OVER 40 YEARS
PROVEN EXPERIENCE
OVER 40 YEARS
PROVEN EXPERIENCE
To help meet the challenges and pressures of an increasingly competitive world, it is essential that businesses look for new ways to create or maintain highly efficient operations. This article outlines several strategies that Hutchison Group, an employee relations consulting firm, has used with our clients to help reduce costs and improve productivity.
By far, our employee relations consultants have noticed that one of the biggest impediments to productivity and performance are restrictive work rules and practices that limit an employee’s ability to contribute and the company’s ability to assign resources as needed. Organizations that have restrictive work rules typically have higher labor costs, and often require additional staffing and overtime to compensate for the lack of flexibility. In addition, restrictive work rules tend to generate higher rates of grievances and workplace disruptions, reducing productivity and increasing company administrative costs.
One way to ensure flexibility and performance in the workplace is to evaluate the company’s job structure and job descriptions to ensure they are not too narrowly defined. Expanding employees’ duties and scope of responsibilities is one of the best things a company can do to improve productivity, as well as improving employee relationships. Operating with broad job descriptions can help reduce employee headcount (i.e. one man working multiple machines), overtime requirements, and minimize grievances and administrative issues associated with job reassignment. Also, expanding the scope of an employee’s job duties can provide them opportunity to learn valuable new skills.
Another item that has a direct impact on cost and workplace efficiency has to do with the levels of management or span of control. Research shows that organizations with fewer levels of management are more efficient and can react more quickly. As one hourly employee put it, “you want to avoid morale problems caused by the perception that there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians.” Our productivity consultants and labor relations consultants work with our clients to carefully assess each layer of management to help identify the optimal employee to management ratio.
Many companies provide uniform annual pay increases to their hourly workers, with no consideration as to individual or company performance. While this approach is widely accepted and easy to administer, research has shown that this method of allocating rewards can have a deflating effect on high performing individuals, while reinforcing the behaviors of marginal performers (e.g. “why should I work harder, I get the same”). Hutchison Group's employee relations consultants work with local management to devise and communicate compensation programs that are tied to both individual and company performance.
It is essential for companies to recognize the important role that supervisors play, and how their daily interactions with employees impact retention rates, teamwork, quality, and other key performance measures. Research shows that even a few supervisors with poor interpersonal skills can be the key cause for instigating union organizing campaigns, grievances, litigations, and other costly disruptions. For union-represented workforces, our union relations consultants note that even a few problem supervisors can make it far more difficult to secure and ratify a new labor agreement.
Aside from compensation, most employees are interested in opportunities to grow and advance within the organization. Employees that have a clear career development plan in place are far more likely to remain with the company. Hutchison Group's labor relations consultants can help management establish a career development planning process that will benefit both employees and the company, helping to retain talented employees and eliminate the costs associated with recruitment and new hire training.
Based on our 35 years of experience of improving labor relations, one of the best ways to improve employee relations and productivity is to LISTEN to what your employees have to say; to understand their perceptions of what works, areas of concern, and their ideas for improvement. Hutchison Group consultants have decades of experience conducting employee relations assessments, helping companies solicit helpful suggestions for improvement. In addition, this process helps to reaffirm that the company values the opinions and ideas of their employees.
For those companies with union-represented employees, our union relations consultants note that it is important to establish a good working relationship with union leadership. The benefits of establishing management and union cooperation include: (1) working together to jointly identify and solve problems (2) create a more flexible and responsive work environment, (3) reduce grievances and other costly disruptions, and (4) increased ability to negotiate new competitive “win-win” collective bargaining agreements.
Over the past 35 years, Hutchison Group has helped many of the world’s best companies to develop highly efficient and productive workplaces, in both union and nonunion settings. For a complete list of our clients and to learn more about our labor relations consulting services please visit our web page at hutchgrp.us/
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