John Ganem is the CEO of Kloeckner Metals Corporation.
How you lead—and how you care for your people—is more visible than ever.
A company’s culture is a direct reflection of leadership, and it doesn’t stay behind closed doors. Glassdoor reviews, LinkedIn posts, word of mouth and retention rates all tell the real story. So even if you’re not talking about your leadership style, your culture is doing it for you.
We’ve made wellness a core focus of our business, not because it’s trendy, but because it’s fundamental to the type of culture we want to be known for. And when we talk about wellness, we mean it holistically: mental, physical and financial. A strong team builds a strong business, and that strength comes from creating an environment where people feel supported, valued and empowered.
Leading With Wellness
I’ll be honest: I didn’t always see it this way.
When I first became a CEO, my mindset was all about performance. All numbers, all grit, all the time. I believed in working hard and winning. I didn’t fully appreciate how important the people, the team and their commitment were to the business’s success.
Yes, we still want to win. We still want to be the best. But now, it’s balanced with perspective. You have to take care of people and show up when they’re struggling.
That shift in mindset became real for us during a moment that had nothing to do with business performance.
One of our company presidents came to HR, not for a business decision, but for help. A family member was going through a mental health challenge, and he didn’t know where to start looking for resources. That raised a bigger question: If someone inside our company needed help, would they know where to go?
That question became the catalyst for everything that followed. We realized we didn’t just want a wellness program; we needed a clear, proactive approach to employee well-being. So we made it a priority, starting with mental health and expanding from there.
The idea is simple: take care of your people better than anyone else. That’s how you differentiate yourself from competitors. Not just as a company where people want to work, but as a place where they can build a career and feel part of something bigger. Products and services are important. So are quality, reliability and relationships. But what sets a company apart is how it treats its people.
Walking The Talk
Recognizing the need for clearer, more accessible support is the first step. What matters next is what you do about it.
We started with mental health, where we felt the need was most urgent. We broke down barriers and expanded our coverage to include $0-cost mental health prescriptions—a rarity in our industry. We hired a wellness manager to help triage employee issues and launched additional training so employees understood how to get support. We didn’t stop there. We surveyed regularly to ask: Are these resources helping? Do you know they exist? Then, we used the answers to improve.
But wellness is all-encompassing, and that includes financial and physical health as well. So we kept building. On the financial side, we enhanced 401(k) options, brought in onsite financial advisors and offered one-on-one sessions to help people plan for the future.
On the physical health front, we’ve made meaningful investments, from comprehensive medical coverage to wellness incentives. But we realized a key gap wasn’t in what we offered, but in how often people used it. We found that surprisingly few people were going in for annual physicals. We tried a variety of initiatives to drive engagement—some worked better than others—and we’re continuing to refine our approach. But that’s part of the commitment: listen, improve, repeat.
A few lessons have stood out along the way:
• Make support easy to access. If it’s confusing or time-consuming, people won’t use it.
• Invest in real tools. Meaningful health coverage, expert guidance and practical resources can make a genuine difference.
• Don’t guess—ask. Survey employees regularly to understand what’s working and where the gaps are.
• Keep evolving. What worked last year might not be enough today.
Wellness initiatives only work when leaders walk the talk and when employees can feel the difference in their day-to-day lives.
Pushing For Continuous Growth
Wellness is just one part of the bigger picture.
We’ve done a lot to move the needle on this front, and I’m proud of that. But we’re not satisfied. We can’t be. If you stop pushing, you stop growing. And when you stop growing, you start falling behind.
That mindset applies to more than wellness; it extends to culture, operations and innovation. We need to keep asking: What’s next? How do we keep people motivated? How do we ensure the energy doesn’t fade after the first big win?
My advice is to treat wellness like any other strategic investment: review, refine and recommit. If something’s not working, ask why. If something is working, ask how to make it even better. And when you find something that truly helps, lean into it. Expand it. Invest in it.
When people are supported well, they’re more engaged, more resilient and more ready to drive the business forward.
Building A Winning Culture
What we know is this: people want to be part of a company that’s going places, not standing still. Growth means opportunity. It means energy, momentum and a future they can believe in.
People want to work for a company that cares, invests in them and gives them room to grow. That’s what this is all about.
When you take care of your people and give them a future, you attract the best talent. And when you have the right people, all pulling in the same direction, you build the kind of team that wins.
That’s what drives success. That’s what drives growth. And that’s how you build a culture—and a company—that lasts.
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