Introduction

The client is an international supplier of microphones to a variety of markets including the music industry, call centres and retail. The organisation had grown rapidly over the last ten years.

The purpose of the assignment was to explore the issues arising from the Employee Survey at management, team and individual level and set targets to improve:

• Performance against the ten dimensions
• Improve the efficiency and consistency of processes
• Devolve accountability to management and team leaders

The assignment followed three distinct changes:

Analysis

The results from the employee survey were sent to each team leader who read through and digested the feedback on his/her teams.  They then attended a coaching session with the facilitator which helped them focus on priorities along with their team agenda.

They then prepared a team session in which individual teams were given an opportunity to digest the results and explore relevant issues, e.g. customer orientation, speed of decision making, accountability, etc. The team leader prepared an improvement plan.

Each team session was different as team leaders addressed their priorities.  The Operations Department targeted operational procedures and started process mapping core systems.  Internal sales looked at the distribution of work and how to improve efficiency across the group.  The latter also included an analysis of team roles and how the balance of the group influenced their approach to different team processes. The engineering department focused on training and development of team members and mapped out the learning process.

The completion of these process improvements was followed by a teambuilding session for the management team which identified work flow at three deferent levels:

• Core Functions
• Territory mapping
• Individual work processes

Development

Responsibility for further process improvement was devolved to individual managers with:

• Process mapping using the five different icons
• An appraisal to agree objectives for improving specific systems
• Logging of processes on the web site so that everyone had continuous visibility of the processes they needed to use

All the processes were summarised on a spreadsheet under the separate functions, e.g. sales, finance, warehouse etc.  Priorities set for ones which needed improving and a status reporting regime was introduced which reported back into the management team.

Outcomes

• Development of a corporate process map
• Increased customer orientation
• Encouraged a dialogue across the different teams and made it easier to discuss challenging issues
• Built a stronger management team