Ingersoll Rand - Achievement in Management

Company: Ingersoll Rand, Charlotte, NC
Entry Submitted By:Clairemont Communications
Company Description: Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR), driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and ownership mindset, is committed to helping make life better. We provide innovative and mission-critical industrial, energy, medical and specialty vehicle products and services across 40+ respected brands designed to excel in even the most complex and harsh conditions where downtime is especially costly.
Nomination Category: Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in Management - Manufacturing

Nomination Title: One Ingersoll Rand: Uniting 16,000 Employees Behind One Purpose

Spearheading a merger and uniting two company cultures can be difficult, but doing so in March 2020, the same month the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, presents an almost insurmountable challenge. This is what faced the team of 15 executive leaders who spearheaded the merger of Gardner Denver, Inc. with the Ingersoll Rand Industrials segment on March 1, 2020 to form the new Ingersoll Rand (IR), a global provider of mission-critical flow creation and industrial solutions.

The Ingersoll Rand executive team devised a strategy across more than 20 workstreams to forge a new company infrastructure and unite 16,000 global employees across 70 countries. This had to be achieved without travel or in-person meetings due to COVID-19. How? The leadership team knew a clearly defined company purpose would serve as a rallying cry, activated by carefully written values that would ensure the manufacturing of vital products – such as pumps for hospital ventilators – to COVID-19 frontline workers with no production delays.

Ingersoll Rand hosted global workshops to define its purpose – “Lean on us to help you make life better” – as well as the company’s values. Then it launched proprietary Purpose & Values Activation Sessions – virtual, small-group workshops designed to facilitate connections between employees and the new company’s purpose. From the factory worker in Shanghai to the Illinois salesperson, every employee was invited by the executive team to take an immersive journey to share personal stories, connect his or her values to the company and craft an activation plan.

Employees explored the IR core value of what it means to think and act like an owner and how this mindset influences business strategy and guides daily decisions. Implementation of the Purpose & Values Activation Sessions was done in-house to successfully achieve a 100-day deployment target with no external cost. Benchmarks on similar global initiatives require an 18-month deployment and a $750,000 budget. Within a few short months of the merger, this initiative united 16,000 employees behind a common cause, and the sessions were lauded by one employee as “one of the most impactful and meaningful experiences I’ve had in my 20-year career.”

To strengthen company-wide relationships, the executive team fostered engagement leading up to the merger through regular emails, global video town halls, live Q&A sessions with the CEO and even a humorous Brady-Bunch-style video introducing the executive team. Segment leaders received leader toolkits to host decentralized trainings and town halls, since travel prohibited large gatherings. An innovative Day 1 celebration across 70 countries meant equipping each of the 300 sites with a “party in a box” featuring inaugural Day 1 banners and posters, a pennant and fun activities, with consideration given to how employees working from home could participate. On Day 1, employees joined a virtual town hall that featured live feeds directly from factory floors, employee interviews across the world and Q&As with the leadership – real-time interactivity that bridged thousands of miles to unite one company.

The IR executive team invested significant time and resources in more than company logistics and paperwork; it also invested its workforce, empowering each employee to think and act like an owner. The Ingersoll Rand executive team was unanimously passionate about awarding a $150 million equity grant, making all of its employees owners, uniting them behind a common cause and poising the company to achieve its goal to double in five years.

The amount of the equity grant, which equates to approximately 20% of each employee’s pay, represents one of the largest equity grants ever given to employees in an industrial company. The executive team was also dedicated to providing the required financial literacy training required to ensure understanding across the global workforce. To kick off the celebration of the equity grant, Ingersoll Rand’s CEO rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, followed by local celebrations safely held around the world.

-Spearheaded the merger of Gardner Denver and Ingersoll Rand Industrials to launch the new Ingersoll Rand, a 16,000-employee company with 40+ brands across 70 countries.
-Developed new company’s Purpose and Values (P&V) and launched P&V employee activation sessions across the globe that personally connected 16,000 employees to Ingersoll Rand, forged cultural cohesion and united employees behind a common cause.
-Expanded Ingersoll Rand Execution Excellence (IRX), the company’s internal planning and execution engine, from 65 processes to more than 200 globally.
-Developed cohesive infrastructure and sales/marketing strategies post-merger that enabled Ingersoll Rand businesses to meet or exceed quarterly and annual 2020 goals – during a pandemic and international shutdown.
-The company delivered Adjusted EBITDA of $1.08 billion and Adjusted EBITDA margin of 20%, which was up 60 basis points vs the prior year, or 180 basis points, excluding HPS (the company recently announced it would sell a majority interest in HPS).
-Three business segments of the company – Industrial Technologies and Services, Precision and Science Technologies and Specialty Vehicle Technologies – all delivered triple digit Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion in 2020. This is only possible through the power of IRX as an execution engine to drive change in every area of the business.
-Industrial Technologies and Services Segment: Core industrial end markets saw continued sequential improvement across Americas, EMEIA and AP with orders up 10% in fourth quarter 2020, as compared to the third quarter.
-Precision and Science Technologies Segment: Strong orders momentum in Q4 2020 driven by double-digit growth in both medical pumps as well as the Dosatron product line serve niche end markets such as lab/life-sciences, water and animal health, and continued strong momentum on funnel for hydrogen fueling applications.
-Specialty Vehicle Technologies Segment: Orders increase in Q4 2020 driven by continued strength in consumer vehicles, as well as growth in golf and aftermarket product offerings.
-The company in an incredibly strong financial position with ample liquidity of $2.7 billion at the end of Q4 2020, which is an increase of approximately $425 million from the end of the third quarter.
-Generated $412 million of cash flow from operating activities and invested $15 million in capital expenditures, resulting in free cash flow of $397 million in Q4 2020, compared to cash flow from operating activities of $99 million and free cash flow of $90 million in the prior year period.
-Enabled IR to acquire Leading Peristaltic Pump Manufacturer, Albin Pump SAS, and Tuthill Vacuum and Blower Systems.
-Awarded a $150 million equity grant in 2020 to all employees, making them owners