Each division is also responsible for creating the demand for its products by winning and retaining customers. Unlike other steel companies, Nucor’s plants aren’t mere manufacturing sites, but end-to-end businesses. Accordingly, each division has its own P&L, which is entirely free of corporate cost allocations.

Exposing people to multiple skills and functions is a win-win. For individuals, the change in pace, activity, and colleagues makes work more interesting. In return, Nucor gets a workforce that’s able to solve complex, multidisciplinary problems.

By bolstering business thinking deep in the organization, Nucor maximizes the quality of decision making at all levels and reduces the perceived status gap between frontline employees and commercially savvy managers.

JOB SECURITY. Nucor has never laid off employees at its steel mills, a remarkable feat in an industry that shed 40 percent of its employees between 2000 and 2018. Nucor could have followed suit, but that would have violated the company’s long-standing promise to employees: “do your job well today, have it tomorrow.” When orders plummet, the company reduces the workweek, not the workforce. This reduces the odds of making the weekly bonus, but for most employees, that’s better than being laid off. In the rare instances when Nucor closes or scales back a plant, people are offered positions in other mills.

True to the spirit of humanocracy, Nucor’s model isn’t about pushing employees to do more, but giving them the opportunity to be more—more than blue-collar workers, more than order takers, more than mere operators, more than employees. Nucor’s frontline team members are experts, innovators, risk takers, and owners.