Survey
How well-known is
KWS’ strategy?
2,189 colleagues responded to a questionnaire asking them what they know about KWS’ strategy and what sources of information they use. Here are the results.
“If you don’t know where you're going, you’ll end up someplace else.” That quote comes from the famous American baseball player Yogi Berra. Apart from his talent for professional baseball, he was notorious for his oxymorons, figures of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
But what does Yogi Berra’s quote have to do with KWS’ strategy? Well, quite a bit. Because if we at KWS don’t know where we want to be in the future, we’d maybe go round in circles. A solid strategy is therefore the compass for our long-term alignment and the foundation for our success.
Its implementation is in the hands of all employees. It’s therefore important for our strategy to be generally known by everyone in the company.
The Group Strategy (GST) and Global Human Resources (GHR) departments and an external service provider (in order to safeguard anonymity) therefore conducted a survey to assess the level of knowledge of KWS’ strategy. All KWS employees, i.e. a total of 4,796 at the time, were invited to take part. 2,189 colleagues worldwide completed the questionnaire.
Pleasing results, but potential for improvement
The survey revealed many pleasing results all in all. One was that around three-quarters of participants have great trust in the KWS Group’s strategy. Most of all, they trust the strategy of “their” Business Unit or unit (see the chart). The vast majority of colleagues who took part in the survey also believe they make a contribution to implementing the strategy.
Assessment of KWS’ strategy
However, the survey also indicates that there is potential for improvement. In some units of the company, for example, it can be seen that knowledge of their own strategy is lower than the average. Digging into the details, it is clear that the objectives of smaller units are often communicated inadequately.
Yet there are branches of the company that know their own strategy very well, but don’t look further afield to see the bigger picture. “But do my employees actually need to know the strategy?” is a question our project team often heard in relation to this survey.
Of course, every KWS employee doesn’t have to know the strategy and its details like the back of their hand. Nevertheless, everyone should have heard of it and have an understanding of their own Business Unit’s strategy and an idea of the objectives of the other units. After all, every one of us contributes to implementing it. Moreover, that will help us gain a better understanding of each other long term and we can grow together and stand by each other in difficult times.
Sources of information worldwide
The most popular sources of information
Participants worldwide stated that they obtain information on the strategy from an average of three sources. Specifically in Germany, there is even an average of four sources. Internationally, participants said that team meetings are the most popular sources of information on the strategy. In Germany, it is the intranet. Employees’ supervisors are ranked third as the preferred source both in Germany and worldwide.
That means that managers in particular have to make greater efforts to explain their own Business Unit’s strategy more – and also to report a little about other units’ objectives, if possible. Managers can also best meet their employees’ needs by explaining the strategy as it applies to their own unit and conveying it in their own words and their own language.
Sources of information in Germany
What is wanted: Linking the strategy to employees’ own work
This was one of the most frequent pieces of feedback from the around 300 responses to this open-ended question: Almost half of them expressed a desire for more understandable objectives and to know how their own work ties in with the strategy.
We at Group Strategy will be pleased to take up such constructive feedback and, together with Global Marketing & Communications, implement it in the communication measures for the KWS Group’s upcoming strategy (SP31). |
Contact:
Telse Sieg
telse.sieg@kws.com
© KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA 2025
