Building and Maintaining Relationships

Building and Maintaining Relationships

Relationships with both his customers and his employees, is one of the things that Jack Welch values most. He strives to be known informally on a first name basis. His employees refer to him as “Jack” instead of Mr. Welch. He also speaks personally with each of his employees and spends time getting to know each and every one of them. His employees are an integral part of his family, and he treats them as such by disciplining them when they need discipline and rewarding them when they excel at their work.

One of Jack Welch’s personal philosophies is that customer satisfaction and positive relationships with both his customers and his employees is what will ultimately lead a business to its success. Therefore, to help his business become successful, he is compelled to build long-standing relationships with his employees. It is difficult being a CEO for a company and having the time to speak directly with each employee. If Jack Welch needed to say something to an employee but was not able to directly speak to him, he would fax handwritten notes to those employees within the company. Sometimes these handwritten notes would include motivating, correcting, or congratulating those that he felt deserved personal communication from both top management to laborers.

Jack Welch’s employees enjoyed receiving notes from the boss, but they were even more excited when they received monetary rewards for their hard work. To determine which of his employees received bonuses for their hard work and which ones did not, Jack Welch established something known as the performance-review program, where he would evaluate people based on how well they were performing. From there, he separated the employees into two categories: the top twenty percent and the bottom ten percent. The top twenty percent of the employees were the ones who received bonuses. The bottom ten percent of the employees were fired and replaced. Jack Welch supported the...