Employee relations go up a gear

By VICKI JAYNE

How to get the best out of your people? It's a question that exercises management minds no matter what the size, type or purpose of their organisation.

It's the old team-talk-before-the-game thing - getting hearts and minds at least roughly aligned toward a common purpose.

Tough enough to do when the purpose is obvious and its execution immediate, even harder to maintain through the day-in, day-out drudge of business as usual.

The answer a UK taskforce of business leaders came up with was to meld a whole bundle of commonsense business practices into a standard. It was an initiative kicked off with government support in the late 1980s when it was realised UK businesses of all sizes were becoming less competitive and lack of attention to employee development was to blame.

A decade after its 1991 launch, the Investors in People (IIP) international standard is now being used by 40,000 organisations in the UK. That tots up to some nine million employees - or more than a third of the working population. The standard has also been exported to 17 countries, including New Zealand.

Like other international standards, IIP provides a consistent structure for achieving and measuring performance. Underlying principles are tagged to a series of indicators for which evidence must be demonstrated if the standard is to be achieved.

A lot leaner on documentation than ISO standards (all you need is a business plan as the standard assesses outcomes not processes), it instead demands a fair whack of managerial soul searching.

"You have to take a full and frank account of yourself and where your business is going," says Bob Hart, who manages five AA Autoservice stations in Auckland.

His is a conservative industry and one in which management skills have had to be learned on the job. Not the easiest, perhaps, in which to transform hearts and minds. That - and a growing number of customer complaints - was what prompted Mr Hart to go for IIP's structured approach to change.

"It's all about self responsibility and putting in systems that foster it. It's a lot of work and you really have to have an open mind because you're putting yourself on the firing line. But at the end of the day, for me, it works."

He has measures to prove it. Despite a year made lousy by petrol and other price hikes, he's looking at a 37 per cent increase in profitability on a 13 per cent increase in sales - and more happy customers.

"We do 23,000 services a year plus tunings, warrants - in all around 50,000 customers come through the doors each year. And at one stage, we were getting 25 complaints per site every month. That's now down to 2 or less."

A pretty reasonable tally given that getting your car serviced is generally regarded as one of life's grim necessities and the odd grump is almost obligatory.

Fewer than 10 other New Zealand organisations are able to lay claim to the IIP standard. That is because the standard is still relatively new to New Zealand and the local licensing body took off its own training wheels only six months ago.

Investors in People NZ had to do a two-year probation as part of gaining approval from the UK licensing body, explains managing director Andrew Odlin.

"You have to meet strict competency levels to become an international licence holder because it's important the quality of the brand is maintained."

Delivery and support services were tailored to better fit the New Zealand business environment with much of the hands-on guidance outsourced to approved suppliers around the country.

IIP controls assessment and most of the 10 organisations "bold enough" to enrol in the two-year controlled pilot have successfully met the standard. Although the company has kept a relatively low profile, word is spreading, says Mr Odlin.

Standard seekers now range widely in size and diversity including retail operations, manufacturers, schools, local authorities and such customer-focused icons as Te Papa Museum. While IIP's underlying principles are familiar territory for any people-focused enterprise (a commitment to developing people in line with organisational objectives to achieve on-going performance improvements etc), its strength is in the provision of a structured recipe any organisation can follow.

"They need to recognise that they may be opening a can of worms and be willing to proceed from there," says Mr Odlin.

An initial assessment measures them against the standard, highlighting areas of strength and weakness. Typically, companies may have a business plan but few employees see it, and even if they do, don't know how their role fits in or what the company expects of them. Training is seldom evaluated to compare the return on investment against specific organisational aims.

Feedback from organisations that have cranked open the worm can is positive - improved communications systems, increased motivation and better work relations.

"The worst thing about me was that I'd been running the business for 8 years by myself. I didn't have managers - just caretakers," says Mr Hart.

Now, he not only has some excellent managers but regular meetings ensure everyone is involved.

"Most automotive workers wouldn't know what a budget is, let alone a business plan - but every staff member here now knows how to have some input into where we're going and what we're trying to achieve."

* vjayne@iconz.co.nz