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the time Primark had reached its
strongest phase of growth in the
2000s, its senior executives were
in their 60s and 70s. It was critical,
therefore, for directors to listen to
the young work force, who could
give insights into customer views.
Democratic management
Ricardo Semler, head of Brazil’s
Semco Group, is perhaps the
world’s most radical employer. He
believes that bosses need to move
beyond empowerment toward
worker fulfilment, even delight.
Born in 1959, Semler took over the
business from his father at the age
of 21. Between 1982 and 2003, he
drove Semco’s sales turnover from
$4 million to $200 million. On his
first day in the office, he fired nearly
two-thirds of the senior management
team, who he believed were too
rooted in his father’s autocratic
management style. In the late 1980s,
he backed a proposal by three ofMAKING MONEY WORK
his engineers to start a special new
business division. This became the
nucleus of a new Semco, developing
new ideas that soon generated 66
percent of the company’s business.
Semler’s leadership approach
is to encourage his work force to
manage themselves in terms of
time-keeping, work-scheduling,
and career development. By doing
so, he believes that workers will
truly care about what they do; this
means that they will inevitably be
taking care of not just the business,
but its customers too.
Semler describes his methods
in his book Maverick! (1993) and
outlines how much companies can
benefit from the staff engagement
that results. This approach has
become known as participative
management. It holds that people
are naturally capable of self-direction
if they are committed to corporate
goals. And when your workers are
your customers, the two sets of
goals become perfectly aligned. ■Clothing retailer Primark has built a
reputation for low-cost fashion in the
European ready-to-wear market. Its
success is due in no small part to the
opinions of its workers.Arthur Ryan
Born in Ireland in 1935, Arthur
Ryan is the founder of Primark.
After leaving school, Ryan
worked at a department store
and then a fashion wholesaler
in London before returning to
Dublin, where he worked for
retailer Dunnes Stores. In 1969,
Garfield Weston, CEO of
Associated British Foods (ABF),
hired Ryan to set up a discount
clothing chain with a seed fund
of $80,000 (£50,000). The first
store, Penneys, opened later that
year in Dublin, but Ryan changedthe name to Primark for the
business model that he was to
use in the UK, the Netherlands,
and Spain. From 1973 until his
retirement in 2009, Ryan built
up the business to change it
from being a “bargain” store to
an inexpensive, on-trend fashion
retailer. In 2013, Primark
employed more than 43,000 staff
in stores in Ireland, Spain, the
UK, Austria, Belgium, Portugal,
Germany, and the Netherlands.
ABF is still its parent company.
In the recessionary year of 2009,
Primark’s like-for-like sales grew
by more than 7 percent.Work should be a pleasure,
not an obligation ...
We believed that people
working with pleasure could
be much more productive.
Clóvis da Silva Bojikian
Brazilian former HR officer of Semco
(1934 –)