Human Resources Vice President, Marcie Kiziak, got a chance to test out her HR theories on how to improve staff morale and turn around a dysfunctional workplace. She was thrown into an industrial coatings company as an interim Operations VP after several others had tried and failed to turn the company around.

Six months into the experiment at Magnum Energy Services subsidiary, Corrosion & Abrasion Solutions Ltd., she’s led an amazing transformation. Quality has improved dramatically, and turnover, absenteeism, and lateness are way down. Equally important, the staff are enjoying working together, and have regained pride in their workmanship.

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Staff Morale Turnaround Process

 

“We had quality issues, we had all kinds of issues… but at the end it was incredibly evident that it was a people connection issue.”

* Get in the trenches and ask questions. You can’t figure out what’s really going on if you stay at your desk all the time. Get on the shop floor. Ask questions. Learn how your operations really work. Most people will happily answer your “stupid questions” if you show them you really are interested in what they do and how they do it.

* Identify the disconnects. Marcie pulled staff from all departments together for a “start/stop/continue” meeting. By having them each go through what was working well (continue), what needed to be done but wasn’t happening (start), and what was happening that shouldn’t be (stop) from their perspective, they were able to identify the key issues.

* Understand the personalities. There are several assessment tools that can be helpful. They used the DISC tool to uncover the work style preferences of each of the staff members. It went a long way towards explaining why there was so much conflict. Going through the process also helped staff learn better ways of interacting with each other. They even put stickers indicating each person’s preferred style on their hard hats!

* Be honest and transparent. It is easy for staff to assume that “the boss” is making money, regardless of how well or poorly the staff are doing their jobs. If you open the books, and let staff see the impact of their work on the company’s financial results, they may well be shocked to discover what a difference they can make (negative or positive). Marcie meets weekly with plant staff to examine the profitability of every job they are working on, and this information is shared with all the workers.

* Have clear responsibilities. The company removed shift barriers so that people weren’t passing off half-finished jobs to someone on another shift. When that happened, it was too easy to blame somebody else if the job was poorly done. If one person has full responsibility for the work, they’ll care more about doing it well.

* Change processes that get in the way. By having staggered start times, based on the type of work each worker was doing, they were able to keep things moving smoothly with one shift instead of two. Instead of having everybody come in at, say, 8:00 a.m. for an 8 hour shift, they would have those whose work had to happen first come in earliest. Then the next type of workers would arrive when that first part of the job was wrapping ...