Our success in meeting our own challenges has shaped our unique approach to consultancy

The Unipart Group employs over 7,000 people worldwide, with a turnover approaching £1 billion, and operations spanning manufacturing, logistics and consulting.

Originally, we were part of the British Leyland Group – a car company renowned for its poor productivity and terrible employee relations. When we became independent from British Leyland, over 20 years ago, it was clear that we needed to find a new way of working and a new approach towards our employees.

The start of 'The Unipart Way'

This new way was informed by the best practice from around the world. While it included the principles of Lean thinking, it was also a move from ‘command and control’ to the beginning of ‘employee engagement’. We called it ‘The Unipart Way’.

What did this involve?

The approach we use to achieve this is not new; we have been developing it for the last 20 years and it has enabled us to completely transform our own organisation.

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It meant starting to share information on performance with our employees, every day.

It meant involving them and listening to their views on the reasons for problems and then encouraging and supporting their ideas for improving productivity.

It meant empowering, enabling and motivating employees to start solving problems at their own level.

The Unipart Way is now our standard way of working across all of our companies in the Unipart Group. It is the product of our 20 year journey and has been continuously developed and refined, based on our own experience.

While other parts of the old British Leyland empire have either failed or merged with other organisations, the Unipart Group has grown independently and become Britain's second largest employee owned company.

How we generate employee engagement

The key to our success has been ‘The Unipart Way‘. This is not only our way of generating high levels of employee engagement in our own companies but also the foundation of our consulting methodology. It is a proven approach that has now been adopted by organisations around the world from manufacturing and banking to healthcare and the public sector.