The Wray & Nephew COVID-19 spirit of no staff cut, no pay chop

As one of the companies that acknowledged, potentially, an early case of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), J Wray & Nephew had to stay above the waters, acting in a spirit of control to ward off the unwelcome evil.

Apart from the separation of staff in its sugar business, which was planned long before COVID-19 struck, the company, part of the Italy-based Campari Group, has maintained the distinction of being one of few in Jamaica not to have cut staff from its core business, or slashed wages and salaries, despite the downturn in sales and production.

Such a situation, according to the company’s senior director for human resources, Jacqueline “Jackie” Cuthbert, was carefully planned and executed, and has been working out in the best interest of all concerned, since COVID-19 engulfed the world almost nine months ago.

“One advantage is that we are part of a big international picture, and what we love is that the Campari Group has the same outlook on people at the centre of our operations,” Cuthbert told the Jamaica Observer in a midweek interview.

“From a group-wide principle, we decided that the starting point was that we would not cut salaries. It would have to get so bad that we couldn’t define what bad looks like. We are not there yet, but up until now we have seen no need to, from a financial position. Like other industries, we have been impacted. We also honoured bonus payments. Not only did the employees not receive pay cuts, they also received full bonuses. So when we, for example, had to shut down our Joy Spence Rum Experience (St Elizabeth), unlike other companies in the leisure industry, all employees continued to be paid. We got very smart in allowing those employees to work in other parts of our business, as far as they could, but their pay was protected,” Cuthbert stated.

In the situation, the company was forced to go into its financial reserves, a telling thump that it committed to bearing. There, too, was a group guideline that cutting salaries was not the direction that the company should go.

“For a business, you start with a budget. We recognised that a lot of our employees live week to week on what they earn. Yes, we suffered some pain, but the pain was digestible, given that we realise that so many of our employees rely on their salaries. At some point a company will have to make a tough call, but we are not there yet,” she reiterated.

The workers too, Cuthbert beamed, had shown their appreciation with what has been achieved at the 195-year-old company, which recently launched its Global Great Place to Work survey, to get answers to what the organisation does.

“The number of e-mails that I and other members of management got about the general heartfelt appreciation is amazing, because the workers connect with other people and they realise that their colleagues and friends are being made redundant, or have had pay cuts, or struggling working from home because their companies are not supporting them. So by default I think we have improved engagement and loyalty even more and I think it is demonstrated that we are a leadership team that puts people at the heart of the operations,” Cuthbert said.

The senior manager, who was born in West London, England, of a St Thomas, Jamaica father and Kingston mother, had worked in senior positions in the United Kingdom and Europe before coming to Jamaica. It was, to her, a pleasant surprise at the lower end, to a “mind-boggling experience” at the higher end, for a newcomer to have achieved strong collaboration with union officers, including three main ones, who have so fully cooperated with the production process not only since the advent of COVID-19, but also in terms of the sugar divestment which saw around 350 workers mainly at Appleton Estates blemished by redundancies.

But what will J Wray & Nephew’s trailblazing decision of not cutting staff or salaries do to other companies which may say that the liquor producer is making things bad for them?

“I hope they say we are making things bad for them,” was Cuthbert’s swift response.

“You need to raise the benchmark of employee welfare in general. I think specifically that the majority of the population are not earning a huge amount of money, living in virtually small accommodations, and we expect them to continue to work and to produce, with no support from the companies. Now it depends on the financial situation of the company, but if the company has a budget that focuses on the employees and they are smart in how they employ that budget in an innovative way, which does not come across as gimmicky, but in a way of working and supporting staff, then it can work.

“I hope to think that we are trailblazers. I thought it was the right thing to do, but based on feedback it turned out that what we are doing is unique. The approach we are taking is two-fold. It is addressing the pain points for employees during COVID, and it’s also important to look at the impact long term. What we are looking at is not gimmicks. This is a new norm – looking at different ways of how we do things,” she said.

And as COVID-19 has shifted the way that people operate, J Wray & Nephew has looked further ahead in preparing its numbers even for the unknown.

“We quickly moved to an online platform for training, and through that we delivered training for management in recognising and dealing with stress, because you realise that now leaders have to step up and go beyond just directing people on how to do their job, but moving more to one of empathy and recognising that it is much more of a challenge managing remotely. So we developed a new leadership thinking of how to manage remotely, how to spot stress, how to motivate and we were well received.

“For our remote workers, we launched this series of health and safety training at home. Our responsibility for their welfare extends to their home environment,” Cuthbert told the Sunday Observer about the organisation that pre-COVID-19 was down the pitch with plans to introduce pay for performance, or as some would call it, performance-based pay.

“My international experience has focused on culture. How do you make people successfully engaged … you don’t have high turnover and people love to work for your company. It’s not just the great things that you give away, but the principles behind it — that you work hard for us and we reward you – we are in this thing together. That’s been our motto — Stronger Together!

“One of the things I am personally pleased about is that having made that tough call that we were going to divest our sugar business, the fact that we were able to do so and say goodbye to over 350 employees and in a way that they appreciated and what we did and there was no backlash, which was partly to do with the cooperation of the unions was great. It was really about getting people to understand why we were going into that direction, projecting the social side too, in terms of reinvesting in education, and being able to continue our scholarship programmes for children of employees,” Cuthbert ended.