High Performance Work Systems

Employee involvement is a major buzz phrase of our times.  But how does one get beyond the slogan to practical reality?  Two of the most common, and potentially the most powerful mechanisms for involving employees are teams and suggestion systems.

Basically, the team concept gives groups of workers, supported by managers and technical personnel as required, the chance and the authority to identify problems and opportunities, find out where and why processes go wrong, develop and test proposed solutions, and implement those that work.  Teams also give individuals the opportunity  to help solve problems that they could not solve on their own.  Ideally, teams address only those problems whose solution contributes in a big way to quality improvement:

• Improvement of yield of BBP ingots at the LD shop -  Tata Steel
• Reduction in oil smear on 200 ml plastic bottles - Marico
• Reducing electricity consumption by 25% - Punjab Tractors
• Increase in copper yield from 82% to 97%  - Sterlite Copper.

Suggestion systems are another device for involving employees.  For many, the suggestion box sitting empty in the employee cafeteria or outside management’s door will leap to mind.  But for suggestion systems to be effective, they must be more than a passive receptacle for employee ideas:

• First, companies must be ready to read and respond to employee suggestions while they are fresh
• Second, employees need to be coached and trained how to identify problems and develop solutions
• Third, suggestions for small improvements must be as welcome as suggestions for big improvements, since small improvements are an important part of the overall environment for continual improvement
• Finally, management should commit to implementing as many suggestions as possible.  Suggestion systems with low implementation rates soon lose momentum because employees become skeptical that their ideas will be acted upon.

During a session I was chairing in Singapore at the Asia Pacific Conference on Quality nine years back, one of the speakers from Texas Instrument stated that at his operations in Asia TI implements, on an average, 40 suggestions per employee per annum.  The next speaker from Toyota in turn stated that at Toyota they implement, on an average, 12 suggestions per employee… per month!  At Toyota, the suggestion box travels up and down the shopfloor on a fork-lift truck. It passes every employee twice a day!