A company’s success may be measured by the number of assets it has accumulated over long years of doing business. Yet, no other company asset is as unquantifiable as the people behind it.
Former Xerox Corp. CEO Anne Mulcahy once said that employees are a company’s greatest assets. “If you want to attract and retain the best, provide them with encouragement, stimulus and make them feel that they are an integral part of the company’s mission.”
At 71 years today, the country’s oldest, fully Filipino-owned tobacco company, employees are not just largely multibillion-peso company assets, they are a closely knit and peerless family, as well.
Mighty Corp. (MC), this year’s award-winning Corporation of the Year by the Philippine Council of Management Research Institute and one of the country’s largest taxpayers, attributes its success, longevity and resiliency to its humble, prudent and dedicated employees who have endured with them through time.
Oprah Winfrey once said: “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”
Rosario Marigomen, who has worked with Mighty for more than 51 years, said: “You could look at us as a big family than a business.”
The company has certainly been through hell and high water having been on the verge of bankruptcy a few times.
Yet, persevering with strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) and core values of compassion, integrity, prudence, dedication, teamwork, piety and charity, the company inspired its people to stand mighty and mightier as time went on.
The Wongchuking siblings owe it to their parents, Wong Chu King and his wife Nelia who they describe as the guiding force of both the family and MC. Their parents imbibed a culture of genuine appreciation for hardworking and dedicated employees.
Among the ways the company gives back to its stakeholders, employees, distributors and tobacco farmers is by consistently supporting their livelihood and sending deserving children to school through its CSR arm, the Wong Chu King Foundation (WCKF).
The foundation, among others, lives up to the family’s legacy of humility, charity and love of God and country. King’s unwavering and enduring faith in God is translated into a solid commitment to charity and compassion. The foundation espouses transformation through charity work because this is how Wong Chu King envisioned his legacy to be handed down.
“We saw to it that our company has a strong social relevance, believing in taking small, but necessary, steps to help the needy and provide opportunities to the deserving, but less fortunate, thereby changing the world—and doing the impossible—one small step at a time, with the help of around 5,000 volunteers of the foundation,” said Alex Wongchuking, one of King’s children and MC’s CEO.
“Our company also does away with office politics. Succession is always based on who is the most qualified, even the choices of executives and managers are purely based on meritocracy,” Caesar Wongchuking, Alex’s younger brother, revealed.
Geoff Gadiana is a living example, having rose from the ranks from a simple kargador, to line supervisor and, now, as Mighty’s plant manager.
Founded on March 30, 1990, by the heirs, WCKF is involved in educational and apostolic charities, primarily in areas in the Philippines where tobacco farming is prevalent. The foundation provides scholarships to deserving young men and women, especially to dependents and beneficiaries of Filipino tobacco farmers.
The foundation seeks to encourage and promote education and scientific research through its scholarship programs, focusing on high-school, and college and university students.
As devout Catholics, the Wongchuking family has spearheaded assistance programs to parishes and dioceses in a number of provinces in the country through WCKF for restoration and rehabilitation work for churches, especially those with great historical and cultural value to communities.
Through the years, WCKF has undertaken projects that reflect the generosity and charity of Mr. Wong Chu King. These can be seen in the foundation’s outreach programs for institutions, like the Home for the Elderly (formerly Golden Acres) and the White Cross Orphanage.
MC began its humble roots on September 20, 1945, with Wong Chu King and his partners, Ong Lowa, Baa Dy and Ong Pay, by setting up La Campana Fabrica de Tabacos Inc., with its first factory in Tayabas Street, Manila. The second factory was then built in 1948 in Pasong Tamo, Makati, and in 1951, it acquired the present site of its head office.
In 1963 Wong Chu King founded the Tobacco Industries of the Philippines (TIP) in a 9-hectare property in Barrio Tikay, Malolos, Bulacan, which became the future site of their manufacturing operations.
MC is now a fully integrated tobacco company, with its factories inside a 9-hectare property in Malolos, Bulacan.
It is engaged in both tobacco processing, which includes fermentation of tobaccos for the cigar-blended cigarillos and cigarette manufacturing. The company has two cigarette-manufacturing plants and one tobacco-processing plant.
It also has a complete threshing and redrying plant, which supplies the necessary requirements for the company’s cigarette-manufacturing operations. The two cigarette-
manufacturing facilities answer for its two major product lines.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.
2 comments
This is very well-said. Sayang. Mighty was one of the post-war ‘heritage’ companies in the same breath as Mercury Drug, National Bookstore, etc. Kudos to Alex and Caesar Wongchuking!
I was a former Mighty employee and a personal friend to the Wongchuking brothers (Alex and Caesar) and I can attest to what this article is saying! They really have a meritocratic form of management which, I believe, makes them one of the few companies that look beyond fancy degrees and whatnot. If you’re a resourceful, hardworking and dedicated employee, you’ll surely go a long way.