Classifying resilient flooring for a sustainable solution
Peta Smith from FloorworX was recently promoted from Regional Sales Manager to National Sales Manager. Her new position allows her to focus on her strength, namely motivating and supporting the sales team.
She is passionate about resilient flooring products and sees resilience as a pre-requisite for sustainability. She classifies a resilient floor on three levels: personal, organisational and industry resiliency.
“On a personal level, resilience is about having an open mind to both success and setbacks. There will be setbacks that may risk reducing one’s self-confidence, but personal resilience is ‘rolling with the punches’ and coming out stronger on the other side. Over time, personal setbacks are the tools used to build character and resilience. I personally believe that this ‘can do’ approach is a critical factor of personal resilience,” says Peta.
Peta joined the FloorworX team in 2010 starting as an architectural sales representative, so she has close to two decades of experience in the built environment. Throughout her career and through the plethora of resilient products she has been exposed to at the company, she has come up with the following definition of resilience: Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties (toughness) as well as the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, also known as elasticity.
“FloorworX does not only specialise in resilient floor coverings, the company also has a resilience mindset in how the industry is approached – adding its strategic agility to adapting in the evolving African marketplace,” says Peta.
Resilience is at the heart of the FloorworX culture. The company sees it as the capacity of a brand to survive, adapt and flourish in the face of change and uncertainty. As a strategic approach, resilience embraces change and addresses both the downside and upside of all possibilities.
“Learning and knowledge sharing is a key priority area at FloorworX. Sharing information both within the organisation and with customers and other stakeholders adds to its resilience, and thus its sustainability,” says Peta.
Embedding resilience within a business means focusing on embracing change, internal process excellence, and keeping a keen eye on emerging trends, including socioeconomic, environmental and regulatory changes. It is both an inward and outward looking concept hinged on both internal and external environment scanning and being highly adaptive.
Lean and agile – the sustainable middle ground
The “lean” movement sought to eliminate waste from business processes, which led to production systems becoming more susceptible to unplanned disruptions. Some thought leaders are of the opinion that optimisation could actually weaken resilience by removing buffers that protect against fluctuations. The sustainable medium that is now advocated by leading businesses is a middle ground — lean and agile — which balances waste elimination with the need for flexibility and backup resources.
For more information, contact FloorworX on Tel: +27 (11) 406 4024 or via www.floorworx.co.za.
