A631.1.5.RB - EcoSeagate

         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.