CSR AND EMPLOYMENT AWARD
Winner: Wurth Australia
Sponsor: SITA and Adecco
Finalists: SRXGlobal, Future Metals Recycling, Norden Body Works
SERGE Oppedisano was once a Wurth customer, self-employed in the service station industry.
He so admired the assembly and fastening materials supplier that he contacted the company and asked for a job with a hand-written resume.
“I told a few fibs on that resume,” he said.
“I started as a sales consultant.”
That was 15 years ago. He rose through the ranks to become Australian CEO and Australia and New Zealand managing director and said he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“For me, work is like a big playground,” Mr Oppedisano said.
He said the Dandenong South workplace was special.
“We have many goose bump moments at work,” he said.
The multinational organisation’s headquarters and origins are in post-World War II Germany.
A 19-year-old Reinhold Wurth in 1954 took over the family business of wholesaling screws, nuts and bolts from his father and started to grow the business internationally and through acquisition.
Reinhold’s daughter Bettina today leads the organisation, which has more than 60,000 employees worldwide.
The Australian arm started in Dingley in 1982 and now employs about 550 people across the country and is in the top 15 of the 400-plus Wurth companies throughout the world – ahead of the US operation.
“Family values shine through in everything they do whether the task is big or small,” awards chairman James Sturgess said.
“The family orientation and values are well and truly alive through Serge’s leadership in Australia.”
More than 15 per cent of the Australian Wurth workforce has more than 10 years’ service.
The company provides three award presentation events across Australia each year and has a family Christmas party every second year.
Wurth Australia proudly supports Swinburne University with research funds and from time to time funds projects with Standards Australia.
The company supports different charity organisations through monthly staff events, provides flu shots, meditation and massages for workers, and assists with corporate health insurance through Bupa.
The business has a monthly newsletter for staff and their families called Wurth Reading.
It’s provided sales consultants with iPads so they can identify stock levels, pricing, invoicing, product demonstrations and customer analysis on the spot with customers.
Mr Sturgess said Wurth had established a world class training academy in Dandenong South to train staff and customers in its products and services, and lived by its statement “safety is by choice and not by chance”.
Wurth was nominated for the CSR and Employment, Retail and Commercial and Premier Regional Business awards.
It was a finalist in the Retail and Commercial and Premier Regional Business categories.
