Seagate
Technology, Inc. has been the world’s leading independent manufacturer of rigid
magnetic disks and disk drives for computers since the 1980s ("Seagate Technology, Inc."
International Directory of Company Histories. 2000). Seagate
Technology employs a total of 45,000 personnel (Max, 2006). The company
continues to continue to strive for innovation and quality. One reason why the
company has been so successful is due to it employees and how the company
trained their high performance teams. According to Brown (2011), team
development is a useful and successful vehicle for bringing about significant
changes in a team.
Developing high
performance teams increases the communication, cooperation, and cohesiveness of
work teams, resulting in increased organizational efficiency (Brown, 2011). To
develop and encourage it’s employees, Seagate has created the ultimate team-building
experience. This program is extremely
popular to its employees and is known as “Eco Seagate”. The company brings 200
high-performing employees to Queenstown, New Zealand (Max, 2006). This event is
an all pay expenses to participate in a one of kind experience in which it
tests all physical and emotional boundaries of endurance (Max, 2006). Seagate
spend $9,000 person, that’s a total of $180,000 for 200 employees. The program
boosts the employee morale, support office amity, and encourages teamwork (Max,
2006). The Eco Seagate is a week-long teambuilding program, which includes a
10-mile trek, 12- mile bike ride through mountain terrain, 3 mile in a kayak,
rappelling down cliff and team building activities (Max, 2006). This is an
effective way to keep morale and encourage innovative thinking within a team
and in my views a great value to the company. It is important to remember that
team development is only a part of an organization-wide change program that
values participation, collaboration, and the maximization of the use of human
resources (Brown, 2011).
With an
ever-changing world, with technology increasing at rapid pace, a company needs
to focus on increasing productively and effectiveness. One-way Seagate is doing
this is by developing it’s high performance teams. CFO Pope believes in this
program, and states "I consider this an investment,"(Max, 2006). At the
completion of the event, the employees reflected on the last week, in which
people from across the country with different backgrounds came together to work
as team to achieve all the objectives of the program.
In my opinion, we
can all learn from this program. In order to achieve greatness a leader must
invest in its followers. A company must look to toward the future with new and
fun ways to get its employees motivated like CEO Bill Watkins did. Tom Peters once said, “Leaders don’t create followers,
they create more leaders.”
Reference:
"Seagate Technology, Inc."
International Directory of Company Histories. 2000, & "Seagate
Technology, Inc." International Directory of Company Histories. 1994.
(2000). Seagate Technology, Inc. Retrieved October 25, 2015, from http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Seagate_Technology_Inc.aspx
Max, S. (2006, April 2). Seagate's
Morale-athon. Retrieved October 25, 2015, from http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2006-04-02/seagates-morale-athon
Brown, Donald R
(2011-01-11). Experiential Approach to Organization Development (8th Edition)
(Page 278). Pearson HE, Inc.
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