How do you Measure Operator Motivation / Morale? Our Auditor wants Documentation

[Greg B]

Well, yes.............but then it's easy for major customers to demand things (like this) from their suppliers (like in ISO/TS 16949) when they, themselves have no (effective) way to deal with such issues! Does anyone think that GM has a world class process to motivate and empower employees???????? Toyota, on the other hand.......

In some places, motivation is simply having a job to go to.............

BTW - attendance, tardiness (lateness) and/or retention (first 30, 60 90 days of employment) turn over etc are all reasonable measurements of morale - ask most informed HR managers......

Andy

Andy,

I don't 'disagree' that there are 'ways' of evaluating morale and 'YES' most of the HR clan will espouse these mystical paths into the minds of the workforce but my contention is with the requirement of a business to document it in the first place. As I stated before 'It is like asking people their perception of Quality - it differs for each individual.'. If this was to be a KPI then I'm glad it is not one of mine.
While I'm at it. I think we have to remember that we at the cove do not have to agree with everything that everyone says or offers up - including the standards bodies! If we don't like something we should do everything in our power to change it and if that starts on discussion boards like this then well and good. IMHO this clause regarding Morale is lowering mine!!! and is a waste of resources. IMO and experience the morale of a company is directly in-proportional to the amount of questionnaires a HR professional asks as they tend to scare people with tocuhy feeling questions that seem to go nowhere. I'm on Randy's side you may as well just line them up and sack every tenth employee thus ensuring that the others tow the line

 

[Helmut Jilling]

One thing about "goodness" or "badness" of measurables. It is really hard to tell how good or bad the measure is without collecting data. We have some measures that initially folks said - oh that's stupid, that'll never work. We collected data, and laid it out against our reportable injuries, and found several "leading" indicators which correlated to injury increases and decreases. If we had stopped when the "experts" said that was a "bad" measure, we would have never ended up measuring anything.

Excellent. I think in the midst of all the sour grapes in this thread, our resident statistical expert found the heart of this requirement, and nailed it!

I don't think the intent of the req. was to create a lame measurable for an audit. But, rather, to drive us to create systems and processes whereby we focus on motivating employees and creating good morale. Also, empowering employees. There is alot of power in these concepts but we often fail to get to it. The standard requires us to try. A good auditor will work with you on that, and not just demand a metric.

PS: I agree our customers have little worthwhile to benchmark in this area.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

I am thinking clause 6.2.2.4 of the ISO/TSO 16949 Employee Motivation and Empowerment. Since it is a requirement to have a process to motivate the employees (it is implied) that you measure it. Let's take it literally though. It states a process for motivation, not to measure the motivation of employees (this is an interpretation). So a measure of the process to motivate would be to measure the resources (inputs) and measure the (outputs) results, (and this is the key), the output or result to be measured should be achievement of quality objectives, not motivation. Moreover, measurement of human related defects can be directly related to the result of effectively motivating employees to achieve quality objectives.
This isn't the SA8000....yet

I think you are on the right track...

 

[ASchmidt]

So, survey seems to be the only thing we can come up with to document employee morale. What questions should be on this survey?

1. Is managment available for questions and concerns?
2. Is your work area suitable for your job?
3. Are your needs addressed by the Quality department?
4. Is the suggestion box helpful? (Which I know it isn't, because they only things ever in there are complaints)....

I would think the employees should rate on a scale of 1-4. I'm just at a loss as to "worthy" questions

 

[RoxaneB]

So, survey seems to be the only thing we can come up with to document employee morale. What questions should be on this survey?

1. Is managment available for questions and concerns?
2. Is your work area suitable for your job?
3. Are your needs addressed by the Quality department?
4. Is the suggestion box helpful? (Which I know it isn't, because they only things ever in there are complaints)....

I would think the employees should rate on a scale of 1-4. I'm just at a loss as to "worthy" questions

Your questions, if you feel the survey is the way to go, should be based on what you wish to accomplish.

If you are concerned about morale (i.e., how the employees feel about the company/system), go with the touchy-feely questions like:

• Do you feel satisfied with your job?
• Would you recommend this company to one of your friends as a place to work?

If you are more concerned with the motivation of the employees (i.e., are they aware of how their actions impact the system/quality/environment/safety/stakeholder needs), then your questions should be more broad.

Either way, if you develop the survey, keep in mind to have some open-ended questions at the end:

• Over the past few years, has the system been improving, declining, remained the same?
• On a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent), how would you rate the system and why?
• If you could do it, what ONE thing would you do to improve the system?

 

[AndyN]

So, survey seems to be the only thing we can come up with to document employee morale.

Woa! Unless you get some (qualified) help with phrasing these survey questions, you're going to have a bigger problem. Just as with customer surveys etc. asking the questions which give meaningful answers is a science. Unknowingly, we can bias the result in the way the survey questions are phrased etc. and the 'measurement' data will be invalid.

My belief is that surveys are O.K but there are other methods which don't require expert help to define.

BTW - once you've surveyed or otherwise polled people, are your management actually going to do something with the results? It might be even more demoralizing to put folks through the process, only to find that management don't like what they see and do nothing!

Andy

 

[RoxaneB]

Andy's right...I, too, don't always feel that the survey is the way to go. If anything, it can cause morale to drop...how do you think the employees will feel if you ask their opinions on things but then take no action on any issues raised?

Does the standard require that you have a process for morale or motivation? They are different concepts as has already been mentioned in this thread.

As for motivation, in this sense it's in regard to how the employees relate to their jobs and their ability to meet the needs of their customers/stakeholders. This can be accomplished through a process that involves orientations, team/crew/department meetings, reviews of process/product indicators, newsletters, etc.

Does the standard require that you measure this? We do this through tracking our planned versus actual results in areas such as team/crew/department meetings, union meetings, company communication meetings, newsletters, etc. We track that we are doing what we say we are doing.

 

[Craig H.]

I am thinking clause 6.2.2.4 of the ISO/TSO 16949 Employee Motivation and Empowerment. Since it is a requirement to have a process to motivate the employees (it is implied) that you measure it. Let's take it literally though. It states a process for motivation, not to measure the motivation of employees (this is an interpretation). So a measure of the process to motivate would be to measure the resources (inputs) and measure the (outputs) results, (and this is the key), the output or result to be measured should be achievement of quality objectives, not motivation. Moreover, measurement of human related defects can be directly related to the result of effectively motivating employees to achieve quality objectives.
This isn't the SA8000....yet

First, I am not very familiar at all with 16949, so take this FWIW...

We could measure incoming, untrained employees (inputs) and measure how many have been effectively trained (post test?) on the ways in which their job effects the final product quality. Effectively trained employees would be the output.

This would assume that employees have an innate desire (motivation) to do quality work. If the above training includes a definition of what quality is for that particular job (Crosby's conformance to requirements) the motivation of the employees should be channeled into efforts toward quality end product. This should have the dual effect of both satisfying the company's quality goals and satisfying the standard.

Right?

 

[Bev D]

I tend to side with Greg B on this. this standard stuff is getting out of hand. (sorry if you are registered to this standard - you have to comply)

The quality standards are straying far from providing a 'basic' QUALITY system. The real purpose of a standard is to provide quality products or services that the Customer can rely on. Does a direct process for ensuring morale and motivation and measuring it contribute directly to a good quality product? maybe sometimes. at other times it is an indirect contributor or a result of other things you are doing that are more direct contributors. And not all great motivation and morale leads to good quality: I'm currently dealing with some demotivated and lower morale design engineers that simply do not want to improve their design and V&V processes, let alone incorporate design for manufacture and mistake proofing, etc. They like dit in the old days when they were free to design the elegent single unit that worked once and then it was manufacturing's problem if the thing couldn't be built or wasn't reliable. characterize materials and proceses? no way - they're DESIGN engineers. so how's that for morale and motiviation?

Morale and motivation aren't easy to measure or create (not that it can't be doen or shouldn't be done) and not all companies are at the skill level and maturity to do it correctly. just look at soem of the survey questions - many of them can do more harm than good. On top of that the poor guy who has to comply to this standard now has to struggel with his auditor because the auditor doesn't like measuring attendance or achievement of goals as appropriate measures - even tho the standard doesn't specify what are appropriate measures and what aren't. And as was said before the customers who require this dont' do it themselves and are often teh most in need of it.

 

[Greg B]

Bev,

I agree on the inadequacies of the questionnaires wholeheartedly. We paid about $50K for a bunch of HR gurus to come in wearing their kaftans and beads...and they asked great questions like "If you were a car would you be a Volkswagen or a Ferrari?", "If you were a colour what would it be?"...now these may be great physco babble questions to ask because obviously different cars and colours mean different outlooks but in real terms people skew the results for these surveys to suit their own ends or don't take them seriously enough in the first place. If people are worried about job security, company mergers, layoffs, Non communication, gossip etc then a survey of car types and colours is not going to help. I feel sorry for those companies that have to quantify morale and qualify KPIs against IMHO a ridiculous clause. We went from 2% staff turn over to 25% turnover because coal mines began appearing out of the ground, less than two hours drive from here and were paying DOUBLE the award wage. We managed to document their reasons in exit polls.