A Note to Business Leaders from CEO
Steve Fechheimer
I came to New Belgium with a background in conventional business, but I became a believer in Human-Powered Business because I’ve seen its benefits firsthand, from the P&L to the wellbeing of people who work our production lines.
The reason for our success is because we invest in our coworkers, and, in turn, they invest themselves in the business. Our coworkers don’t work for us; we work for them.
These practices may seem costly at first glance, but it’s not even debatable that the cost of huge challenges like climate change, widespread inequality and systemic racial injustice are exponentially more expensive in the big picture for each company, and for society as a whole. And, in the long run, businesses that invest deeply in the wellbeing of people and our planet show more growth, greater resilience, and better financial performance overall.
No business is perfect, and that includes New Belgium. We’re also a medium-sized company, and ultimately we can only have a medium-sized impact. Our goal is to tell our story transparently – the ups and the downs – in the hopes that other companies may start adopting the Human-Powered Business model and join a movement for a more prosperous, equitable, and people-centric economy.
If the business community can take these steps together and learn from one another as we go, we have an enormous opportunity to strengthen business performance over the long run, while starting to reverse the historic challenges our communities – and, as a result, our companies – are facing right now. Simply by re-humanizing business as we know it.