The problem was that sales were now levelling off at a run rate that the team could more than cover as a result of all the improvements that they’d made. We were building stock, we had too much capacity. Or, I thought, we had an opportunity to sell more. I discussed the opportunity with the commercial team. We did some work on it together. It didn’t look commercially viable. We’d established a price point in the market, carved out a niche. Better to slowly and sustainably grow the sector, defend our margin. I was going to have to reduce capacity to turn the team’s Continuous Improvement gains into cash. My problem was how to bank those Continuous Improvement gains without demotivating the team who had worked so hard to achieve them; without switching the rest of the site off from our Continuous Improvement Journey.
There was only one way. We’d achieved the launch success together by openly and objectively sharing information. Together was how we would turn this problem into an opportunity too. It was going to take some doing though. The scale of the improvements that the team had delivered meant we were about 40% over capacity. One shift too many out of the three. How could I keep that discussion objective and turn it into an opportunity?
Throughout the launch I’d sat down with the team to update on sales, the brand, customer feedback, progress with engineering modifications and, if I’m honest, why we needed more hours worked or improved performance. I’d slipped a bit of late as the brand had settled into steady state trading and the team had become more self-sufficient. I needed to get those team briefings going again, to share the information and open up some discussion. I expected that we’d need to let the reinstated weekly briefings run for a couple of weeks to allow the team to absorb the information, draw some conclusions, before we could start to talk about capacity.
The team were ahead of me though. The formal briefings might not have been happening but the cross functional launch team still exchanged information informally. The team knew that stocks were building and had the same initial reaction as I’d: it’s an opportunity to sell more. The commercial team had done the work on that – so we shared it. There were worried faces in the room now. “Are we going to be made redundant?” I was asked. I couldn’t give a definitive answer. I had to give an answer though and one that would move us on to seek out the opportunity in the situation. I said “Workshops have helped us get to some creative solutions before. I think we should workshop our way through what the team wants and what the company wants and see how we can get the two to overlap.” There were some sceptical looks and a couple of nods.
A team of us met up the next day: three managers and six team members. I started off by naming the three company needs. They were that the line could produce a given volume at a given cost per tonne whilst meeting the company’s duty of care to the team. The team of representatives had come suspecting that there would be a management plan, an answer, to sell to them. Instead we spent a couple of hours exploring what the important things to them were, what the question was. The representatives would need time to reflect and to talk to their colleagues on shift. We closed the meeting once the discussion on team needs had run its course. We’d built trust by openly sharing our thoughts and needs. We agreed to meet up again in a week. In the meanwhile the team representatives would share a one pager of notes from the meeting with the rest of the team.
A week later a more relaxed group meet for the second workshop . The team representatives knew what the needs of the team were. They shared that the team sought job and earnings security and a better work life balance. During the hectic new product launch period a lot of overtime had been worked and family life had suffered. The team had an idea too on how these might be achieved whilst meeting the company needs. The idea was to reduce the current three eight hour shifts covering five days to two twelve hour shifts covering three.
We wrote the idea on a whiteboard and then wrote up the company and team needs next to it. We ticked off Meeting Volumes from the company needs and ticked off Work Life balance from the team needs.
“Are we OK on Job Security?” I asked moving down the needs list. We were the team assured me. Each of the current three shifts was made up of five people. At the moment there were three vacancies being covered on temporary contracts, a fourth leaver was expected and a fifth team member wanted to move to another department. That department would shortly have a vacancy due to retirement. Creative! That was job security ticked off the list.
Only cost to go now. We came up with a win win on that: the new shift pattern was a thirty six hour week, the old thirty nine. To achieve our cost per tonne need the pay rate had to pro rate to the hours. To achieve the earnings security need the team had to earn for three more hours per week than the new pattern gave them. The compromise was that we would pay thirty nine hours and bank the extra three to be called off at a week’s notice anywhere on site. The win to the team was that annual income was maintained. The win to the company was that overtime to cover seasonal peaks would be covered at single time instead of time and a half. We’d ticked off all the needs!
The team were enthusiastic to move to the new pattern as soon as possible. A week later we were up and running. At the three month review the only amendment was to drop out the banked hours. The team preferred the certainty of fixed hours. If they needed some top up overtime the view was that they would volunteer for it in the normal way.
By openly and objectively sharing what we wanted to achieve we’d turned a problem into an opportunity and banked our Continuous Improvement gains.
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