It pays to listen

Most of us have seen the good and bad sides of employee suggestion schemes. Simple insights have saved companies thousands and thousands of pounds. They often come from people who have been wondering for years why exactly management wanted it done that daft way in the first place. All it needs is an opportunity to be heard. But, equally, there are stashes of anonymous survey forms with helpful suggestions to double wages, sack the foreman and refocus the business on chocolate teapots. There's a simple truth behind these two extremes. Surveys and suggestion schemes are not a universal panacea. If there are real, deep-seated problems and suspicions at grass roots, neither employee opinion surveys nor suggestion schemes are going to solve the problem. They work best when employees and management have genuine mutual respect and want to pool their efforts in improving both the detail of daily operations and the general working environment. Joe GoasdouŽ, chief executive of the British Quality Foundation (BQF), is a firm advocate of the inherent benefits of both these mechanisms. Nonetheless, he feels that organisations often misunderstand the underlying purpose, particularly with regard to suggestion schemes: "They are not primarily about saving cash. If that's the overt objective, they are likely to be regarded with suspicion. They are really about involving people in the company's activities and encouraging innovation." BQF is an independent, not-for-profit organisation and its Innovation Unit provides advice and networking events for manufacturers to learn from each other's experiences in running schemes of this type. GoasdouŽ says both figure highly on his members' list of priorities: "There is constant debate about the merits and how to do it." Let's take suggestion schemes first. In his view, many fall down because they become remote from line management. "If they are centrally run, there has to be a slick way of doing it. Otherwise paper gets filled in and passed on and it becomes part of a big relay race... There can be central co-ordination but it is absolutely essential that line management takes responsibility for the suggestions and ideas of their employees." Some companies have developed good online schemes, using intranets; others rely on face-to-face interaction. But GoasdouŽ reckons there's no substitute for the suggestion board where people stick bits of paper with their ideas on them. "Simplicity is the solution - respond fast and make it very easy for people to generate ideas." GoasdouŽ says the best suggestion scheme and, indeed, the best employee surveys he has seen in UK manufacturing are at Ricoh UK Products Ltd (RPL), Ricoh's UK manufacturing plant in Telford. Chris Nicholls, general manager of manufacturing, explains that RPL particularly avoided using HR for both of these because "you get an HR system instead of one geared to improving manufacturing". The Telford plant's sole focus is making product and its customer is Ricoh's retail group, which handles all the sales and marketing, "so we concentrate on where we can make improvement". The whole plant, including the departments supporting manufacturing, is geared to continuous improvement (CI). Everyone has been trained in 5S and kaizen activities are an intrinsic part of normal working. "Engaging our employees and tapping into their ideas gives us long term CI," explains Nicholls. "We don't mind people making suggestions about other people's processes or outside their own work area, but we do believe they are the real experts when it comes to their own jobs. We also believe strongly that employees' suggestions contribute strongly to the organisation's profit. More importantly, it gives everyone a sense of ownership and of control over their own destiny in jobs that are mainly line assembly. Ownership leads to greater engagement and employee satisfaction. Engagement is the key thing." RPL believes the responsibility for implementing ideas and rewarding and recognising improvement is best held at the lowest possible level of the organisation. "We try to avoid bureaucratic systems that mean suggestions have to go all the way round the Wrekin before they can be implemented," explains Nicholls. People either fill in a form or make their suggestion online (this allows for those who don't have working time access to a PC). It goes directly to their team leader or supervisor who does a quick assessment using a matrix that RPL has designed. It tells them whether it can be implemented straightaway (Fasttrack), in which case they can make the award themselves, or whether it might have bigger benefits and therefore needs to go through the Specialist Track, with more detailed analysis and a panel decision. Around 80% of the ideas are implemented through the team leader straightaway. Only 10% are rejected - an indication of the quality of thought and commitment of the employees. Nicholls says it is vital that people see their suggestions are being acted upon. "If you just store up suggestions, nothing happens and if there is no feedback it is going to collapse very quickly. We encourage people to put in simple 5S ideas about their own workstation like 'moving the jig two inches left will save a second on production time. But added up, it can mean significant benefits for production time." New ideas Ricoh UK Products is also one of Ideas UK's top three performing UK suggestion schemes and the only manufacturing company to figure. Ideas is the not-for-profit association that provides support to organisations looking for ways of capturing creative ideas from within (www.ideasuk.com). This year, RPL targeted its 18 apprentices, offering special prizes with double rewards for good suggestions. One of them has reached the Ideas final with an excellent way of saving a lot of time on starting procedures. This typifies something that Nicholls considers essential: "You have to keep on promoting the scheme to keep it vitalised." For example, the plant is homing in on environmental action and has received 150 suggestions. Some are simple like switching off a light; others are more sophisticated like the introduction of power and heat recovery systems. "You get a lot of repeat ideas but that doesn't matter. Every single idea must be treated with respect - if not, you are asking for people not to bother in future," says Nicholls. The plant aims for three ideas per person. A few submit none; some produce as many as 50. The outside time for implementation is 30 days but the company likes to do it a lot faster. Some may be implemented in a day, before the paperwork has even been sent in. "We have a meeting every month to review the suggestions but team leaders are empowered to handle most of them themselves." Rewards are small - a few pounds or a gift with bigger rewards at the end of the year - but the contribution is properly acknowledged. Employee opinion surveys are an even tougher nut to crack, despite their rising popularity. External specialists figure prominently here, largely because the questionnaires are difficult to frame and the data processing load can be demanding. In an interesting case of the physician being unafraid to take his own medicine, international business improvement group TBM Consulting recently surveyed all its employees in eight countries. UK business manager Donna Hopkins says it was done to supplement current feedback routes: "Because we are increasing our global footprint, it is important for the people running it to know that everyone is happy and not just those they see on a daily basis. We want to carry on growing safely, knowing that our culture is preserved and, indeed, enhanced." The whole thing was handled anonymously, using Towers Perrin-ISR to work with TBM in designing the survey, to administer it and to analyse and present the results. This led to a new approach to training and a widespread communications programme to resolve an embryonic sense of isolation in some of the regional offices. One of the direct results was the TBM Global Exchange held in the US. Now expected to be an annual event, it allowed every member of the company to spend a week together exchanging experiences, listening to clients and generally learning to feel valued and part of a bigger team. With over 160 employees involved, it was clearly an expensive undertaking and therefore not an avenue open to every company. Nonetheless, in a group that depends upon a shared ethos in solving client issues, it is clear, good business sense. Ricoh UK Products started its annual employee satisfaction survey with professional help seven years ago but eventually bought the software licence for collating and analysing the results. It now handles the whole thing itself. Nicholls says it's now virtually automatic but it took five years and a lot of resources to get to the point where it became routine. He thinks smaller companies might find it easier to rely on a professional web-based survey and that multi-site companies would find it virtually impossible to handle without professional help. RPL tests its own survey by asking employees every four years how relevant they think the questions are. The categories stay the same each year: working environment; communications; leadership and management; training and development; reward and recognition and a general section. Questions may vary in each category although at least one core question is fixed so managers can look at trend and continuity. "We do it because we genuinely want their opinion," says Nicholls. "We want to test any changes before we make them." These tend to focus on welfare issues like the occupational health (OH) service and the canteen service. "There are other forums for production changes and we would normally do it face to face. You can't possibly cover in a few questions things that you really need to consult the workforce on in depth." RPL provides a template for making the surveys accessible even using the electronic approach. Around 50-60% of the respondents have their own workplace PCs. The company set up 12 computer screens in rest areas and the training suite for the others. They are mainly production workers who can't easily leave the line so they are given a 20-minuted slot to do it in working time. They are given computer training and someone is always on hand to help if necessary. The whole process is confidential; information in encrypted so it can't be traced back to individuals and Ricoh knows only if they are management, staff or operators. Participation is entirely voluntary but the response rate is around 85% - far above the industry average. None of this comes cheap so what's the payback? "It's difficult to quantity through money but it can be done through meeting targets in quality, customer service, and stakeholder needs," reflects Nicholls. RPL surveys its customers - ie, the retail arm of the group - every year. RPL always scores around 85%, ahead of France, US and China. It is usually only beaten by the Japanese subsidiary. Like most global operators, there is always internal competition for assembly business so it pays to stay ahead on all performance indicators. But equally, the plant's employee retention rate is way above the norm at 94%. It pays to know your employees are content.