From the shop floor to Glazerite: 31 years of shared experience

For Robert Brearley and Darren Rhodes, a shared approach to manufacturing, leadership and workplace culture has been more than three decades in the making.

Today, Rob is Group Managing Director of Glazerite and Darren is Managing Director of its Northern sites. Their working relationship began in 1995, when Rob applied for his first job as a junior lab technician at Carrington Wire in Halifax. Darren was the head of the department and interviewed the then 17 year old Rob for the role. The pair went on to spend around 10 years working together in the steel industry, gaining experience across wire manufacturing and developing an understanding of production that would continue to influence their careers.

Darren remembers Rob making an impression from the beginning. “Rob came across very well in the interview for such a young man. We were looking for someone with enthusiasm and Rob had that in spades.”

Building experience across manufacturing

Their careers gave them experience across a range of manufacturing industries. Rob gained experience in industries including food manufacturing, while Darren went on to work across mattresses, springs and other manufacturing environments. Throughout that time, they remained in contact and continued sharing ideas around manufacturing, operational improvement and lean processes. Those conversations became an important way for both to learn from the different industries they were experiencing.

“We always liked to share best practice between ourselves,” Darren explains. “We had very similar manufacturing careers in terms of learning about lean manufacturing and different ways of working. You can never know everything, so we’d talk about what Rob had learned from his experience and what I’d learned from running different businesses.”

Their careers crossed paths again when Rob joined Sash in Barnsley and discovered Darren was running a manufacturing operation on the neighbouring site. The proximity gave them an opportunity to put some of those conversations into practice. Teams from each operation visited the other site, allowing employees to see different manufacturing environments and exchange ideas around best practice. The experience strengthened their belief in the value of sharing knowledge and learning from the ideas and experiences of others.

Coming back together

Rob and Darren had spoken for several years about working together again when the right opportunity arose. That opportunity came five years ago, when Rob was involved in the management buyout of Glazerite. The Group’s northern operations provided an opportunity to bring Darren’s manufacturing experience into the business, alongside the shared approach to operations and culture that the pair had developed throughout their careers. “We’d probably been talking about working together for five years before that,” Rob says. “We’re very like-minded. We’ve got the same sort of operational energy, business thinking and approach to culture, so I always had it in mind that we’d work together again.”

Their experience across manufacturing environments also helped shape the culture they wanted to develop at Glazerite. Both started their careers close to the manufacturing process and understood the experience of working directly on the shop floor. That background continues to influence their approach to leadership today.

Staying connected to the shop floor

For Rob and Darren, knowing the people within the business is an important part of leading it. Time spent walking through Glazerite’s manufacturing operations gives the senior team an opportunity to speak directly with employees, understand how teams are performing and stay connected with day-to-day life across the business. Darren believes their own early careers have played an important part in shaping that approach. “We like to get to know people. We know their names and we know what interests them. We might be talking about cycling with one person and football with another.

“We think being personable is important because that’s where we came from. We were once working on the shop floor, putting things together ourselves.”

Their shared experiences have also influenced the emphasis they place on fairness and creating a culture where people feel part of the wider business. Over three decades, both have gained experience across a variety of manufacturing environments and leadership styles. That experience has helped shape the principles they now bring to Glazerite.

Building a shared culture

Today, that approach extends across Glazerite’s wider leadership team. Customer focus, caring about people, manufacturing quality products and protecting the long-term health of the business provide common goals for the people responsible for leading the Group. For Rob, having a team aligned around those priorities creates a collaborative way of working.

“We all have the same goals: customer focus, care about people, culture, making good products and making sure the business is healthy for the future,” he explains.

That shared direction is rooted in experience. Rob and Darren’s careers have given them experience on the shop floor, in senior leadership roles and across a range of manufacturing sectors, eventually bringing them back together at Glazerite. Along the way, they have continued to exchange ideas, learn from different industries and develop their own views on how manufacturing businesses and their people can perform at their best.

More than 30 years after their first meeting in Halifax, those experiences continue to influence the way they work today. The understanding they gained from starting their careers on the shop floor remains an important part of how they lead Glazerite and the culture they continue to develop across the business.