Structure a Total Employee Improvement Process- Create a Favorable Environment

By David McGiverin 

Managing employees well isn’t easy – in fact, a conversation with the average manager will quickly reveal that it’s probably the hardest part of their job. But there is a simple way to encourage your employees to have a laser-like focus on your company’s well-being, to cut costs, improve plant-wide morale and enhance the lives of all stakeholders: by encouraging bottom-up innovation to create an environment for improvement. 

In other words, you must begin thinking differently about your staff to begin seeing different results. The first step in kicking off this type of campaign is for the management team of your company to settle for nothing less then a total commitment to creating an environment for improvement.

By creating an environment for improvement, you lay the foundation for future success. Let’s be honest – in most companies, a few highly knowledgeable people reside at the top of the food chain. These individuals have many great ideas and, without them, the company wouldn’t be where it is today. But it’s no longer enough for a company to rely on top management to provide transformative direction. In today’s economic climate, it’s crucial for the entire workforce to create ideas. 

If a manager can create 10 great ideas a year to improve a company, and we have 10 such employees at the top of our organization, then we can create 100 great ideas. To take it further, if each of the ideas had a cost savings or additional revenue potential of $2,000 a year, then the company has added $200,000 to its bottom line. But if your company has 100 employees, and each employee generates ten innovations per year, this would be worth $2,000,000 per year. That’s the fundamental concept driving a total employee continuous improvement process. 

To create this environment, begin by using some of the tools your sales staff uses every day – for example, pull, don’t push. In this context, you need to ask (pull) questions, rather then telling people what to do (pushing). By telling people what to do, we push them away, by asking them for their ideas; we engage them in a new way of thinking. 

This seems like a simple process, but it’s probably the largest paradigm shift any company can undertake. It creates a circuit that draws power from every brain in the plant while committing every employee to the success of his or her ideas. This inherit buy-in strengthens the employer-employee bond in ways that can beneficially impact every level of your organization. 

While this process is relatively easy to implement, it’s also easy to implement incorrectly. It relies on the ability of those currently in control of a company’s top-down innovation process to release that control and begin to manage people, not just their own ideas. Further, managers must provide timely feedback and encouragement to empower others to create more ideas. 

Timely feedback is related to the scope of the idea. An idea that requires many participants or significant operational change may take longer to implement than an idea that, say, optimizes workspace layout.  Encourage your employees to narrow the scope and eat the elephant one bite at a time. One crucial point: in creating an environment for employee-driven improvement, be careful to provide feedback that encourages, rather than discourages, further idea generation. By disparaging his or her idea, you effectively terminate that employee’s participation in the innovation process. 

A second important point: when you encourage employees to continually engage in idea creation, you must allow for trial and error. Some ideas need to be tried, then fine-tuned and improved upon. Encourage experimentation, ask for more ideas and coach your employees through the innovation process. Resist the urge to pull back the reins if initial results are less than optimal.  

Once you’ve achieved employee buy-in and participation in a structure of continuous, employee-driven improvement, it’s important to fine-tune the process through training that will help your employees expand their skills, capabilities and areas of influence. It is at the point where that is achieved that your company will start to see the greatest benefits.

• Commit- Total commitment needed from top management
• Engage-Engage all employees, not just the top few
• Lead- Shift managers from managing their own ideas to managing improvement participation by all
• Build Trust- Give timely feedback on ideas and provide resources needed to accomplish them (24 hr rule)
• Encourage- refrain from putting ideas down; coach workers through the thought process. Ask, don’t tell
• Development- Identify necessary training so the workforce can increase the quality of ideas as well as expand the area of influence
• Celebrate- Reward employees for implementing ideas.  A raffle works nicely; the more ideas implemented the greater the chance to win during the raffle