Family-run firm hasn’t had a single layoff in its 75 years and posts huge annual growth, as CEOs flock to St Louis HQ to learn its secrets

While most companies are all too familiar with layoffs, one family-run firm in Missouri has defied the norm for 75 years. 

The Gund Company, a St Louis-based manufacturer and fabricator of engineered materials, said it follows specific guidelines that keep its 1,300 employees there to stay, according to a new report. 

And the clearly successful tactics have not gone unnoticed, with other CEOs flocking to the company’s headquarters for some pointers, The Wall Street Journal reported.

For one, the company makes it a priority to put its employees’ needs above the firm’s short-term profits, CEO Steve Gund told the outlet.

Steve, who is the third-generation CEO of The Gund Company, said the approach is something he is determined to share with all businesses – especially those run by families. 

‘It sounds touchy-feely, but it’s profitable,’ the 55-year-old boss stated. 

Other keys to the company’s success are that they do not overstaff, and they encourage workers to voice their concerns daily. 

Employees at Gund Company are urged to write down their worries on red cards that are displayed on the factory floor so leaders can immediately address the issues, the report stated. 

Also, everyone who is employed there, no matter their rank, has a career-development plan in place, the company told WSJ. 

Now, with the word out that the company is thriving and doing what most can’t, other bosses have taken a trip to see it all for themselves. 

Don Taylor, the CEO of Ohio’s Welty Enterprises, traveled to St Louis with his son Michael Taylor, who is also on the company’s executive team. 

The father and son had heard great things about how Gund Company runs its business through other leaders, per the report. 

‘Hopefully we can mimic some of that,’ Don told the publication. 

But the success didn’t just happen overnight, Steve, who joined the family business with his brother Rich in the early 1990s, said. 

He and Rich, who is now the company chairman and COO, initially helped make spare parts for generators and other machines. 

At the time, the business raked in $2.7 million in annual sales. There were also 20 employees, nine of whom were family members. 

Steve compared the dynamics of those days to a restaurant atmosphere that had ‘a lot of screaming and yelling going on in that kitchen,’ he shared. 

He also credited an adviser who told the family they needed to map out a long-term growth plan for the company in order for them to be successful, Steve said. 

Steve also said that his father, Paul Gund, said there wouldn’t be layoffs because that would mean the company’s leadership failed, Steve recalled. 

And to push it all a step further, Gund also introduced a stock ownership plan for US staff in 2009. 

By 2025, workers owned 30 percent of the company through that program, the report stated. 

Steve has also credited the employee-first mentality the company has adopted to another local business owner, Bob Chapman. 

Chapman, the CEO of the machine industry company Barry-Wehmiller, inspired Steve back in 2015 when Gund’s board had faced the challenge of returning the business to a 15 percent compounded annual growth rate after slow sales. 

But Steve was more interested in helping those who needed it instead of investing all of his efforts into running the business, and Chapman helped him see that. 

‘You’re trying to alleviate homelessness by going and working in a soup kitchen or handing out blankets,’ Chapman told him, according to Steve. 

Chapman added: ‘Why don’t you employ people?’ 

Steve now abides by a self-made 12-point management system that he says includes a ‘paternal level of care’ for the workplace. 

And all of those moves also help employees move up the ranks and prove themselves, including Diedra Jones. 

Jones, 33, started as a janitor for the company 16 years ago before becoming a receptionist and then a customer service representative. 

At the time, the cleaning job was one of four that she had, and all the while, she was taking care of her child as a single mother, Jones explained. 

Eventually, she was nominated by her coworkers for a leadership role that sees her travel the world for Gund presently. 

‘My dreams and my aspirations are what no one in my family has ever even thought was on the road map,’ Jones said.  

Nearly a century after Steve’s grandfather, Ed Gund, pivoted from selling candy to launching the company in 1951, the firm is nearing $400 million in sales and works with well-known companies like Rockwell Automation and General Electric. 

While the company is headquartered in St Louis, it has several manufacturing facilities across the nation, including in New York, Texas, California, Wisconsin, Indiana and more.