Undercover with the Boss
February 17, 2010
If you haven’t seen the new CBS TV show Undercover Boss, it’s worth checking out. Perhaps not so much for the cheesy endings (at least on the first two episodes) where outcomes are achieved for individual employees that rival Queen for a Day in terms of bathos. What is “new” here, though, is our ability to look over the shoulder of CEO’s from brand name companies while they experience first hand how hard their employees work to deliver a good outcome for their customers, often in spite of organizational obstacles imposed in the interest of greater efficiency.
I put “new” in quotes because the concept of understanding your front line employees as a means of understanding how to improve your business goes back to management research that Joseph Juran was pioneering in the 1950’s. When I was teaching total quality management seminars in the 1980’s, we were preaching the value of understanding the moments of truth where your employees either delight or disappoint your customers. What’s therefore so interesting about this show to me is what a revolutionary concept this field level view of the world has become for many organizations.
In the first episode, pictured above, Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management experiences not only how difficult and dirty some of these waste disposal jobs are, but also how well meaning policies set at a corporate level can wreak havoc at the employee level. He seems genuinely surprised to see that truck drivers have no bathroom breaks built into their routes or that cleaning 15 portable toilets an hour is a superhuman effort. He appears equally surprised at the level of grace and humour that many of his brand ambassadors bring to their very tough jobs. Larry takes action to address these issues when he goes back to his day job that hopefully will make the work environment more friendly for his employees.
How great could your organization be if senior leadership could experience life in the trenches?
P.S. In the second episode, the CEO of Hooters seems perplexed that potential customers find the Hooters brand demeaning to women. REALLY?
The Productivity Drain
August 26, 2009
In our most recent survey conducted in conjunction with Harris Interactive, we asked over 1000 US workers how they are faring as the recession reaches the one year mark. Although there are some glimmers of hope being expressed that we’ve seen the worst of the recession, many of our respondents have already felt the impact in the form of layoffs, increased workloads and lower workplace morale.
Thirty-eight percent of our respondents said that there had been layoffs in the past year at their primary place of employment. Forty percent of them further indicated that productivity had been negatively impacted by layoffs:
o 66 percent said that morale has suffered and people are less motivated;
o 64 percent said that there is too much work and not enough people to do it;
o 37 percent said the wrong people or departments were laid off, leaving inefficient systems and workflows; and
o 36 percent said they are concerned that as the economy picks up, they won’t have the right resources to meet demand.
Employees also have some advice for employers on how to improve the work environment:
o 50 percent said employers should look for ways to improve morale. The most frequently cited mechanism to do so is increasing hours or salary;
o 46 percent said their employers have processes that should be automated to be more efficient;
o 36 percent said their organizations should invest in new technology to help manage productivity – interestingly enough, more men (42 percent) than women (30 percent) believe this would help; and
o 36 percent of employees believe that organizations need to take a fresh look at how to redistribute the workload among those employees who are left.
In an upcoming CFO.com webinar with Jim Holincheck of Gartner, he’ll be offering insights into what organizations are doing to balance recession economics and productivity. If you’d like to learn more, you can register here.
If you’ve felt the sting of cutbacks in your workplace, what’s your employer doing to help you work smarter, not just harder? If you’re one of the optimists who believes the economy is starting to recover, how prepared is your organization to sprint out of the recession?
Gaming the Clock
June 15, 2009
In a recent survey we conducted with Harris Interactive, we asked over 700 hourly paid employees if they had ever cheated in reporting their hours in order to increase their paycheck. Twenty-one percent indicated that they had. Not surprisingly, of the 21% of respondents who admitted to cheating on their time reporting, the highest percentage (35%) of them were using paper based systems. As the means of time reporting became more automated and harder to deceive, the percentage of cheaters declined, with only 5% of those using biometric time clocks reporting themselves as having gamed the system. Among those who cheated, the tactics included:
- Punching in earlier or out later than scheduled (69%)
- Adding extra time to their timesheet (22%)
- Failure to punch out for meals or breaks (14%)
- Having someone else punch them in or out (5%)
How much does time theft hurt businesses? A recent Diagnostic Assessment analysis Kronos conducted for a 6,800 employee manufacturer revealed rounding-rule abuse cost of over 1.3% of total wages paid. The 4 worst-performing departments in terms of rounding-rule abuse cost the organization approximately $3.6M annually. According to a 2006 Nucleus Research Report ROI report, companies with manual time and attendance systems typically incur unnecessary payroll costs upwards of 1.2 percent of their total payroll costs due to inaccurate application of pay rules, as well as human errors, intentional and otherwise.
Feelings run high on both sides of this issue. This discussion thread from Woodweb, a website for the woodworking industry, is a spirited debate between employers and workers regarding whether automated time tracking is a necessary management tool or Orwellian incursion. The truth lies in how the tools are used, of course. Employee punches collected by time clocks are indisputable data elements. Friction between employers and employees, or failure to comply with standards such as those set by FMLA, FLSA or union rules, is caused by how that data is used to calculate pay. Fair and legal policies, consistently applied via technology, can help to close those gaps.
Discussion with David Caruso: Reducing Costs and Boosting Productivity in a Challenging Economy
May 6, 2009
I recently had the opportunity to talk about the importance of labor cost management in manufacturing with David Caruso, the founder and Principal of David Caruso & Associates, Inc. David’s consulting firm specializes in manufacturing, supply chain, and technology strategy. We talked about how manufacturing organizations are increasingly focusing on labor cost management in the current challenging economy.
In our conversation, David provides a number of examples of how manufacturers have used labor analytics tools to analyze and improve both worker productivity and product quality. In one firm he assisted, they found that quality eroded over the course of the day due to worker fatigue. They inserted more breaks into their process and achieved significant improvements in productivity and quality. Click here to listen to a podcast of our conversation and hear more tips from David Caruso.
You can find additional information on this topic in this new Kronos whitepaper as well as in this article from IndustryWeek by my colleague Gregg Gordon on effective ways to manage a global workforce.
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