Layoffs have become a familiar reality for many businesses, but one family-owned Missouri manufacturer has managed to avoid them for an extraordinary 75 years.
The Gund Company, based in St. Louis, produces and fabricates engineered materials. According to a new report, the company credits a set of guiding principles with helping retain all 1,300 members of its workforce.
That unusual record has attracted attention from business leaders across the country. CEOs have been visiting the company’s headquarters to learn how the family-run firm has avoided layoffs for decades, The Wall Street Journal reported.
CEO Steve Gund told the publication that one of the company’s most important practices is placing employees’ needs ahead of immediate profits.
As the third-generation leader of The Gund Company, Steve said he hopes the strategy can serve as a model for other businesses, particularly family-owned companies.
“It sounds touchy-feely, but it’s profitable,” the 55-year-old executive said.
The company also avoids hiring more people than it needs and creates a culture in which employees are encouraged to raise concerns every day.
Workers can record problems on red cards posted around the factory floor, allowing management to see the issues and respond quickly, according to the report.
The St. Louis-based Gund Company has operated for 75 years without carrying out a single layoff
Steve Gund (right) leads The Gund Company as its third-generation CEO. His brother Rich Gund (left) serves as chairman and COO, while their father, Paul (front center), joined the business in 1963
Career-development plans are also provided to every employee, regardless of position or seniority, the company told the Journal.
As word of the company’s growth and no-layoff record has spread, executives from other firms have begun traveling to St. Louis to study its approach firsthand.
Among them were Don Taylor, CEO of Ohio-based Welty Enterprises, and his son Michael Taylor, who is part of the company’s executive team.
The pair had heard about Gund’s management style from other business leaders and wanted to see how the operation worked for themselves, the report said.
“Hopefully we can mimic some of that,” Don told the publication.
Steve emphasized, however, that the company’s success was built gradually. He joined the family business with his brother Rich in the early 1990s.
In those early days, the brothers worked on spare parts for generators and other industrial machinery. Rich now serves as the company’s chairman and chief operating officer.
The business was generating $2.7 million in yearly revenue at the time and employed just 20 people, including nine members of the Gund family.
Steve recalled an intense atmosphere, comparing it to a restaurant kitchen where “a lot of screaming and yelling” was taking place.
A business adviser eventually helped the family recognize that a detailed, long-term growth strategy was essential if the company was going to expand and remain successful, Steve said.
DON’T MISS: Alabama Man Accused of Decapitating Family Hours After 911 Warning
Don Taylor (right), the CEO of Ohio’s Welty Enterprises, traveled to St Louis with his son Michael Taylor (left), who is also on the company’s executive team, to check out The Gund Company’s ways that they hope to adopt
Other keys to the company’s success are that they do not overstaff, and they encourage workers to voice their concerns daily
Steve also said that his father, Paul Gund, said there wouldn’t be layoffs because that would mean the company’s leadership failed, Steve recalled.
And to push it all a step further, Gund also introduced a stock ownership plan for US staff in 2009.
By 2025, workers owned 30 percent of the company through that program, the report stated.
Steve has also credited the employee-first mentality the company has adopted to another local business owner, Bob Chapman.
Chapman, the CEO of the machine industry company Barry-Wehmiller, inspired Steve back in 2015 when Gund’s board had faced the challenge of returning the business to a 15 percent compounded annual growth rate after slow sales.
But Steve was more interested in helping those who needed it instead of investing all of his efforts into running the business, and Chapman helped him see that.
‘You’re trying to alleviate homelessness by going and working in a soup kitchen or handing out blankets,’ Chapman told him, according to Steve.
Nearly a century after Steve’s grandfather, Ed Gund, pivoted from selling candy to launching the company in 1951, the firm is nearing $400 million in sales and works with well-known companies like Rockwell Automation and General Electric
Chapman added: ‘Why don’t you employ people?’
Steve now abides by a self-made 12-point management system that he says includes a ‘paternal level of care’ for the workplace.
And all of those moves also help employees move up the ranks and prove themselves, including Diedra Jones.
Jones, 33, started as a janitor for the company 16 years ago before becoming a receptionist and then a customer service representative.
At the time, the cleaning job was one of four that she had, and all the while, she was taking care of her child as a single mother, Jones explained.
Eventually, she was nominated by her coworkers for a leadership role that sees her travel the world for Gund presently.
‘My dreams and my aspirations are what no one in my family has ever even thought was on the road map,’ Jones said.
Nearly a century after Steve’s grandfather, Ed Gund, pivoted from selling candy to launching the company in 1951, the firm is nearing $400 million in sales and works with well-known companies like Rockwell Automation and General Electric.
While the company is headquartered in St Louis, it has several manufacturing facilities across the nation, including in New York, Texas, California, Wisconsin, Indiana and more.