As a result of a
cutting-edge, three year, action research project sponsored by the Ford
Foundation, we have learned how to help intact work groups and their managers
optimize the three bottom lines: shareholder value, customer satisfaction and
employee satisfaction. In essence, "Re-Inventing Work" is a systemic
intervention that helps organizations understand and manage the
interdependencies in the world of work and the world outside of work. Events
are not isolated occurrences. There is interdependency between our personal
lives, our professional lives, the needs of our customers and the needs of our organizations.
When changes occur in one sphere, it impacts the other spheres. Teams challenge
themselves to find solutions to their dilemmas that will support the needs of
at least these three key stakeholders: shareholders, customers and employees.
Prior to the Ford Foundation
research, the tensions between work and personal lives were addressed in most
organizations with a myriad of innovative policies and programs. However,
cultural barriers and managerial resistance prevented many employees from utilizing
these creative policies and programs such as: Â
flexible work schedules, telecommuting, part-time work or job sharing
arrangements. Managers often feel that it will be more difficult for them to
manage employees using these arrangements. They fear that if they let one
person telecommute or work a flexible schedule everyone will want to do it.
They wonder how the work will get done and who will be in the office?
There are at least three key
problems with the policy and programmatic approach to resolving work-life
dilemmas:
1. Â Â Â Â Â Managers do not always see the link between meeting
their business goals and accommodating individual needs; Â
2. Â Â Â Â Â The policies are ends in and of themselves rather
than means to an end. For example, companies measure how many people use the
telecommuting policy rather than measuring how telecommuting helps to retain
employees, helps to increase productivity or how it helps to attain key
business goals;
3. Â Â Â Â Â The policies are negotiated on an individual basis
rather than trying to understand the systemic issues and resolving those.
Let´s examine a systemic
case study. Â A company imposes a new
requirement on its employees. They are now required to be on a customer´s site
within two hours of a call to fix their computer hardware. Employees can no
longer make personal plans to be out of beeper range or to be more than a
two-hour drive from their customers when they are on-call. A new business
requirement has directly impacted the personal lives of employees and their
families. No more family picnics at the lake when on-call; no more baseball
games or attendance at soccer matches while on-call if the location is out of
beeper range or longer than a two hour drive to the customer site. The
manager´s budget was over expended because of all of the on-call hours.
Employees with valuable skills were threatening to leave. The team came
together to problem solve these challenges.
Collaborative Solutions
Leading to a Three Way Win: Employee, Customer and Shareholder
- Two members of the team
volunteered for a permanent weekend schedule. Thus, other team members did not
have to be on-call on the weekends. The weekend team members did not have to
take on-call during the week. Thus, everyone and their families could make
personal plans without being concerned about on-call hours. The manager was
able to bring the budget back into alignment. The customers were delighted
because they knew who would come out to service their equipment and were able
to develop trusting relationships with their customer service representatives.
No one left the team. Morale and productivity increased. Because of reduced
overtime expenditures and increased productivity, profitability improved.
This change process is a
systemic one because changes are made to support the needs of employees, teams,
managers, customers and the organization as a whole.
Here are some other examples
of how work teams and individuals have empowered themselves to improve the
three bottom lines while attaining work-life harmony for employees:
The Presenting Dilemma:
A group of account support
engineers are responsible to fix customer problems with software. They are
assigned specific customers and are required to respond to the customer needs
and to stay at a site until the problem is fixed. Ten years ago, this job was
manageable within a forty-hour week. But with increased sophistication of
software, with the multitude of platforms to be familiar with, with the fact
that it took excessive time to find information because it was not well
organized in a research bank, and with the fact that many businesses need to
have the troubleshooting done at night or on the weekends because they cannot
take their computer systems down during business hours, the job of a n account
support engineer has evolved to a 24x7 job. Needless to say, account support
engineers were not happy with this situation. They were burning out and
threatening to leave.
Solutions:
The team came to understand
that their hours were excessive because they would have to do extensive
research to learn how to fix the software problems. There were too many
platforms and too much complex software for each engineer to become an expert
in all of the areas. The team solution: They created a Knowledge Engineer
position. The responsibilities of this job would be to:
One person on the team
volunteered to move into this position. It was designated as a full time
telecommuting position. No new headcount was needed because the team determined
that once the data bank was created, they would save so much time in the field
that they could function with one less head count and they would bring their
individual hours back to forty hours a week instead of 24x7. The outcome was a
win for all three bottom lines: shareholder value increased because engineers
were more productive and turnover was curtailed. Customers were delighted
because their problems were fixed more rapidly. Employees were happy because
their jobs were more satisfying and could be done in a reasonable amount of
time. The employee who volunteered for the new position was ecstatic because
she had had been in the account support engineer position for nine years and
was ready for a change and she had always wanted to telecommute. The team and manager
were all pleased because they were able to resolve their own dilemma while
supporting the needs of the business.
Presenting Problem: The separate silos between sales and account support engineers means
that the field is not always aware of activity in their customer accounts. This
is frustrating for both account support engineers and customers.
Solution:
Send out a weekly e-mail to sales and from account support engineers asking if
there has been or will be any activity on key customers. This allows field
staff to find out if calls have come in or if equipment has been ordered. With
this proactive interaction customers can be serviced more effectively and staff
can do their work more efficiently so they have fewer unexpected ´crises´ to
respond to. Customers will feel that there is more integration between the
company´s employees and thus be more satisfied with their experience purchasing
from this corporation.
Presenting Problem: The explosion of information and the complexity of software make it challenging
and time consuming for account support executives to keep updated.
Solution:
At each staff meeting, employees share ´best practice´ ideas regarding their
´tool´ assignment. Thus, each employee only has to keep updated on the tool(s)
assigned to him or her. This saves considerable time while also keeping the
entire staff up to date on cutting-edge information. Staffs now know who is the
´expert´ in each tool so they can call them when faced with a problem on a
customer´s site.
Presenting Problem: Employees were not using their accrued leave time; burnout was
becoming a concern for staff as well as managers.
Solutions:
Presenting Problem: A Human Resources group was not meeting its deadlines for long-term
projects. Staff morale was down and concern about burnout was rampant, because
staff members were working long hours in an attempt to complete their project
work.
Solution:
The members of the HR group determined that interruptions during the core
workday were preventing them from having concentrated time for their long-term
projects. They reconfigured their furniture so a "receptionist"
prevented drop-in visitors from interrupting all of the staff. Staff members
rotated into the "receptionist" role and addressed visitors´
questions, so that others in the department were not disturbed and customers
were still supported. Professional staff also began rotating responsibility to
answer the telephone. Now everyone in the department has uninterrupted time to
focus on longer-term projects by avoiding constant interruptions. Customer
requests are still addressed on a timely basis, and HR staff members feel more
job satisfaction and less stress. They are working more efficiently and
reducing their overtime hours.
Presenting Problem: Customer engineer managers are required to travel extensively to cover
their territory, attend corporate meetings, and meet with customers. This takes
them away from the office and away from home frequently.
Solution:
A Customer Engineering division schedules quarterly off-sites to begin at noon
so that staff travel in the morning and avoid an extra night away from home.
They have agreed to work through dinner to cover the agenda. They prefer this
schedule to taking an extra night away from home. Travel costs have been
reduced for the business while employee satisfaction has increased.
We need to redesign habitual
work processes and traditional work structures so that they are more responsive
to the needs of employees, customers and the organization´s ability to achieve
its business goals. We often approach work on automatic pilot. It is important
to step back occasionally and determine if the nature of the work or the nature
of the work force needs have evolved in order to optimize productivity,
profitability and customer and employee satisfaction.
To find out more about the
research and other case examples, please see our web site at www.artemismanagement.com.
Achieve results; increase productivity, improve quality, expand customer service, increase employee satisfaction, build teams... ReInventing Work will help your organization achieve these outcomes.