For many years, Southwire didn’t always feel the need to tell those outside what we were doing, let alone ask them what they thought we should do. We are still absorbing into our corporate culture the lessons we learned about transparency and responsiveness as a result of the dioxin concerns that surfaced in 2000.


Here’s a brief rundown of what we’re doing so far to maintain better relations with our important stakeholder groups.


Customers
Being candid with customers and responsive to customer concerns is a bedrock requirement for doing business successfully. Southwire has been good at customer relations for a long time. Our marketing, sales and engineering teams maintain close contact with customers, seeking always to know what they need so we can be ready to supply it. As products are developed or improved, Southwire conducts focus groups with end users to see what they like and what needs further tweaking.


Suppliers
Southwire’s sourcing managers have for many years worked closely with suppliers to ensure they know what we need and are ready to supply it. But our outreach to help suppliers improve their sustainability programs is new and essential to the success of our own sustainability effort. We will continue to work with our suppliers to collaboratively reduce our environmental footprints.


Employees
The key to Southwire’s success is its people. They make things run, and they have unique knowledge about how to make things run better. We encourage the sharing of ideas through open communication and surveys. Members of top management also have lunch and dinner regularly with randomly chosen employees, where company issues are discussed. We conduct opinion surveys to keep a pulse on employee morale to make sure we are properly responding to employees’ needs and concerns.


Communities
Our effort at building and sustaining a dialogue with communities is a new focus for Southwire. But, we’re learning fast.

We have two goals. First, we want to become a company that shares with our stakeholders – even hostile or critical stakeholders – news about our failures and problems as well as our accomplishments. Second, we want to become a company that seeks input from all our stakeholders – especially hostile or critical ones – on how we can do better.


Learning to be more transparent with our stakeholders and more responsive to their criticisms and concerns is the linchpin of improving our sustainability efforts.

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Transparency and Responsiveness

For many years, Southwire didn’t always feel the need to tell those outside what we were doing, let alone ask them what they thought we should do. We are still absorbing into our corporate culture the lessons we learned about transparency and responsiveness as a result of the dioxin concerns that surfaced in 2000.


Here’s a brief rundown of what we’re doing so far to maintain better relations with our important stakeholder groups.


Customers
Being candid with customers and responsive to customer concerns is a bedrock requirement for doing business successfully. Southwire has been good at customer relations for a long time. Our marketing, sales and engineering teams maintain close contact with customers, seeking always to know what they need so we can be ready to supply it. As products are developed or improved, Southwire conducts focus groups with end users to see what they like and what needs further tweaking.


Suppliers
Southwire’s sourcing managers have for many years worked closely with suppliers to ensure they know what we need and are ready to supply it. But our outreach to help suppliers improve their sustainability programs is new and essential to the success of our own sustainability effort. We will continue to work with our suppliers to collaboratively reduce our environmental footprints.


Employees
The key to Southwire’s success is its people. They make things run, and they have unique knowledge about how to make things run better. We encourage the sharing of ideas through open communication and surveys. Members of top management also have lunch and dinner regularly with randomly chosen employees, where company issues are discussed. We conduct opinion surveys to keep a pulse on employee morale to make sure we are properly responding to employees’ needs and concerns.


Communities
Our effort at building and sustaining a dialogue with communities is a new focus for Southwire. But, we’re learning fast.

We have two goals. First, we want to become a company that shares with our stakeholders – even hostile or critical stakeholders – news about our failures and problems as well as our accomplishments. Second, we want to become a company that seeks input from all our stakeholders – especially hostile or critical ones – on how we can do better.


Learning to be more transparent with our stakeholders and more responsive to their criticisms and concerns is the linchpin of improving our sustainability efforts.