Recruit, Reward, Retain – A Huge Challenge For UK Organisations

Many of our UK clients are finding it hard to recruit, reward and retain good people. Inflation is surging, household budgets are stretched, and the labour market is tight. Unusually, there are too many jobs chasing too few people. Flexible working, home working, hybrid working, four-day weeks, joining bonuses, and other innovations are just some of the “headline” ways that employers are trying to cope.

As consultants, we’re seeing the effects at first hand. More and more clients want us to provide resources they simply don’t have. We help them tackle new projects, coaching and mentoring their in-house staff. We provide concentrated part-time resource (the Operations Director that isn’t yet a full-time role). And we help them to develop a whole range of reward, recognition and incentive programmes.

Growing businesses often find that their payment and bonus systems become opaque, demotivating and no longer fit for purpose. In urgent cases, we can often recommend simple, transparent systems to relieve some of the pressure points. This buys time to follow up with a more nuanced and effective approach, yet still keeping it simple and transparent. Most importantly, the new systems need to be seen as fair, and reward the right actions and behaviours. Simple grade structures, payment for skills schemes, group productivity programmes, and individual performance reviews are all part of the arsenal! If you find your own organisation struggling with the “three R’s”, simply drop an email to info [at] nicholsonconsultancy [dot] com, and find out how we can help…

Simply Sustaining 5S

Many people find the first three stages of 5S fairly easy to do, but Sustaining 5S activities can be a real challenge. So here’s a simple approach you might find helpful:

Working with the people in each area, decide on a small number of things you really want to be better organised (the “vital few”).

Describe in simple words what good looks like. If you possibly can, phrase this as a simple “Yes / No” question, where “Yes” represents the desired outcome. Examples might be “All tools back in the correct places on the shadow board at the end of the shift?”, “All gangways clear of any obstruction?”, “Floor clear of any packaging materials?”.

Create a simple checklist for each area, listing these questions.

At agreed times (hourly, at end of shift, daily, weekly, etc). check the work area against the items on the checklist, giving each a “Yes” or “No” answer.

Record how many items have been checked, and how many of these reached the standard (a “Yes” answer). Calculate your score as the number of “hits” (items that were a “Yes”), divided by the number of checks carried out, then mutiply this by 100 to create a percentage score.

Set a target / desired level for the next period of time (eg “95% by March 2020”), and compare this with your current score.

Make the scores visible, tackle the reasons for any “No” results, recognise the team’s efforts and watch your 5S performance improve.

Periodically raise the standard – add new items to the list, make the standard more demanding, challenge the team to do better.

As always, please let us have your own thoughts, experiences and examples. And if you’d like some help in developing a sustainable approach to 5S, simply contact andrew.nicholson@improvemyfactory.com

Sustaining 5S - tackling S4 and S5

How to break out of the “Too Busy to Improve” trap

Once you’re up and running with Lean and Continuous Improvement, you’re in the “virtuous circle” where you’re continuously becoming more efficient, saving more time, and investing some of that time in becoming even more efficient.

But if you’re very busy and you haven’t yet started your Lean journey, what do you do?

The biggest danger to avoid is just to “wait until things quieten down”. This approach can be self-fulfilling – but not in a good way! If you don’t improve then the downside of “being busy” can be longer lead times, higher costs and reduced performance. All of which can lead to a permanent – sometimes fatal – reduction in business as customers go elsewhere. This is often called the “busy fool” approach – putting in more and more effort, but getting back less and less benefit.

Instead, you need to get started on the virtuous circle by finding ways to “force in” about 10% of additional time and resource “up front”.

To do this, you need to do a bit more of the things you always do to increase your capacity: work some short-time overtime, cut back on time-consuming unprofitable work, bring in additional labour, contract out some of the workload, reschedule low-priority work, etc, etc.

And then you use some of that time to provide some short, sharp awareness training about Lean, non-value-added activities and the Eight Wastes. People will soon identify where the problems are, and come up with improvement ideas. Then you help the teams to prioritise their ideas and implement them. Focus first on improvements that save time and make the job easier. In no time, you’ll start getting some “quick wins”. Productivity increases, morale improves and people start to smile again.

Pretty soon, you’ll experience the unusual sensation of having time to actually stand back and think. And then you realise that the virtuous circle has begun….

If you want help to break out of your own “Too Busy Improve” trap, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com. Pretty soon, you’ll be getting better results with less effort. And who knows, you might even start to enjoy work and live longer!

The Number Twelve Motivator – “In the last year I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow”

Continuous Improvement applies as much to people as it does to organisations. Yet many organisations fail to understand this and to act on it. As a result, people tend to under-perform and hence the organisations they work for also tend to under-perform.

Effective Leaders understand how to get more from their people. Almost always, they challenge people to do better. And critically, they provide people with the right training, coaching, and support to achive those challenges.

Here are just a few of the many, many ways to help people to learn and grow:

Best Practice: providing opportunities to see what good looks like – perhaps in a completely different industry, sector or environment.

Peer learning: providing opportunities to work alongside colleagues from other departments or organisations

Secondment: typically a short-term transfer to another department or organisation. Maybe a one-year sabbatical?

Delegation: often a simple but very effective way to develop employees. Just make sure that you pass on some of the good stuff, not just the drudge work!

Training and Coaching: often, one of the best wayw to really understand something is to teach it to others.

Projects: typically, important long-term activities, often “above and beyond” the day job. Great for team-building too!

Just a few examples but not only do these approaches help to motivate the individual concerned, they can also provide huge benefits for the employee’s colleagues, for their boss and for their organisation. Try it!

… and if you’d like some help in developing your employees – and perhaps to create yuor own learning organisation – please contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com.

The Number Eleven Motivator – “In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress”

This one really gets to the core of workplace motivation, since it covers some of our basic human needs –

  • the need to have objectives and goals – something to aim for
  • the need to feel that we’re making progress towards achieivng our goals
  • the need for regular feedback, to help us keep on track

Without these – aither at work or in our personal lives – it’s easy to drift and to lose motivation. Remember – “You are happy to the extent that you are in pursuit of worthy goals”.

Effective Leaders get to know their people and make the effort – however busy they are – for regular one-to-one discussions with each of them. Formally, this might be done every six months through an appraisal and review system, but more frequent one-to-one sessions (at least monthly) are perhaps even nore important.

Regular, honest, constructive feedback is vital to individual performance and motivation. In fact, most of us would rather have negative feedback than no feedback at all.

As well as reviewing performance against objectives, it’s also an opportunity to talk about career progression and to ensure that the employee’s idea of their future trajectory is realistic and generally fits with the needs of the organisation. In simple terms, we might benefit from some fast track superstars but most organisations also need a fair number of “steady Eddy’s” – committed, reliable people who always turn up on time and just get the job done.

… if you’d like to know more about objective-setting, effective feedback that works, appraisal, performance management or any other apsects of practical workplace leadership, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.con

The Number Ten Motivator – “I have a best friend at work”

Maybe this is the only one of the Top 12 Motivators that isn’t always simple and easy to address in the workplace. In fact, one of the difficult challenges for first time managers is having to accept that they shouldn’t aim to be “everyone’s friend” at the expense of getting the job done.

That said, there are at least three things that we can aim to provide in the workplace:

  1. For new starters, a designated “buddy” who will be available for the first few days and weeks to help them find their way around. “Hold their hands until they find their feet” as one of my colleagues once put it!
  2. For the “rising stars” (and the owner or Chief Exec) an experienced mentor who can act as a sounding board and ask the right questions
  3. Regular, honest face-to-face feedback – providing in an open, professional manner some of the benefits of a “critical friend”. In other words, being prepared to challenge and to question, in the long-term interests of the other person.

So maybe we can’t literally be, or provide, a “best friend” at work, but there’s a lot that we can do in an organisation to provide many of the positive benefits of a “best friend”. And it’s also a great motivator for those taking on the role of the buddy, the mentor and the “Critical Friend”!

The Number Nine Motivator – “My fellow employees are committed to doing quality work”

When we’re surrounded by people who strive to do well, we’re often encouraged to up our own game. And the opposite is also true – if those around us don’t care about how good of a job they do, and set themselves low standards, then the rest of the team will often sink to the same low standards.

People give of their best when they’re challenged and supported. And no one was ever inspired by the prospect of being average, or “just see what you can do”.

That’s why it’s so important for Leaders at all levels in an organisation to have high expectations of their teams, and to tackle any examples of poor performance.

So maybe it’s time for you to set some stretch targets – agree one or two BHAG’s (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), expect excellence, give team members the support they need to achieve, and tackle poor performance immediately – it’s often contagious!

… and if you need some help with achieving a “One Best Way” culture or you want to know how easy it can be to manage employee’s performance, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com

The Number Eight Motivator – “The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important”

It’s easy to become sceptical about Vision, Mission Statements and the like adorning the walls in Reception, but working for an organisation that does worthwhile work that you believe in or identify with, is increasingly important.

We need to feel that what we do has some purpose and meaning, and we’ve probably heard the truism that “We are happy to the extent that we are in pursuit of worthy goals”

Hoshin Planning (Policy Deployment) is a very structured way of addressing this. Put simply, the idea is to cascade an organisation’s goals – by discussion and agreement – through every level of its hierarchy. Although it appears simple it often takes years to introduce the approach effectively. Done well though, everyone can see how the projects that they are working on fit into the “big picture”.

More easily, a good employee appraisal system should help translate the organisation’s goals into objectives, targets and measures for key staff.

Even more simply, regular one-to-one sessions where employees agree objectives and receive regular feedback, can be a great way of ensuring that employees understand how and why what they’re doing fits into the “big picture” and why it’s important.

Whatever technique we use though, we need to help employees understand that their work is important and valuable and that it contributes to a worthwhile goal. From a Leadership perspective we need employees to understand not just “what” they need to do and “how”, but also – and most importantly – “why”. Speaker and author Simon Sinek explains this in his “Start with Why” Ted Talk on YouTube.

… and if you’d like some help to find the “Why” in your own manufacturing business, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com

The Number Seven Motivator – “At work my opinions seem to count”

In the age of smartphones, 24/7 email and social media it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by communications. Employees can feel it’s difficult to make themselves heard, and managers can struggle to hear people above the continuous “white noise” of messages. As a result, frustration increases, motivation drops and stress levels rise.

That’s when a simple technique – “Ease and Effect” – cuts through the noise, engages employees, makes managers’ jobs easier and quickly gets the best ideas turned into actions.

“Ease and Effect” sessions are one of the simplest, most effective ways to give employees a voice, to translate good ideas into action, and to sustain your Continuous Improvement activities.

It’s often best to start with a small workgroup – perhaps five to ten people – and be specific about the areas that you’d like to tackle. Give the team a week or two to identify problems and wastes (think of “The Seven Visible Wastes”), then bring them back together for a short brainstorming session.

Ask the team to rate each idea as to how Easy it would be to implement (Easy, Medium or Difficult) and how effective it would be (High, Medium or Low effect). Start with the “Easy, High” ideas to get some quick wins, then move onto the “Easy, Medium” and finally the “Medium, High”. Keep track of progress and see how quickly motivation rises and performance improves!

… and if you’d like some practical help to implement “Ease and Effect” in your manufacturing business, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com

The Number Six Motivator – “There is someone at work who encourages my development”

Take an active interest in helping your employees to develop – you’ll boost their skills and their motivation!

Most of us like to feel that we’re making some progress in our lives and our careers. We want to keep our minds active and we want to believe that tomorrow we’ll be more knowledgeable, more skilled or more adept than we are today. And most of us feel happier when we’ve got something to aim for – “We feel happy to the extent that we are in pursuit of worthy goals”…

Ultimately we’re each responsible for our own career progression and development but it can be difficult to do it all on our own. And that’s particularly true if we’re not sure what skills we might need in the future.

Larger organisations may have HR staff with active “talent management programmes” who provide career counselling, well-planned training and development opportunities, and the like. But for smaller organisations there’s often very little help or it falls to the employee’s immediate supervisor or manager and often is low on their list of priorities.

An alternative approach is to provide access to a mentor or “career buddy” elsewhere in the organisation – ideally a more experienced manager that the employee doesn’t directly report to.  They will have an idea of the roles that are likely to be required in the future, and can guide their mentees towards how best to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to fill those roles. It’s also a great way of helping more experienced staff find new ways to make use of that experience. Try it!

… and if you want effective, bespoke training and development for your manufacturing employees, contact Andrew.Nicholson@ImproveMyFactory.com