Key Assumptions:
- The more people-intensive (and less fixed asset-intensive) businesses have the following:
- Maximum potential flexibility to change, but also
- The biggest problem of keeping employees focused.
- Intangible, service products which sell both slowly and as a result of consistently good service interactions and good customer testimonials.
- Consistently superior service is produced by: superior caliber people who receive superior training and work in a superior, motivating environment receiving super wages from a company that can still make superior profits. These elements are not mutually exclusive but rather inter-dependent.
- A company’s environment and coaches (manager) drive behavior. 2’s and 3’s can turn into 8’s. Get hobby energy on the job.
Guidelines:
- Work to achieve a quadruple-win pay policy for which employees earn 150% of the average metro-market wage for a given commodity job, but produce 165%(+) of the output of an average worker.
- Fewer people; better quality; strip out inspectors and supervisors, achieve zero errors and 120% input effort.
- Pay a lot, expect a lot: pay for results, week for lack of results; post numbers for quality, quantity and department “PPR” for individuals and team.
- Achieve caring, service excellence which primes the stakeholder cycle and allows management and salesmen to grow business vs. react and protect.
- Hiring is the most important decision a manager makes.
- Advertise premium wage range for measurable, proven tract record with references for a generic type job.
- Don’t be distracted by specific industry knowledge of applicants.
- Use multiple screening process; call and check references; insure team ownership and chemistry.
- Equal pay is unequal.
- Penetrators and peak performers deserve more and greater raises than steadies (weed coasters).
- Only penetrators may be potentially motivated by incentives.
- Incentive programs are over-rated, over-used and under-managed (the health analogy).
- Criteria for person for whom an incentive might work:
- Will they change behavior for an incentive?
- Can they afford at-risk pay vs. a raise?
- Difference between serious and fun incentives?
- Can they cope with cyclical and external shocks to the pay plan?
- Can they re-negotiate plans with a long-term win-win outlook?
- Can they explain and self-administer progress scoring frequently?
- Balance the mix of penetrators with peak performers for innovation vs. maintenance. Seek a constant level of tiger-power that is geared to the company’s growth rate; the team needs one heart-beat and pace.
- Create an environment that induces employees to turn on and work hard, smart and enthusiastically. You can’t runcompanies anymore.
- The entrepreneurial – wanabee, new-value employee.
- Decentralizing DB information and power.
- Elements of the high performance environment:
- Reference – providing big picture orientation and training.
- Make employees responsible for growing productivity or GP$/employee; GPS/total people costs.
- Lots of growth expectations – on-going education and personal development for all.
- Lots of positive feed-back on all progress and well-intended efforts.
- Keep pushing stretch responsibility that will allow only small, learning mistakes and tuitional expense.
- Structural discipline and motivation of posted numbers and commitment to service excellence standards.
- Team building, awareness and celebrations. Hooplah!
- A sense of family to replace the traditional family and community support which is declining.
- Make the job an enabling or growing experience.
- Promote a sense of ownership in the job, department, branch and company at least as a stakeholders; perhaps someday as a shareholder.
- Teach all to be capitalists who work to insure the company’s profits to provide growth and development capital for:
- Stakeholders’ future growth.
- And perhaps year-end profit-sharing business.
- Vs myopic, selfish, adversarial, static-pie philosophy of get more and do less.
- Have one class of employees, o excessive perks, titles and formalities.
- Give everyone credit and responsibility for knowing the most about their job. Consult on changes involving them and make sure they sign-off and up for any such changes.
- Measure monthly, year-to-date and annual rates of: turnover, sickness and lateness quietly and then publicly if it become a source of pride, an indicator of a “we like it here, you can count on me” attitude.
- Jazz up the learning environment by getting everyone involved in teaching at least a weekly, group, show-and-tell session.
- Does everyone have a chance to conform and belong as well as a chance to stick out and feel important.
- Everyone’s motives and sources of motivation are different. Survey what motivates them; how motivated they currently are and what can they, as well as the company, do to achieve or maintain a high level of motivation.
- Maintain first-day enthusiasm and motivation of all new employees.
- Assign a sponsor to teach orientation lessons.
- Lay out a learn-and-earn, cross-training certification program.
- Turn osmosis OTJ training into a science. Drill, test, measure and pay.
- Create strong, positive work norms; they self-perpetrate themselves and provide the most powerful, relentless incentive of all – keep up with your peers or feel the heat.
- Informally practice full employment planning and then formally announce the policy assuming a person maintains quality and quantity standards.
- P.R.I.C.E. and write-up someone three times before weeding.
- Make sure other stakeholders’ perceive the treatment fair.
- Practice work-sharing in tough times.
- For unions:
- Treat them like every other partner, stakeholders.
- Invest trust to get trust.
- Don’t try to humiliate or embarrass the institution.
- Find successful union shop role models and examples.
- Negotiate with measurable, objective standards (PAR example).
- Put in upside individual and team bonuses to put peer pressure on the coasters.
- Summarize employees “bill of rights” and their responsibilities; they should both increase together as well as decrease if abused.
- High wages; high responsibility, flexibility, reliability and standards.
- Everyone is responsible to contribute to a high performance environment.
- Future raises? Every one must work to lift GP$/employee.
- Either part of the solutions or part of the problems. No free riders.
- On-going personal education and development requires among other things:
- 1 – 3 goals; each of which is written-up on one page.
- A one-page job description including how to measure good performance for which employee and manager have 100% agreement.
- Everyone must understand, believe and practice the rule of 5 – 7 and 1 – 10 if progress is to occur. (First-time teachers vs. fist-time students.)
- Everyone must forward invest some of their time into themselves.
- Personal initiative before someone else has to tell you what to do.
- Promote:
- From within to give others positive expectations.
- To underscore new company values and directions; not to reward seniority and out-dated values.
- Only after the fact: leaders have followers; you can’t command others to do things; power-seekers and users are outmoded.
- Fewer people as managers and inspectors are eliminated and the numbers, the standards and the guidelines allow more self-governing.
- Pro-actively form bench strength. Chose today’s hires to grow into tomorrows responsibilities.
Personnel Guidelines – SECTION FOUR