Welser Profile

Welser Profile at a glance

Welser Profile is a family business that has been working with steel for eleven generations. Founded in 1664, it began its activity with the opening of a stove forge. 

At the end of the First World War, the construction of a stamping plant and the conversion of traditional hydroelectric power to turbine power heralded a new era for the company. In 1960, the company began producing rolled sections, marking a decisive turning point in its history.

Today, Welser Profile is recognized worldwide as a specialist in the development and production of steel profiles.

Key figures :

• 2,400 employees
• 5 production sites in Austria, Germany and the United States
• 11 sales offices in Europe
• 24,500 cross-sections designed and produced

Raison d'être: Passionate people create opportunities for generations to come.

Website: https: //www.welser.com/

Context 

Five years ago, working in silos was commonplace at Welser Profile. Each department set its own objectives, which led to a lack of alignment and agility, and prevented the company from adapting quickly to market changes. 

In 2018, Welser Profile decided to make a fresh start by launching an ambitious project: reinventing its corporate culture. The aim? To instill more trust, strengthen collaboration and empower teams, while bringing everyone together around a common raison d'être.

As Karl Teufl, who has been with the company for 30 years, explains: "We wanted to develop a more agile mindset and align teams around common goals. So we started by defining our raison d'être, to lay the foundations for our organizational transformation."

In search of a method to structure this change, Welser Profile turned to a hybrid model inspired by Holacracy. This model proved to be the ideal solution for reinforcing team agility and autonomy. To support this transition and anchor this new operating mode, the company chose the Talkspirit platform.

Challenges

• Organizational silos: Each department operated autonomously with its own objectives, limiting overall alignment and cross-team collaboration.
• Lack of agility: Lack of coordination hampered the company's ability to adapt quickly to a constantly changing environment.
• Lack of shared purpose: Teams lacked a common framework to guide their actions and align their efforts towards collective goals.
• Operational constraints: As a production company, Welser Profile faces some unique challenges. For example, its production line runs continuously 24/7, which is not compatible with the Holacratie methodology.

Why Talkspirit

Several key arguments convinced Welser Profile to implement the Talkspirit platform: 

• Its intuitive, agile interface makes it easy to implement governance changes.
• It's all-in-one: all the essential functionalities are integrated, for both governance and collaboration. And they're compatible with several methodologies, including Holacracy!
• A top-notch team, always ready to listen to customers' requests and suggestions.

Terms of deployment

• Pilot test: Talkspirit deployment began in 2022 with a one-year test in the Finance department.
• Gradual roll-out: Following this initial success, use of the platform was extended to the whole company, department by department. Currently, the platform has 800 users. However, the aim is for all the company's employees (over 2,000) to have read-only access to the platform.
• Hybrid approach: The company has created its own model - the "Welser Organizational System" - which combines the principles of Holacracy and traditional structures, to meet its specific needs.
• Change of mentality: The change of mentality was initiated by the company's top management and managers, a key step in encouraging buy-in and facilitating the transition within teams.
• Employee support: A "Talkspirit guru" role and a knowledge base (including tutorials and FAQs) have been set up to help teams with ongoing self-training.

Functionalities used

On a day-to-day basis, the company mainly uses : 

• Dynamic organization chart allows you to view and modify roles, and ensures a clear division of responsibilities.
• Meetings Meetings: facilitate synchronization between different teams.

Welser Profile also plans to introduce the Projects module to centralize task management, and the OKR module to facilitate goal definition and alignment.

Benefits identified

The cultural transformation initiated by Welser Profile has brought many benefits:

• Alignment of objectives: All teams now work around a common raison d'être and a single objective shared by all circles, reinforcing collaboration and cohesion.
• Trust and collaboration: By building mutual trust, departments work together to solve customer problems.
• Empowerment : The role-based structure has reinforced employees' sense of responsibility, making them feel more autonomous in their missions.
• Taking the initiative: Employees in all circles actively put forward ideas to develop their roles, fostering a positive dynamic within the organization.
• Harnessing talent: Each employee can take on different roles according to their skills (not their job description). They can also develop their roles in an agile way, which is an essential asset in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world.

In short, this transformation has enabled Welser Profile to build a more agile, collaborative and forward-looking organization.

Read more about Welser Profile's implementation of Talkspirit in this article.