WL Gore & Associates was voted the UK’s ’best company to work for’ - does the radical approach of the company have a place in other firms?

Have you ever wondered what it may be like to work without managers or bosses or a chain of command?  What about a company that only pays staff according to what they are worth with no hierarchy within the work place?

This is what WL Gore & Associates is all about and they have topped a nationwide "Best Companies to Work For" national survey for the second year running. So it seems to sit at an office desk within their firm is quite an experience!

At first it would seem that the business works like any other manufacturing company: producing fabrics and polymer products. If you take a closer look, you will discover it has what appears to be an almost socialist work culture.

Staff are known as "associates" and bosses are called "sponsors" who guide them through their "general work area" and jobs, even the office furniture does not get chosen through hierarchy and everyone works from the same type of office chair to the same type of office desk with the only thing taken into consideration that reflects on the type of office furniture you inherit is the type of job you do e.g. you work from a computer desk because you are always on the computer and you don’t get the best office desk because you are the boss! There are no bosses!

There is a work culture embraced through the firm’s 3 Scottish factories (2 in Livingston and the other in Dundee). The firm has 45 plants across the world; it employs a total of 6,000 people.

The survey of The Best Companies to Work For was conducted by The Sunday Times and it found that 92% of its employees (known as sponsors), believe they make valuable independent contributions to the firm’s success and a huge 93% said they would miss their office chair and place at Gore if they left.

Nine in every 10 employees (sponsors), do believe that their manager trusts their own judgment and only a fraction fewer felt that their manager talks openly with them, 84% say that the principles of the firm would not alter should the leader changed.
With such freedom, are these principles actually too finely balanced?