Spoiler alert: The vast majority of you will relate to this topic
You arrive at work and go out to the production lines. The building is almost empty. You walk into one of your supervisor’s office and ask: “Where is everybody?” The supervisor starts a rather lengthy list. Three people quit without notice, four are simply missing in action and nobody showed up from the temporary agency. The supervisor was on the phone with the temporary agency and put them on the speaker phone. The temporary agency is having the same problem. They have no one to send to you.
Filling out your production lines with good trained people has always been a problem. You are forced to use the temporary agency and you hate paying the premium wage for them. Even with the temporary workers you are routinely 10 to 20% below capacity. You also have a problem with the lack of productivity even with the high wage you are paying.
How much do under capacity production lines cost you?
Cancelled contracts, bad customer experience, lower quality and timeliness penalties are all very expensive. Also factor in the stress of not knowing which days this week will be under capacity. It ALWAYS hits at the worst time. All of these are significantly more expensive compared to the cost of identifying and implementing a long term solution. The long term solution will also prepare you for growth. You will be able to keep the cancelled contracts and accept new business. Growth will always help your future recruiting.
Wouldn’t you rather prepare for growth versus paying higher costs?
One company was not pleased with the lack of quality in their workforce. This lack of workforce quality resulted in a lack of product quality. The organization did not understand what was creating a wide range of quality. After reviewing some of the employee files, the issues came into focus. Simply, nothing was being done to make it better. The previous years’ evaluations were two steps from being a plan. We needed to know clearly who the supervisors wanted to rehire next year. The second step was what remedial training was needed by each returning employee. The evaluations were modified and sent back to the supervisors. The supervisors then provided a detailed report by employee.
We now knew exactly who we could contact early to get them back to work. We also identified who was not going to be rehired. The report further identified the remedial training which needed to be scheduled and completed. Employees were not allowed to return to work before being recertified. These two simple steps lead directly to an increase in productivity and quality.
You are now building your workforce foundation!!
