Employee Satisfaction: Getting upper managements attention

[SRGBE]

Ok well I work for a small company. We recently passed our initial certification audit, and as such now I have a little more free time to tackle problem areas and focus on some real improvement.

Disclaimer: This is a great company, with great people.

The problem I face is that our biggest area of concern is employee satisfaction. We have very few benefits (extremely high cost medical insurance, 1 week vacation after 1 year service), and our President and VP are micro-managers to the extreme. They are very old-fashioned in their approach to business, and do not budge easily. Fortunately, they understand quality and customer satisfaction (or they wouldn't be in business), what they don't seem to understand is that the expectation of military like discipline (myself and a few other top people are ex-military) wears down morale. Penny pinching is a constant battle. Time off is an unspeakable horror. Being late is equivalent to quitting.

I want to address this area, and I think anonymous employee surveys are a decent first step in that direction. The problem I face is twofold though: employees haven't had an outlet in a long time (maybe ever), and I think this would skew the results in a negative manner while they vent their frustrations, secondly the Pres. and VP (husband and wife, btw) don't listen to employee complaints. Only when those complaints are safety related do they get any attention, employee morale seems to be greek.

I am new to Quality Management, and I don't quite know how to get their attention on this problem, but I do know (99.9% certainty) that if this is addressed, the entire organization will benefit drastically.

Help, please.

[Duke Okes]

Look at it from a business standpoint: What is the impact of the employee dissatisfaction (assuming it is there)? Is it causing poor outcomes? Customer complaints? High turnover? etc.

Then turn that into dollars (assuming management really understands that!). What are those outcomes costing the company? (e.g., lost business, hiring & training, rework ...).

And I definitely would not do an employee survey without management agreeing to it up front. First quantify the above, and see if there is ammunition that you can use to get management attention.

[SRGBE]

Well, we have a solid core of employees, but it is VERY difficult getting new hires to stay for very long. What has prompted this thought is the now growing talk of dissatisfaction, and 2 or 3 employees that are preparing to leave. This is not official information yet (I was once a line-man so they trust me above other management), so I can not expose it. The problem is once we lose these people it may be too late.

We do not offer any formal training, only OTJ. So there is no cost of training. I can not use the threat of losing people as an incentive, because they are the type who refuse to be intimidated, even in the face of facts.

What I do have, that I can quantify, is excessive absences. I know the truth behind these absences, but I couldn't dare prove that correlation to the top management without betraying the trust that gets me the important information I use to improve processes and the system in general.

I know for absolute fact the dissatisfaction is there (outside of normal griping, which is always present and is good for morale), but how do I show that without "stepping on toes" or "betraying the trust" that employees have put in me?

[Duke Okes]

Are all managers blind or is there someone who is more open minded you could talk with about your concerns (without divulging any specific examples that could betray confidentiality)? The idea is to see if you can build a coalition.

[SRGBE]

There are three managers, 2 of us are in agreement. The last one is basically a yes-man, so he will voice support when they do, but will not go against it until they do.

[Jennifer Kirley]

There is much grumbling in current business circles that "The work ethic is dead."

It's not dead, but it is changing. New hires are less apt to put up with an oppressive work environment - or a sense they aren't trusted - than their elders. In fact, data suggest young people may care more about this culture than medical benefits.

So who you hire is bound to make a difference in what's expected. The younger they are, the less of what you described will be tolerated and your turnover costs will show it. See my paper Conquering Employee Turnover Costs for methods to measure those costs.

But it's easy to compare costs of benefits - it's not so easy to change management styles! My experience has shown it can take a generational turnover to get that done; or some epiphany, whichever happens first.

Your management team may need to use this as a decision maker about whom to recruit. If they want more discipline, they may need to look for older workers. If they want young people, they will need to think younger too - or else recruit veterans. But watch out! Veterans like to be treated like we have intelligence too. A veteran career counselor once told me that one of the common reasons vets have a hard time is the paucity of responsibility and authority in the workplace.

So your management will need good, honest data and appropriate choices to select from regarding this phenomenon. You can survey your employees, but I suspect you've no great need to. If you do, I suggest you use a survey like this one: Are We Making Progress because it is structured in a way that isn't intended to point fingers at managers.

But all of this is pointless if they are not ready for the honest results and to act on them.

When I started my civilian work, it was in a machine shop full of deeply distrustful men. They believed I was to be the president's poodle. They had no experience with a woman in the inspector's role except the president's daughter, and in any case did not appreciate the need to hire an inspector at all. They wondered "What is wrong with us that we can't inspect?" Some months later I could detect thawing. When I asked what did it, one of the older members said he decided to take a second look upon being so surprised by the strength of my handshake. Overall I won them over by talking, with them versus at them, and telling them more details about quality systems and frustrations I could see and feel. I was able to get some things resolved, which helped "prove" my position, but the event that really did it was a heated argument with the shop foreman, which almost all of them could see. They couldn't hear us from the noise and should never have been allowed to see such a thing, but it did win over the last doubters.

That should never need to happen. Really, you may need to do your own "temperature checks" to see how it's going for you as well as the employees. Good luck with this.

[justncredible]

Sounds like being between the rock and hard place. It is their business, and sometimes it will take a hard failure for them to change. I can understand you want to stop that from happening, but if conditions are bad these people need to find better jobs. I give a new job 3 strikes then I leave, I might be on new hire probation for 3 months, but I give them a full year to make 3 mistakes. I get these fly by nite temp agencys ask me why I job hop, I consider that a strike on them. If they mention it again another strike, so far I will not deal with any more temp agencys,,LOL I owe companys nothing, I am the asset, if they can not figure that out it is best to leave. I would tell the employees that. No reason for them to be unhappy.

I find people become "lazy" and will accept all kinds of abuse.

[Jennifer Kirley]

In Reply to Parent Post by justncredible

I find people become "lazy" and will accept all kinds of abuse.

I have seen people take a lot of abuse and they weren't lazy. More like, they were more patient or believed they did not have better options. They were generally older employees, which infers nothing except they may have believed there would be few places where they could start over.