HR Matters | Contributing to the Bottom Line In Tough Times (And Good)

DOUG SHADBOLT
IMAGE COURTESY : DOUG SHADBOLT

Making Improvement Workshops work successfully - everyone has equal say!

To ensure the most senior or outspoken people didn’t dominate the workshops leaving others disappointed and disengaged, a simple technique was used.

1. The large group was broken into sub-groups of 6 to 8 people with a mix from different departments and ensuring no one had their boss in the same group. Senior managers in attendance were not allocated to a sub group but acted as information sources.

2. To ensure everyone was involved –
- The process and objectives for sub-groups to identify and prioritise improvement projects were clearly explained. Improvement ideas had to be quantifiable; that is, improve sales, reduce costs, improve efficiency, reduce waste, or improve customer service.
- After general discussion about what improvement suggestions might involve each person was asked to write down their ideas for improvements, as many as they could think of, big or small.
- Each person was then asked to rank their ideas in order of importance based on likely impact on the business (improve sales, reduce costs, etc.), time frame for achieving the result, and cost of implementation.
- Each sub-group nominated a ‘scribe’ to record the findings.
- Working sequentially around the sub-group table each person gave their highest priority idea with a brief explanation. The scribe listed these. The sub groups continued to work sequentially around the table with each person giving their next idea, and their next, and so on until all ideas had been tabled. [Note: some people only had one idea and others had many. This didn’t matter. It was important that everyone had a chance to have all of their ideas recorded]
- Each person was asked to consider all suggestions from their sub group and select the three they believed the most likely to have a positive impact. The ‘votes’ were used to rank all suggestions in order of priority.
- Returning to a full group format the workshop leader asked the ‘scribe’ from each sub group to give their three highest priority ideas and provide a brief explanation of each. The result was a list of 18 improvement ideas from the six sub groups, but some were similar and were combined thereby reducing the final number.
- Everyone was then asked to select the three best ideas from the final list using the same prioritising criteria as before. ‘Scribes’ collated the ‘votes’ from their tables and reported back to the workshop leader. Summation of all ‘votes’ identified the highest priority ideas to be addressed.

3. The final stage of the session was to invite staff to volunteer for any project they were keenly interested in. This was done by asking people to put their name on a list at the end of the session rather than having to indicate their interest publicly.

4. The steering committee then reviewed all improvement ideas from all workshop sessions to identify :
- A manageable number (about 6) of the highest priority ideas to be addressed
- Volunteers who were best placed to work on the selected projects
- Any smaller or lesser priority improvement ideas that could be addressed and implemented easily and quickly without forming a project team.

These improvement projects were proposed to senior management for approval, and project sponsors identified.