PLANTING OUR ROOTS: 1899-1969
In a business built by people, who better to come up with great ideas than our own employees?
It’s a longstanding Sonoco tradition: Share your idea for improving products, processes, safety, etc. If it works well, we’ll implement it on a broader scale. So many innovations come from the lab, but each and every employee takes part in generating new ideas through sheer experience.
There’s a great deal we can test, model and discover in the lab that we can’t simulate on the plant floor. On the flip side, there’s a great deal that employees experience firsthand that’s much harder to discover in the lab.
That’s where our Suggestions System—now called the Sonoco Awards & Recognition Program (or SOAR)—comes in.
Starting in 1944, we gave employees financial awards for winning ideas on how to build better processes, adapt machinery and even improve sustainability. For some time, we had a literal submission box where people could submit their proposals.
Since then, we’ve had countless submissions and scores of employees who have offered up successful ideas. One such employee was Glenn Odom, who in 1984 suggested that Sonoco reclaim the scrap two-by-fours from discarded pallets and use them for the Corrugating Division’s paper shipping. A win-win for the company. He won just over $5,000, with an additional 20% bonus at the end of the year—a check followed by a handshake from then-CEO Charlie Coker himself.
Listening to our people is one of our greatest strengths. When everyone is involved in innovation, you’re not only a well-oiled machine but also a self-aware company with more opportunities for discovery and fewer gaps.
In Charlie’s words: “Open communications, which rely on a free flow of messages coupled with large measures of management listening, are the key to good people orientation.”
Today, SOAR recognizes employees who innovate in the areas of Customer Satisfaction and Quality, People, Process Excellence, Safety, and Sustainability. Recent SOAR winners include a mill that reduced risk by 40% with no recordable injuries for five years, honored as a Top 10 Safest Canadian Mill by Paper & Pulp Magazine in 2021.
SOAR is an increasingly global program that helps fuel innovation and by extension stronger relationships with our client partners.
At Sonoco, people build this business through each better idea.