By Joseph Lamena and Melissa Coupe

• Has flexible working hours to suit you. Because at
Semco they believe everyone works at different speeds, so they do their best to suit to every employee’s desires and needs.
• Has no organization chart, you run the sector you’re in.
• Gives you the employee a chance to voice own opinions on new workers.
• Offers you to express your decorating skills on your working area. At Semco they want employees to feel free to change and adapt their working areas as they please. Painting walls or machines, adding plants or decorating the space around you is up to you.
• Has no uniform. At Semco either clothing or appearance has any importance. All that they ask is you wear your common sense.

• Taking strikes are considered normal. At Semco they believe strikes represent that person’s feelings about the company. No consequences or punishment are given to employees who choose to strike.
• Your opinion matters. At Semco our philosophy is built on participation and involvement.
• After three years of working or after you reach the age of fifty you are protected by the company. At Semco no one can be dismissed without long series of approvals.
We try to increase the security of our employees.
• Keeps all private life private. At Semco everyone knows his/hers private life and a person’s private affairs are considered scared by the company.
• You get to set your wages and product activity targets and select you own managers.

• Gives you 30 days off a year to holiday. At Semco vacation is vital for health and the company’s welfare.
• Manufactures over two thousand different products, including marine pumps, commercial dishwashers, and digital scanners, filters, mixing equipment, diversified into baking and environmental services.
• That believes the key to management is to get rid of the managers. The key to getting work done on time is to stop wearing a watch. The best way to invest corporate profits is to give them to the employees. The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working shifts or top executives, feel good about life.

• Is based on three interdependent core values: employee participation, profit sharing and free flow of information.
• Its own president of the company Ricardo
Semler, author of two books: Maverick and
The seven day weekend. Published in over 200 magazines and newspapers, including of Time highlighting future world leaders. Named one of the global leaders of tomorrow by the economic forum in Switzerland.

Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler turned business convention on its head when he took over the relatively small family engineering firm Semco, introducing radical fall of participative management giving workers a rather an extraordinary say in the running of the company. As one of Latin America’s fastest growing companies Semco’s workforce has gone from a few hundred to 5 thousand. The turnover from about $40 million a year to $1 billion and the profits just keep going up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCcQ4XS7Js

• www.leighbureau.com/speaker.asp?id=186
• www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Semler
• www.cionisght.com/c/a/Expert-
Voices?Ricardo-Semler-Set-Them_free/1/
• www.saludygestion.com/archives/Ricardo%20
Semler%20&20%Semco,%20Thunderbird.pdf
• Maverick by Ricardo Semler (1993)
• YouTube: interview with Ricardo Semler