Viewsto use Power From The People e ‘‘
This can be a delicate situation because, maybe, they are challeng- ing long-held ideas, some of which are not serving the company well in terms of marketing, sales, cost control and profitability.
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ven though you may say your company has an open door policy, one question is almost always asked at most businesses: Why don’t your employees come in through that door and tell you what they are really thinking?
The answer is pretty simple: Because it takes courage to tell the boss why his concepts and policies aren’t working as well as they should be. In the telling, that person may be stepping on powerful toes. In this uncertain period of time they may not want to stick their necks out.
But the people in your company can help you more than you think. There are tools out there to help you unlock the power of your employees. Many companies offer such services, including ours, which we call our J.P.Q. (Job Profile Questionnaire) survey. These enable employees to “give it up” in a confidential way that never identifies individual responses.
The concept of these surveys is to provide your employees an opportunity to suggest ideas for improvement of the company without making you – their boss – mad. This can be a delicate situation because, maybe, they are challeng- ing long-held ideas, some of which are not serving the company well in terms of marketing, sales, cost control and profitability.
Our survey itself has been used by a wide variety of companies in the fashion business, including Wacoal, Triboro, Weatherproof, Oxford Industries, Jones Apparel Group, Gerber Childrenswear, Polo Jeans and Rashti, among others.
These surveys can address a number of different areas: • Streamlining organization and reporting relationships • Growing market share • Elimination of non-value adding activities • Software needs
Once the survey responses are in, the organization table as seen through the eyes of the employees can be charted. Mostly this shows up as different from the company organization chart and explains why key elements sometimes fall through the cracks. Sometimes we get unexpected side comments: Recently we heard about the need for a user- friendly merchandise calendar, as well as the use of webinars to cut the cost of travel.
When looking to do an employee survey, make sure the statistical results will be presented in a useful way, through an Excel spreadsheet or some other software-driven process that helps you and your management team understand the findings. That’s very important.
An important part of any employee survey is an open-ended section that provides an opportunity for your people to tell the company where solid improvements can be made. Of these comments, 95 to 100 percent are on how to make the business better, not about needing a raise, coffee breaks or more vacation time.
These surveys can provide an effective low-cost, analytic methodology that when acted upon will let you unleash the power of your people and increase profitability and in the end make you more valuable to your customers.
The idea is to find out what you don’t know, and how that new knowledge of your organization will make it a more professional and customer-centric, speed-to-market, low-cost value provider to your customer.
Emanuel Weintraub is president and CEO of Emanuel Weintraub Associates Inc., management consultants specializing in business strategy, profit improvement, marketing, organization analysis, speed-to-market process alignment, chargebacks, IT systems, sourcing strategy and distribution. (201) 568-5684,
consultewa@aol.com
Emanuel Weintraub
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specialtyinsider.com
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