Having been through the process with a couple of companies, a recent article in Management Issues on managing change in the workplace struck a chord.
The article makes the very good point that, contrary to the popular myth, people love change – provided they are included in the process. And that’s where a lot of companies fall short in the eyes of their employees.
Some companies undertake staff opinion surveys to gauge how their people feel about the company and the work place. If the results come back showing lower levels of satisfaction than the Board (or HR Director) would like, the priority changes to how to improve those scores.
Having listened to their staff complain about lots of things, one company I know of went about getting staff to volunteer to participate in workshops to discuss the most pressing problems (those questions that returned the least favourable responses). In groups of 6 to 8, they discussed leadership, employee engagement, strategic planning and other high-profile problems. The process utilised was known as Workout.
Full marks for trying, guys, but you missed.
Firstly, Work-Out was designed to “identify and eliminate unneeded processes and tasks…”. It relies on people from all affected areas getting together to discuss the issue and come up with workable suggestions for improvement.
The company I am talking about bent the rules.
Firstly, the subjects selected for discussion were HUGE! Issues such as Leadership, Engagement, Efficiency and Innovation and others were on the agenda. Tough ask to change anything material like that in the allowed 90 days.
Secondly, participants were volunteers, not selected on their knowledge of the problem area. There were also only a handful of them present. So no guarantee of meaningful solutions, but the important thing was that the workforce felt engaged, right?
Third, while it generates a lot of ideas and thoughts, only a few of them are taken forward for action. There is also little rigour to ensure that the most important issues are taken forward for resolution.
It was completely the wrong tool for engaging the staff in the change process.
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