

Today, in the scope of collaborative management, staff groups have been created, allowing for the adoption of business focused decisions across different markets.

The goal to date is to abolish the traditional management model in order to pass the microphone to staff for the majority of decisions.

In terms of the employee satisfaction, COSUCRA envisions integrating surveys in the company.

CONTRIBUTION TO COMPANY PERFORMANCE

An empowered company allowed to avoid the decrease in revenue for COSUCRA
The proposition to change working hours allowed to increase productivity by 5% in the work context. (http://idsolution-blog.com/cosucra_forumouvert/)

Benefits

The cause and effect between collaborative management and decisions/objectives of the company : decisions made by the departments of higher lever to those awaited by Management.
Employee participation and involvement beyond the limit of their work: the “low-level” categories (workers and assistants) reveals their competencies
The COMEX has to have the authorization from the division in order to participate in their meetings
Employees trained in sociocracy on demand in order to have a true leader roles during meetings
The integration was difficult because there was a lot of mental differences that displayed an unwillingness for this type of management.