Embracing a New Paradigm of Change That Most Workers fear

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Many manufacturers started looking at new ways to increase their efficiency, reduce labor costs and increase profitability. These ways or changes that need to happen in order to drive excellent results are not easy to implement because of many reasons, some of them are predictable and some are not. We live in a very complicated world where no one can accurately predict the future due to infinity number of unforeseen situations that could make the implementation of a new change go wrong. One of the factors that can make the implementation ineffective is undoubtedly human behavior, which is the hardest factor that we can forecast because of its natural complexity and this is what I will passionately talk about in this post in relation to embracing a culture of continuous improvement.

How can a company have an effective implementation? Well, let's see what effective implementation is made of. If there is an equation for it, it would be effective implementation = quality of solution x acceptance of solution. The acceptance does not only come from management, as many people think that this is the case, but also acceptance from team leaders and assembly line workers is very critical. This is said because if management does not get the shop floor workers buy-in, then it is very hard to have an effective implementation because people in their nature do initially resist any type of change. Why is that? Because workers in general fear change, risk and uncertainty. In order for them to adapt to the new change, they have to step out of their comfort zone and put an extra effort and even time to familiarize themselves with the new method.

Since having an effective implementation does depend on both management and shop floor workers, everyone has to be engaged in the process improvement initiative or the new change coming up as a way to weaken workers' resistance to the change. Convincing skeptical workers about a new change can be hard sometimes. However, decentralizing decision making process and involving the influencers are two important steps in a successful execution. This is said, because it is not important that the early adopters adapt, but the influencers do. Getting the influencers onboard at the early stages of the change can bring about positive changes.

What companies can do is to share some of its realistic and measurable solutions with the team leaders and assembly line coordinators as a tactic to embrace workers so that they return to their workstation thinking that their opinions did matter and in most cases it really does. Because they do help management decide, as these workers are in fact experts in their work as some of them have been with the company for 10 years or more. When management asks workers to pick a solution from many others, then it becomes obvious that this particular solution is feasible or likable. Yet, some workers might not like any of the solutions or might pick a solution that is similar to the current method as they are comfortable with it. In this case, we have to step back and look at what mistake we made in the process of coming up with these solutions.

When workers are invited to discuss a potential solution with management, this should be done in sequential sessions and each session should be only for one worker. This is said, due to bias that might affect the decision making process because if there are more than one person in the room, then one will influence the other's answer or a worker might want to drive the decision making process. Not all workers have to be involved, only the influencers. Anyway, this process is important because if workers are truly convinced about a certain solution, then they will sell it to other co-workers in the shop floor. So, instead of saying "management wants us to do" they will proudly say, "my/our idea is".

Some companies do happily celebrate small wins along the way as an approach of highlighting these so far successful changes and giving recognitions to people who were fully engaged in the process. However, there are some very prestigious firms that do celebrate failures as a lesson from which they learn. Whether doing this or that will have a positive impact on the people and the company. Other factors that can smoothen the change are sending a compelling message to workers at regular intervals throughout the course of the change, training and educating workers, sustaining the change, making it fun and considering penalties. Raising the cost of not following the new procedures can adjust the behavior of workers.

In summary, change takes time and if important workers as well as influencers do not involve in the change process, they might turn against it. Management team has to take appropriate actions toward having an effective implementation that can bring about positive changes that can increase efficiency, reduce labor costs and increase profitability.

Source:

https://hbr.org/2015/03/convincing-skeptical-employees-to-adopt-new-technology