For most growing companies, eventually space will become an issue. Good businesses look for ways to either expand or reconfigure their space; great ones turn the challenge into an opportunity to improve their culture, as well. Such was the case for 2016 MDM Market Mover Paramont EO.

Just two years after an acquisition moved the Chicago, IL-based company into a new warehouse, space was at a premium for the electrical and decorative lighting distributor. So the company decided to redesign the existing space to improve efficiency and utility.

Rather than hire an outside firm to do the work for them, they turned to their employees to not only do the heavy lifting, but also to help plan the new configuration.

"We actually went as far as to put Garmins on a bunch of our directors and have them fill tickets," said Kevin Reed, director of purchasing. "We were able to track how long it would take to fill an average order. If anything was out of place, we just moved that aisle instead of having to just live with that for as long as we kept our building open."

The step-counters helped the company determine which routes employees were taking to get what goods – and, in turn, identify which routes were efficient and which weren't. "Something as cheap as a $50 watch we bought on eBay is actually saving us years of productivity," Reed said.

And having employees involved from the get-go allowed them a sense of ownership over the project – and the success of the company. They saw that their opinions were valued because their input was sought out, Reed said.

The warehouse reconfiguration project also got the leadership team thinking about how it could replicate the team-building benefits throughout the organization. Read more about the results in the 2016 MDM Market Mover Profile: Paramont EO’s Team-Building Redesign