sect 4.1.6 ISO16949

When one has a relatively low skilled workforce, has anyone determined a good set of principles to encourage employee motivation. I have tried several schemes with little or no effect (paying more wages is not an option - we are an automotive supplier!)

How about "no or unacceptable work quality or quantity - no job"?

Originally posted by Randy:
How about "no or unacceptable work quality or quantity - no job"?

Union or non-union?

Don:
I have used our employee newsletter at times to provide our workforce with information that hopefully allows them to relate their every day personal expieriences/interests/attitudes to our Quality system.

I have presented quality systems use to them in terms of sporting events .... something they can relate to..

IMHO any contest, professional/semi professional/amature sportsevent - even auto racing - can be related to an operational quality system. All the main inputs and expected outcomes can be related to a good system.

Executive Management - Owners
Mid level managers - Coaches
Safety - Medical Trainers
Auditors/Inspection - Referees
Procedures & work instructions - Playbooks
Workforce - Players
Customers - Paying Spectators
Standards & specifications - Rulebooks
Defects/nonconformances - Fouls, Penalty minutes, errors etc.

Respected successful companies - World Champs

The need for continious improvement - training - upgrading of skills and expected product outputs (and the results of not providing quality products) are all there..

Surley this won't work everywhere but it did seem to make sense to our folks.

Regards:
Jim

To AJPaton - non union shop
To Randy - good idea; I may not have much of a workforce left though!!!!!
To Jim Biz - thanks for the info. We have a company newsletter. I may try to liven it up a touch.

It only takes one or two for the message to get out - union or not....

Profit sharing based upon productivity also helps..... no productivity-no quality-no profit-no bucks...

Its a tough world.......

With a non-union shop you have leeway to follow Randy's suggestion more than we do here, however, chances are that your replacement workers would be even less motivated. Management by intimidation is a passe model. Although I do sometimes see its appeal.
Our workforce's most common complaint is training. They don't feel needed if they don't know why they're doing their job.
Some of our most popular classes are the ones that explain our product and shows what it does. Failure conditions are especially good, since ours are safety devices, and injuries and/or fatalities can easily occur in misapplications.
To get buy-in to systems thinking, you need to give people the overall view of the product/system.

Employees should be made to feel that they are an important part of the process. A sense of "ownership" goes a long way to improving quality and quantity (productivity).

The key to ownership of the process, ergo product, is a good internal communications network. Playing I've got a secret with those individuals involved only creates resentment, half-truths and mis-understanding of the true mission and objectives of the organization.

In the Marines our "product" was the successful accomplishment of our mission. In order to get everyone on the same sheet of paper we used the term "SMEAC".
"S" situation. What's going on, where
and why.
"M" mission. What are we expected to do
(product)? What is the objective or goal?
"E" execution. How are we going to
accomplish the "mission". Would 'work
instructions be here?' Tier 3 documents
maybe?
"A" administration. How is this process
going to be managed? Tier 2 documents?
"C" command and control. Who is in charge?
What are responsibilities are assigned?
Tier 1?

Organizations providing the above basic information to the line employees will gain greater employee buy-in at less expense that those organizations that choose to do otherwise.

[This message has been edited by Randy (edited 08 May 2000).]

I'm quite interested in the part motivation plays in company wide quality improvment. You seem to be infering that low skill = low motivation. Is this right? Also how have you identified low motivation. What methods have you used?

Low skill = low motivation? Never have considered that myself.

How skilled are the raft builders from Haiti and Cuba? Not very skilled at boat building but motivated like hell. The reason....they have a definite defined goal to work towards. Someone, sometime told them about the USA and what it has to offer....that's communication in action.

If organizations would honestly take the time to win over the lowest of the low to it's goals, the motivation to succeed will surface.....the improvement of quality and quantity will follow.

30+ years ago we called it the "Hearts and Minds Program"...win over their hearts and their butts will follow....

COMMUNICATION = MOTIVATION = PRODUCTIVITY+QUALITY = PROFIT ($$$$$$)

The bottom line in business is profit and anything that keeps it from occuring is a negative factor in the equation.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out or have an MBA either.

The best motivators I know of are involvement and honest communication. Post scrap reports. Post monthly sales and profits figures. Employ profit sharing.

Randy said: "...Employees should be made to feel that they are an important part of the process..." I sort of agree - but I would say: "...Employees must feel that they are an important part of the business as a whole..." I believe we're saying the same thing, but I think the word BUSINESS is important.

Good points, Randy.

[This message has been edited by Marc Smith (edited 09 May 2000).]

I believe a culture change is required within the organisation. There is more than enough information regarding business performace (production, quality, sales, health and safety, etc) and employees are offered the opportunity to comment, post improvement suggestions and to attend improvement discussions.

However, it seems to fall onto the same couple of people to drive it through.

several briefing sessions have been held with the whole workforce (split into small groups and including management) in an attempt to get their 'buy in' into improvement programmes and to provide the springboard to increased motivation.


The most frustrating comment I hear is "we've been doing it this way for 40 years. Why change?".

I know the answer is blindlingly obvious and the answer has been given to the employees. I may as well talk to a wall.

Our major customer is keen to help (Jaguar Cars) as an improvement in our company naturally reflect in quality and delivery performance. However, we area small company employing 45 people. We do not have huge resources in terms of personnel and finance.

Any more comments, fellas..........


Don Reid

Don

The thread suggests that improved communication will lead to improved motivation/business objectives. As you are in the UK have you considered a model like Investors In People as a means of spearheading a cultural *change/changing attitudes?

*I find the term 'change' too emotive. Not many object to 'improvement'.

Paul -

Yes; I have been talking to the Leicestershire Training and Enterprise Council with that in mind. Curiously, when I mentioned this possibility at a works meeting, the general thought was "Ooo, good, were getting more money"!!!!!!!

Why Change? IMHO: Dig out a picture of a 40 year old Jaguar - compare it to this years model - what customers wanted (and would accept) 40 years ago is not what they want to see you do today.

"We've always done it this way" ---- is it still valid? can it be improved? is there a better way today? In 1960 you would be asking for information by telegraph - doing accounting with pencils and adding machines... What if we were still conducting business that way today?

Old comparison: - you either move forward with the traffic or literally become a permanent part of the road..

Regards
Jim

I have a short story to tell that may or may not be relavent, but jumped to mind as I read the above posts. All this happened near the end of the "star wars" projects when the DoD buys were going away, and electronics companies were scrambling to change focus from military manufacturing to commercial.
The company i worked for had been getting complaints that several of the components they were getting failed their incoming visual inspection when they were delidded. The customer was purchasing commercial grade (ie no temp extremes, less process control and enviornmental testing, visual criteria not as stringent because of these less stressfull conditions). They were great at military manufacturing, and everyone proudly boasted that their stuff went into Patriot Missles, and on the space shuttle.
Try as I may, I couldn't get them past the "well what do they want, its just commercial?" attitude. What i ended up doing was provide a list of applications where commercial product would be used.......and the consequences of failures. Banks, medical devices, computer controls,commercial airplanes, automobiles, communication instruments (including military ) provided for a huge amount of respect. I got them past video games, personal computers and TV. The work force was thrilled to know what they were a part of, and there were zero complaints based on "its just commercial" processing...

moral of the story? give them a pride in ownership and anyone will go above and beyond...they need to know that what they make is worth putting the extra effort into.

As an auditor I saw a client that had some real meanial tasks,,low tech ...the guy was putting salad oil on a cutting blade for the food industry. He approached it with such pride and precision,,,,wiped each and every crevice carefully, hundreds of blades a day...each with as much care as the first. Why? he told me that "I love my job, if I don't do it properly the blade may rust, and maybe someone could get sick."

need i say more?

[This message has been edited by barb butrym (edited 10 May 2000).]

Barb,

heard a similar one about a guy who swept the floor at Nasa. When asked by a visitor what he does, he replied "I help to put a man on the moon"

Don

Yes Don...heard that one too....isn't that a wonderful way to look at your job?

I try, with every training I provide ....to instill/promote that type of pride. I strongly suggest that all auditors I train take that into effect during their audits of tasks that they find little interest in...never let the auditee feel that you are disintereted in what they are doing.

I'm posting an article I wrote in 1995. It appears also under ISO9000:2000 matters elswhere on this board - so sorry for the double posting. The article proposes a simple Scanlon plan (see also http://www.gainsharing.co.nz/Gainsharechapter.html)
Hope this doesn't bore you. Best Regards, Al

DRIVING ‘CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT’
BY PRODUCTIVITY GAIN SHARING

There have been schemes proposed for ‘Productivity Gain Sharing’. These are usually based on payment of cash bonuses as a result of assessment of arbitrary productivity indicators.

I suggest that the payment of this type of bonus is undesirable for the following reasons:

a) impact of the bonus is essentially short term;
b) areas such as occupational health and safety, and environment can be neglected by workers to more easily achieve payment of the bonus.

The new approach to quality management offers an opportunity to implement Productivity Gain Sharing in a much more effective manner.

The usual implementation of ISO9000 quality management systems involves documentation of work practices as ‘quality system procedures’, development of quality policy and mission and vision statements.

ISO9000 standards place a strong emphasis on ‘continuous improvement’ and the next phase may be implementation of Total Quality Management TQM. This activity concentrates on improvement of work practices through worker participation.

The normal sequence of events of TQM is:

a) plan a quality improvement to a process and document the process ‘warts and all’;
b) brainstorm for possible solutions using a group activity, and implement changes to the process;
c) check that an improvement has actually been achieved (use statistics) and that other processes have not been adversely affected;
d) act to consolidate the changes by updating process documentation (such as quality system procedures).

Thus the effectiveness of the quality management system depends on achievement of a high level of worker participation.

Employee Share Ownership (ESO) programs offer an excellent opportunity to drive the ‘continuous improvement’ concept and achieve a higher level of business competitiveness.

I suggest that public listed companies should sell shares to their employees at a discount rate dependent on increases in productivity.

Productivity of a company can be assessed by calculating the ratio of ‘profit’ to ‘wages bill’(provided there is not a greater investment in plant in any given year). This calculation takes into account gains and losses due to the management of the organisation.

The formula for calculating the share discount should be made available to the employee.

The advantages of this approach are:

a) the ‘continuous improvement’ program is driven by self interest;
b) employees gain a sense of ownership;
c) impact of rewards is long term;
d) the shares can be converted into cash and provide a ‘cash bonus’ if required;
e) employees can have an input at shareholders meetings and direct organisation policy. This would effectively implement Industrial Democracy.

To the employee this approach should look like ‘going to the races and riding the horse he/she has bet on’. Nothing motivates like ‘a piece of the action’.


Alan Cotterell
5 July 1995

Don:

At my company we have put in a couple of methods in place, one causes a positive cash flow for the company the other costs about $100.00/month. Here they are try them out.

1. The most popular - For the line in our plant (we have 7 times 2 shifts for 14 possibilities) that performs the best for 1 month, they get a 1 hour lunch as opposed to 30 minutes and the company springs for the pizza. Measurables to determine who is the best are:
a. Least customer returns
b. Least end of the line rejects
c. Least osha recordable injuries
d. Highest internal ISO/TS 16949 audit score
e. Productivity

Each items score is weighted, this would depend on the objectives from your business plan

2. The so/so popular - Each line participates in quality circle meetings that try to end problems, this also covers our continuous improvement projects and our priortized reduction plans:
a. All people on the line participate from both first and second shift
b. Meetings are led by a Quality Technician
c. Topics covered are highest 2 customer returns for that line, highest two end of the line rejects for that line, and finially the highest 2 RPN's from that lines FMEA.

Ideas come from these meetings that are put in place, some are not. All and I mean all are responded to by upper management. At first a bunch of silly ideas came up but when everyone seen that upper management was comitted to giving a response to even the most bone head ideas, the quality of the participation got alot better.

You might try it, it has worked extremely well for us.

I've been in the workforce at various levels for 35 years. I've observed hundreds of content and disgruntled employees. The "happy" people have two common threads.

1. EXPERTISE - Through training, coaching, experience, they have become completely proficient at what they do. They are brimming with self confidance. We have a dock receiver who's been there for nine years. Never a complaint, never late, etc.. When he gets audited he's perfect. He's the best at what he does and loves it.

2. HIGH QUALITY LEADERSHIP - Supervisors, Dept. Heads, etc. that really know what the hell is going on. People need guidance they can count on in any situation; be it time cards, policy, unusual work circumstances, personal problems, or whatever. Employees are fed up with "I'll look into it". They will do anything for an "answer man".

So, you can try all the toys, games, gimmicks, incentives, and slogans you want. None of it will work as effectively as ensuring that an employee will walk through that door each day confidant that she/he can cope with any situation and that they will always "have a good day". "Success" is not a term reserved for CEO's.

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