Boost employee morale: creating ownership of area

In many organization and industries, we always heard top manager complaining about shopfloor employee that lack of ownership of their area and responsibility. This will lead to bad operational performance result which eventually add up to bad organization operation performance. Shopfloor operation is frontliner of organization performance, if shopfloor has tremendous ownership and strong performance it will lead to overall organization key performance indicators. Edward Deming, the Quality guru once said
“The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top Management!” Meaning that leadership of top management is really required to drive this initiative, so that the worker will follow according to the rule which is set together and team can work according to the agreement.

It is paramount concept to engage ownership and instill in every employee shopfloor so that we can gain efficiency to upmost level. Ownership will also act as morale booster for employee in their work. There are 3 pillars of motivation for shopfloor employee:
Ownership of work area
Ownership of work result (responsibility)
Ownership of work improvement

These three pillars will increase their working motivation as every individual will do their best to show their area and their work result. This motivation will also energize their daily routine work and keep their work spirit.

Ownership of work area
The way to build ownership of work area is to make their work area comfortable. There area few elements to achieve this:
Safety
Organized workplace
Minimum inventory
Efficient lay out
Equipment restoration

It is always begin with safety first. To have safe work environment, we must be able to identify all sources of potential hazard. Shopfloor are need to be trained and equipped with knowledge to be able to identify what will be the source of accident. This area need to identified, marked, and remove all the hazards. The principles are removing the hazard, if can not then the next option is substituting to lower risk, and last option are putting safety protection. The safe work environment will make employee work faster and more efficiently.

The next important element is to make organized workplace. There is well known Japanesse concept which really suitable for this, namely 5S. It is in Japanese word (Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke) or can be easily understood if converted in English term as Sorting, Set In Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. 5S concept will really make work area more efficient, cleaner, safer, organized, and most importantly comfortable! The first step of Sorting will require employee to remove all of unuseful items in their work area such as: obsolete documents, material sample, evaluation material, and all items which is non-related to work. The great advantage of doing this very first step is to make work area more spacious, gain extra space in storage, and will free up area of non value added items. It will help to avoid buying additional storage such as cabinets, trays, etc.

The second important step is Set In Order, Hence, after all unused items removed and left only necessary items, then we make proper place of all these items. It also apply to toolings, documents, and equipments. Employee is enforced to keep their area always tidy by returning all items in correct place. The benefit of this are employee will be very efficient in finding all items which is needed, since all items are securely located in fixed storage area so that there is no waste of searching items. It seems small improvement, but actually if we realize that there are so many time wasted due to employee look for items, documents, materials, etc these are activities which is not non value added but organization is actually paying for their time! If we sum up in one year, you can imagine hours of non value added time wasted due to look for stuff. The third step called Shine. This are step to make all items in work area become clean from dust and dirts. The clean environment will definetily boost employee morale and keep their mind clean and healthy. It is very discouraging if an employee come in the morning to look at their work area is full of dirts, it will affecting their mood in the first place and in whole day, which would affect their performance.

The fourth step is standardize is to make the first three activities is keep rolling in consistency manner. We can make schedule to follow and make visual management so that abnormality become easily visible. The fifth and last step is Sustain. The idea is to make the whole steps running in discipline manner and become organization culture. Periodic audit can be used to sustain all the improvement. Competition among area will also help to stimulate improvement in workplace organization. Reward shall be addressed to best area in order to recognize this achievement. This 5S initiative is indeed win-win situation for both employee and employer. Employee gain benefit of safe work area, clean and organized environment, efficient area, and more importantly: higher motivation in doing their daily jobs, since employee spend most of life in work. While employer will gain benefit higher productivity of their employee. This is what called employee ownership of area, they will understand their responsibility to make their area as efficient as possible and as comfortable as possible. Employee is encouraged to keep make improvement to their area and bring it to highest standard. In factory we call it visual factory while in office we call it visual office. In this stage, everyone in the area will easily spot if there is abnormality in process. Is your organization ready to implement this?
(By: Riyantono SSCX)