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As an athlete, I have some recurring injuries that flare up when training for an event. Since my issues were always on my left leg, I often joked that I should just cut off my left leg and grow back a new one, preferably without these nagging injuries.
While that might seem like a far-fetched idea, I had client who was having systemic issues with their workforce and made the decision to fire a majority of the employees and then hire new employees. In their mind, this would resolve the inherent cultural issues and allow them to hire operators with a skill set that would be better suited to support the new direction of the company.
What appeared to be overlooked was the amount of time required for an operator to master a specific job function. How would a new employee learn those skills if they weren’t taught by someone who possessed them? How long would it take to develop those skills?
Here is what I believe to be true about operators – they don’t purposely decide to do a bad job. People inherently want to take pride in their work. So, if they aren’t following the process, the logical question is why?
So, we started asking questions, including:
- Do the operators know and understand what is expected of them?
- Do the operators receive feedback on their individual performance and the performance of the department?
- Are there established procedures to follow?
- Have the operators been trained on the procedure(s)?
After reviewing the responses from the questions above, I proposed a different approach. Start by training the employees on what is expected of them and put the systems in place to ensure the training is reinforced. This isn’t as drastic as hiring all new employees, but, in the end, the results are much more sustainable.
So, just like my nagging sports injury, we identified the root cause of the problem and strengthened the areas that were causing issues. And over time, the organization became much stronger. Do you have some issues that are keeping your organization from operating at maximum efficiency? Let’s connect and see if we can work together to make your organization healthy and happy.