20 years ago, the story began in Co Fermanagh Northern Ireland in 1998, when Quinn Glass was born as part of the Quinn empire. We later added a plant in Elton Cheshire, expanding our range of services to become known as Encirc. But, we went through some challenging times, and from a great beginning we entered a period of uncertainty during the financial crisis when our ownership changed. The people of Encirc stuck through this time and showed resilience and persistence in weathering the storm. When we were bought by Vidrala, they saw in us a solid investment, a good company. But good is not good enough for us; if you stay good you stagnate and many have learned that the hard way in the past. We believed we had an opportunity to show our ambition and potential so we developed a five year plan and showed Vidrala how positive this could be. We believed our people, you, could achieve it and they backed us with significant investment.
Security is important. It allows us to plan, to think bigger thoughts and it affords us comfort from the uncertainties we faced in the past. But, we know we would regret it if we didn’t take this opportunity to go from good to great. We want to make Encirc into a great company. One where each and every one of you feels secure, challenged and rewarded. A place where people want to work. Where we would want our sons and daughters to work, secure in the knowledge they could reach their full potential. A business is only great when our people, you, say it’s great. That is what a great company is and that’s what we are going to make Encirc together. We have a chance to build a company we all want to be part of.
Now I would not blame you if some of you are asking what that means for you? Or if you asked yourself can we actually achieve this. I understand all the concerns you may have. When we see the pace of the world around us changing, we know that to keep up, to win, we can’t behave like any old company. That’s because we are not any old company.
The last 20 years have proven that. Today we have owners who believe in us, and a leadership team who believe in a great future and we want you to believe in that too. So I am setting us this new challenge. The challenge of becoming a great company with complete confidence that we will achieve it. This is an opportunity to shape the culture of our company for the future we want, and to show ourselves and the world around us what we are capable of.
This is about a line in the sand where we acknowledge and feel quite rightly proud of our past, but our focus now will be relentlessly on pioneering possibilities for a better future. As your leadership team we are committing to delivering on this promise. We are asking you all to commit to playing your part – and that starts now.
We are launching a new cultural framework for our business – with values and behaviours that we can all benchmark ourselves and each other against. Values that we can all aspire to live. Things at Encirc will begin to feel different now and that will benefit us all.
To be great we need more than just a plan. I believe we can be better leaders, I believe we can be better collaborators, better supporters, better listeners and better coaches. Living the values and behaviours in this booklet will be key to helping everyone be the best they can be. We have spent a long time analysing how to do things. We have asked you for your opinions on how we can improve on not just what we do, but how we do it, and how it makes us feel. You answered, we listened. And from this we understand that all of us, including the leadership need to behave differently. It is not just about how we do our work it is also who we are at work to make Encirc great.
Together we can help pioneer new possibilities and achieve our vision of Great People, a Great Place to Work, Great Future.