It amazes me how often business leaders miss the point: the secret to business success is an informed, empowered workforce.
I’ve worked with many companies of various sizes, some of which pour huge amounts of time and money into employee communication and some of which do as little as possible to keep workers engaged.
Some companies have all the bells and whistles – an intranet, a publication, television monitors throughout their buildings, quarterly dialogues with executives and other communication vehicles. However, in many cases employees in these companies know less about what’s going on than the organizations that have bare-bones communication.
Given the choice between a fully loaded employee communication program that fails to engage people and a limited program that reaches people with relevant information, I would of course choose the latter. But it amazes me how often business leaders miss the point: the secret to business success is an informed, empowered workforce.
A recent story in the United Kingdom’s Shropshire Star newspaper tells how employees at the Epson printer manufacturing facility in Telford reinvented the business when it looked like the end was near. Rather than give in to a soft market for their printers, employees learned the advanced technology necessary to make ink cartridges instead.
It would have been easy for workers to throw their hands up in despair. The workforce had been cut by more than half. Employees had to be retrained in every way – from the engineering and manufacturing to the technical and customer support for a different product. Their efforts are paying off. This year, three years after the change, the facility received a £5 million investment in six state-of-the-art automated ink cartridge production lines. More investment is coming in 2005. Eventually, more than 50 percent of Epson’s printer ink cartridges will be made in Telford.
Ray Prior, operations support manager for Epson, credits the company’s adherence to the Japanese improvement system called kaizen – the innovation, cost control and quality improvements that are necessary to meet market demands. And one method for achieving those improvements is employee engagement.
“The secret lies in the empowerment of the workforce,” Prior told the Shropshire Star. “You actually give people ownership and responsibility and you get employee-led improvements.”
That’s not just talk. Prior says the Epson factory significantly changed the shift system earlier this year. The elimination of double shifts might not have happened if not for employee involvement. “This meant changes which affected pay packets,” he told the newspaper, “as those on double shifts were getting special allowances. We discussed a range of proposals around which we had no idea what the outcome would look like. But there was real partnership between the management and staff and we came up with a proposal that suited both the company and the employees.”
Communication is nothing new to Epson. Employees in groups of 50 to 100 attend quarterly briefings by the managing director and local unit manager. The dialogues focus on company issues ranging from marketing to product changes. Most impressive is how the communication obviously has led to improvements. Epson credits employee involvement for an increased emphasis on training and education, a safety record 10 times the national average, lower energy costs and a more than four-fold increase in implemented employee suggestions.
Employees in most companies are ready and willing to work for the good of their enterprises, if only business leaders are willing to unleash them.
Q&A: What does your company do to engage employees in the business?
