Loadhog: A purposeful framework for growth

Our brief

Loadhog is an employee-owned manufacturer of reusable supply chain packaging. Based in Sheffield, and part of the Glide group of businesses, Loadhog was founded on the back of significant innovation over 20 years ago.

Shaun Khan, Loadhog’s MD, approached us to see if we could help them codify their culture and make sense of their purpose, vision and mission. Having expanded into the US and, more recently, broken ground on their new factory in Obernai, France, the management team needed to engage and align their teams around a plan to grow significantly over the next 5 years. The new framework of purpose, values, vision and mission would help them do that and see them through more than just the next 5 years.

With 200+ people across various global locations and a wide diversity of job roles, it was crucial to create alignment across the organisation to achieve the levels of growth the business was striving for. Our initial recommendation was to involve as many team members as possible and give everyone a chance to make a meaningful contribution.

Our approach

Following discovery and onboarding conversations with the management team, we designed an approach centred around several streams of work with different groups from the team.

Our workshops were designed to work in sequence, first on purpose, vision and mission, then values. Once we’d completed these initial workshops we then ran a smaller, more contained session with the management team to take the initial drafts and turn them into working, guiding statements.

Our first workshop, with an extended senior management and leadership team, examined the business through three distinct lenses.

Firstly, the business itself, where it was going, its goals, aspirations and the potential challenges along the way. We witnessed a team fully engaged in their business, but alignment on various subjects was more tricky to find. We challenged their assumed position as market leaders, how they can prove a culture of innovation and tried to resolve the tension between innovation and a “we’ve always done it that way” culture.

Our second focus was customers and how Loadhog meets their needs. Through significant investment in innovation and sustainability, we were able to challenge the team on what they really deliver and their definitions of both innovation and sustainability.

Finally, we focussed on the employees of Loadhog, investigating how the employee voice could support a more cohesive culture, how learnings from other group companies might be used to Loadhog’s advantage, and how to communicate the new framework.

Following these early workshops, we expanded our gaze to the whole organisation. We ran values workshops which covered the entirety of the workforce, mainly based in Sheffield and in person, with the US and French workforce joining us online. This company-wide initiative clearly showed Loadhog’s commitment to the process, and to ensuring that everyone’s voices were heard. We introduced each session with drafts of the outputs from earlier workshops to start the process of internal communication. Again, we witnessed a highly engaged workforce and a culture of respect, creativity and, ultimately, friendship.

With all of the context and insight we gathered over the course of the engagement so far, we ran a final workshop with the senior management team to focus on workable, guiding values and to ensure that statements around purpose, vision and mission contained similar guidance for teams, and were couched in the language of Loadhog.

The framework we’ve helped Loadhog uncover makes sense of the past, present and future of the business. A purpose which focuses on the development of people and communities, a vision which offers a rallying call to all of Loadhog’s employees to embrace sustainability both from an environmental perspective and the perspective of long-term value, and a mission which speaks to ownership, innovation and growth. The values, literally drawn from the entirety of the workforce, speak of passion, creativity and ownership from a truly authentic perspective.

“Working with Harry and Arabella at Salad has been fantastic from start to finish. They made the whole process feel effortless, from our first meeting to the final release, and took the time to truly understand our vision and our people. They spent valuable time at our Sheffield office, connecting with every employee and the management team to listen, consult, and engage with us on a deeper level.”

Initial outcomes

Since our work with Loadhog, they’ve been working to operationalise the framework, creating strategic objectives which are focussed on sustainable growth, radiating from purpose and bound to their mission.

We’ve been able to support the creation of the strategy report that their senior team have presented to boards and other stakeholders, with creative services and copywriting as we’re now so familiar with the brand, the language and their perspective.

Operationalising values is the next step, followed by the wider communication of the strategic plan, purpose, vision and mission.

“When it came to refining the details, they embraced all our feedback and worked with us to shape a final product that felt powerful and authentic. Their attention to detail and creativity truly came through in the finished piece. Throughout, they handled everything seamlessly, which gave us real peace of mind. I’d highly recommend working with them.”

Lucy Ellis, Marketing Communication Manager

Empowering engagement

Our EO programme is designed to help you overcome the challenges of communication, alignment and engagement. Whether you’re anticipating going employee-owned, have recently transitioned, or are at a more advanced stage of employee ownership and need specific assistance, we can help.

Head over to our EO page, or get in touch to learn more about the programme.