Step aside, managers

Eileen Applebaum. Picture / Fotopress

More skill development and incentives for staff to make better decisions and take more responsibility should be part of every employment package, says a leading researcher in high performance workplaces.

Professor Eileen Applebaum says rank-and-file staff should handle the communication and co-ordination in the workplace, not their managers.

She wants to see a change to the practice in some call centres in which time limits are imposed on staff to end conversations with callers. She believes call centre workers should have as much time as they need to solve callers' problems. She also wants manufacturing workers to perform their own statistical process control.

"It means more skill development," says Applebaum, who was a guest speaker at University of Auckland Business School this month. "It means providing workers with incentives to make good decisions - quality bonuses in their pay, for example - but also fair treatment and a long-term stake in the company's success."

She says relying more heavily on the frontline workforce does not mean allowing them to run the company but encourages them to make the day-to-day decisions that affect customer service.

Applebaum is an advocate of the high performance work system (HPWS) - an evolving practice to move decision-making down the line. She has been promoting it for more than 10 years.

The system advocates:

* The mobilisation of workers' knowledge and initiatives

* Staff doing their own inspection, maintenance and supervision

* Reduction of indirect labour costs

* Encouraging employee participation on the shop-floor

* Motivating employees to contribute knowledge and effort to the system

* Ensuring employee participation in the decision-making processes

* Encouraging staff retraining as technology improves

* Improving the organisation's decision-making processes.

Applebaum says the practice improves product quality and customer service and cuts costs. She believes companies that introduce HPWS reduce mistakes, require fewer supervisors and middle managers, and have lower employee turnover.

"The past two decades have seen stronger competition and advances in computer and communication technologies," she says. "The workplace practices of previous decades are no longer effective or appropriate. Some firms have responded by making major investments in the skills of the workforce, then providing frontline workers with the opportunity and responsibility for making decisions that affect quality, delivery times and customer service."

Applebaum has 20 years' experience carrying out research on workplace practices and labour-management co-operation. Her research focuses on organisations' work-life practices, with an emphasis on issues related to work time and flexibility.

"Our research shows that HPWS practices also increase revenues - they lead to repeat business as customer satisfaction improves and the company becomes a preferred supplier. Lower employee turnover means a more experienced workforce that can better meet customer demands," says Applebaum.

But her research also shows firms benefiting most from the practice of HPWS are better-than-average employers paying higher wages and providing staff with more intensive benefit coverage.

"Supervisors and middle managers need to recognise that they have the most to lose from these changes and will often try to sabotage them. Senior managers need to be prepared to deal with different expectations once changes are put into practice."

Applebaum believes there is limited need for supervisors as their main job can now be done by workers.

"In high-performing workplaces nobody gets paid to stand around and watch somebody else work," she says. "There are several things a company can do to become a HPWS. It needs to begin with clearly identifying what the business will gain by making the change and why the changes are necessary at this time."

Applebaum says once the gains are identified the next step is to communicate to the workforce why the company must change to become or remain successful.

"Frontline workers want the firm to succeed because they want to continue to have a job."

The next step is to involve the people whose jobs will change. "Managers need to make the necessary investments in staff training, redesigning the workspace and providing employees with the resources to do their jobs well. Employees [can] learn to do their own quality assurance and arrange their own holiday schedules, previously the domain of a manager.

"It is a false economy to skimp with training as the better informed and more engaged the workers are with the end result in view, the more likely they are to succeed and stay with the company."

She says change is difficult to implement when a company is already making a profit and it is easier to take a short-term view.

"Call centres used to be placed in rows but are often now designed in horseshoe shapes to allow workers to talk to each other to solve problems. The payoff for the companies that adopt the new practices is that other costs will be reduced as there is less waste or rework, and less need for supervisors as workers are self managing."

Applebaum's advice to middle managers facing the introduction of high performance workplace practices is to step up the dialogue with senior managers.

"There is a clear need to think about their skills to make the most of their abilities," she says. "The main benefit to a company adopting HPWS is that it frees up managers to focus on new strategies. A new work organisation follows when the co-ordination has been turned over to the front line allowing managers to pick markets and develop strategies. It's a win-win situation."

She says innovative work practices will encourage managers to seek long-term answers and hone a company's vision. Applebaum encourages managers to be given laptops or whatever tools necessary to help them to seek new markets and find out where a company is heading.

Her advice to frontline workers is to look closely at the training programme offered. "Don't be swayed by a nice job title," she says. "Make sure you understand what your responsibilities will be and how much training will be given to enable you to progress to the next level in your career."

If a company routinely seeks out people with MBAs for its senior posts and you don't have the necessary qualifications, then ask if they will support your training.

Some companies want their top posts filled by people who have gained experience abroad. If this is the case then find out before you join the company if it will send you abroad to prepare you for a senior post.

"The tight market is an advantage here as retention is a hot issue encouraging companies to make the most of those within their ranks, as they already understand their business."

But there is a downside to HPWS, according to researcher Pradeep Kumar, who surveyed the system in Canada. In his paper Rethinking High-Performance Work Systems he says the productivity gains achieved by some firms adopting HPWS have come at the expense of workers.

Writing for Queen's University's Industrial Research Centre he said: "The adoption of high-performance practices has been accompanied by a deterioration in the quality of work environment and is a fundamental problem for the sustainability of high-performance systems.

"Managers must learn to strike a balance between organisational imperatives for improved productivity and workers' needs for a healthy, challenging, and satisfying work environment.

"There is no evidence to indicate that a firm is likely to suffer by adopting a well-planned high-performance system.

"However, there is some evidence to suggest that the work environment and the well-being of workers may have suffered as a result of the new work systems.

"The heavy emphasis on downsizing and organisational restructuring has created insecure, stressful environments. Far from empowering workers, the new systems have led to a loss of control and autonomy and have placed a wide range of increased demands on workers.

"The Canadian evidence, together with similar conclusions from a limited number of studies from the United States, calls for a rethinking of the potential of high-performance work systems to improve the well-being of workers."

- Additional reporting, Steve Hart