Masonry Magazine October 1997 Page. 14
Why Good Employees Leave
Continuing our Commentment to Quality
by Al Roach
For those contractors who have made a commitment to improve their company through the Quality Process, they have seen great rewards: improved morale, increased efficiency, higher profits, and a more valuable company.
But, as in everything we do to improve, these contractors have invested a great deal of time and money. Is the investment worth it? Most, if not all, will tell you that it is. Although the basic principals of Quality (customer focus, participatory management, team-building, continuous improvement) are simple concepts and have been around for many years, it's not easy to drive the process through the business. Quality is not a magic wand or a secret powder, it takes time and hard work.
First, Quality improvement takes a substantial commitment from management. Not just lip-service, but a "roll up your sleeves" involvement. Management must believe in the Quality Process and be an active participant in making it work.
Once management has made the commitment, their job is to get their employees involved. This process takes a great deal of patience and empathy on the part of management. More than ever before, management must see the challenges from their employees' perspective.
Some of your employees will jump on the improvement bandwagon immediately. They believe in you and the company, they are excited about the new opportunities they see for themselves, and they like the idea of being involved. They see the benefits of Quality and want to be part of the process.
But that's not the case with all employees. Everyone is different and, as you know, we will have employees who just don't seem to buy into the Process. So, what do we do? As we see it, we have the following options:
Give up. Not a good option!
Shoot (fire) the mules. This is an expensive option and, be careful, we may not be good at spotting the mules. We could shoot a stallion in mule's clothing.
Why Employees Don't Buy-In and What to do About it
Help your employees with the "buying in" process. Obviously, this is our recommendation. This is what leadership is all about. Unless we have an employee with an inherently negative attitude, the reason that our employees don't buy-in is not their fault, it's ours. Our job as leaders is help our employees want to do what we want them to do in order to reach our company's goals.
One of the first steps in helping your employees buy into Quality Improvement is to understand why they don't. Let's look at some of the reasons.
They fear change. We are all creatures of habit. And, the older we get, the more difficult it is to change those habits. This is true in our personal lives and in our business lives. We've done it "this way" forever and we don't like to change. Change could bring failure so let's just be safe in doing it the way we've done it in the past. This fear of change is as real with your employees as it is with us. Remember, we can fire them if they make a mistake. No wonder they fear change and any effort to get them to change. For them it could mean death!
As leaders, we need to recognize this fear of failure and make sure that we support our employees in their efforts to change.
They don't know what we want them to do. Before we can ever criticize or challenge an employee for not doing his or her job we must make absolutely sure they know our goals and what we expect. And, typically managers do not set goals for employees. Do your people know what you want? Do you consistently explain to them your goals and help them understand their role in reaching those goals? If you haven't done this, then it's not their fault if they don't do what you want them to do. It's ours.
They don't know how to do what we want them to do. Here, again, we need to look at ourselves before we blame our employees. If we have not properly trained our employees on how to do their job - not just in laying the wall or completing the payroll, but in all aspects of taking care of the customer then we can't blame them if they don't do the job right.