Employee Involvement Key to Budget Marine’s Success

Budget Marine is the Caribbean’s leading marine chandlery, specializing in equipment sales and service.  Headquartered in St. Maarten, Budget Marine has a firm retail footprint throughout the Leeward, Windward & ABC islands.  Budget Marine supplies all types of boats: sail, power, fishing, and megayachts.  Budget Marine is also keenly committed to promoting the sport of boating through their involvement in events and youth sailing programmes on many islands.

Budget Marine believes that their employees are key to their business success.  One of the challenges, of course, is enabling communication among employees who are located hundreds of miles away from each other, in different countries.  And while yachting is the culture that ties them all together, each island country in the Caribbean has its own social culture as well.

We would not have become the best chandlery in the Caribbean without our knowledgeable, helpful and enthusiastic staff.

Over a decade ago, before many people in St. Maarten even knew about FaceBook, Budget Marine implemented an internal communication forum for its employees.  As Stephane Ferron, one of the system’s creators, recently explained to me, the Intranet has a “user friendlyness to it. It is reliable, dependable, and most important, used.”  At first, it was used as a tool to make company and product information available to employees.  Over time, it started being used more and more as a place for employees (including managers) to share information with each other.

Lessons for Others

The key to this transition from one-way to all-round communication is education, encouragement, openness, and fun.  By using the Intranet to post pictures of employee events, announce employee contests, and greetings to newcomers, everyone learned to check and participate in it regularly.  From education, to social interaction, to practical suggestions among employees – what works in their location and what doesn’t, Budget Marine’s Intranet helps employees connect and, in turn, these connections help the company.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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