Examples and anecdotes regarding the implementation and operation of management system, both good and bad...

Treat the cause of the problem, not the symptoms

A high-tech equipment company, let's call them Hightech Ltd, maintains a team of highly-trained engineers to service and maintain their equipment throughout the UK.  The team is small and works hard with long hours and lots of travelling required.  Although Hightech Ltd is publicly-listed and successful, the engineers' pay and conditions are not the best in the industry.

Problem – the engineers were leaving to join the competitors.

Now, each new Hightech Ltd engineer takes at least a month to recruit and three months to train, which means that when one engineer leaves, the others are asked to 'cover' for the best part of the next four months.  More work, more stress.

Symptoms - customers complain about not receiving a good service and the managers spend their time 'fighting fires' instead of running their departments efficiently.

To arrive at a solution to such problems, it would be sensible to:

•    meet with the engineers to discuss the situation (communicate)
•    determine the nature of the problem from the engineers' perspective (analyse)
•    offer an upgraded remuneration package (to stem the tide of leavers) in return for, let's say, flexible hours (negotiate)
•    maintain a pool of employees whose main role was not engineering, but who were trained to do the job, and could be called on if/when necessary (resolve).

However, no meeting was held, the reason that the engineers were leaving wasn't determined and no negotiation took place.  But a resolution was implemented:

Solution – change the engineers' contracts to require them to give three months notice!

As a result of poor management communication, the resolution looked to cure the 'symptom' rather than treat the cause.  And worse, it compounded the problem of what the engineers saw as 'management not listening' to them.

Result - the rate of attrition within the time-served engineers actually increased and the company is still working its way through this problem.