Steve Gund is the CEO of a third-generation manufacturing company that has averaged 18% annual growth for a decade and zero layoffs during the same time period. The Wall Street Journal honored this accomplishment with this Page 1 headline: “Bosses Seek Secrets of Firm With No Layoffs in 75 Years.”
In this post, we will review what makes The Gund Company unique and what ideas can and cannot be utilized in your organization.
What Comes First: Revenue or Employee Well-Being?
Ed Gund started a materials company in 1951. Now approaching $400 million in annual sales, the Gund Company provides components for industrial customers such as General Electric and Rockwell Automation. According to CEO Steve Gund, the company has a culture that puts its 1,300 employees’ well-being over short-term profit. Says Gund, ”It sounds touchy-feely, but it is profitable” (Pohle, 2026).
What Does Gund Do That’s Special?
- Hire sparingly so employees can weather leaner times while working harder when times are good.
- Employees are encouraged to communicate directly with the CEO and go outside the hierarchy by writing their ideas and concerns on red cards posted around the office.
- Each year, every employee creates an individual development plan separate and distinct from the company compensation program. Where does the employee wish to go with his/her career, and how can the company help?
- Company financials are posted throughout the company. Financials involve categories including: (A) Taking Care of Business; (B) Taking Care of Customers Through On-Time Delivery and Meeting Quality Goals; (C) Taking Care of Each Other Through Low Injury Occurrences, Recognizing Peer Accomplishments, and Helping Peers Manage Personal Crisis.
“Business Structure Beats Good Intentions”
President Gund says, “We’re in the bowels of industrial manufacturing. If we can do this, anybody can do this.” Sadly, we must disagree.
The Gund Company is a privately owned company with an employee stock ownership program (ESOP) where workers own 30% of the equity. A corporate structure like this mandates boards of directors and CEOs take corporate culture seriously.
When companies go public or become private equity portfolio companies, business corporate structure beats good intentions. Owners insist on management demonstrating quarterly and yearly growth in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Corporate culture then takes a back seat.
There are praiseworthy exceptions like public company COSTCO, but they are rare.
An Objective Look at Corporate Culture
Google has a free public web tool called trends.google.com. It analyzes the relative popularity of search queries across Google Search, YouTube, News, Images, and Google Shopping. Search data is normalized and scored from 0 to 100 based on a term’s popularity relative to total search volume.
Between March 31 and April 30, 2004, the term “corporate culture” scored 100. In 2004, corporate culture was a “hot” topic because of the demise of energy giant Enron and Big Five CPA firm Arthur Andersen. Between March 31 and April 30, 2020, “corporate culture” dropped from 100 to 13. Between Sept. 3 and Oct. 31, 2026, “corporate culture” searches dropped to 10.
We suspect that corporate concern with maintaining and enhancing corporate culture has dropped in response to an increased obsession with enhancing operational efficiency through humans interacting with artificial intelligence (AI).
If Corporate Culture Is Not “Hot” Anymore…
In an earlier Psychology Today perspective, we suggested that as business use of AI increases, the perceived value of analytical thinking and technical competence will become more commoditized. To stand apart in a competitive marketplace, the most important thing is to be perceived by customers, prospective customers, and employees as trustworthy.
Most U.S. public companies and private equity portfolio companies are so consumed by short-term EBITDA gains that they fail to take the necessary long-range steps to generate perceived trust.
Achieving perceived institutional trust may allow some companies to adapt Gund’s principles cited earlier in this post. The traditional concept of corporate culture focuses on how full-time employees treat each other and their customers. Perceived institutional trust is different in that it examines how customers/clients, full-time human employees, interim human employees, and artificial intelligence systems work together.
