Situation
The Owner of the business had unsuccessfully defended two cases for Unfair Dismissals. He had lost a degree of credibility and influence over his remaining Staff.
Business results were trending downwards. Staff were openly defiant to management and largely did what they wished.
The Owner did not know how to recover the situation & was at the point of ‘giving up’.
What We Did
The first thing we did was to meet with the Owner of the business and his Staff on a one-to-one confidential basis. We identified as to:
- What was going well?
- What was difficult or hard working in the Company?
- What was their thinking of the current situation? How would they want to see things improved?
- What will they do to improve the situation?
- How could I help?
The data was fed back to everyone. Agreement was reached on the areas requiring focus on attention. Three project teams were set-up. We defined the problems in each area. We gathered and analysed data. We identified the root cause(s), put in remedial corrective action(s) and checked for desired results.
Outcome
Individuals across the organisation became familiar with working with one another on a joint problem-solving approach.
Barriers came down. There was greater appreciation of each other’s roles & the barriers/obstacles preventing them from doing a good job.
There was enhanced team effort with an external focus on delivering value and service to the Customer. Sales improved, costs were reduced and efficiencies improved by 10%.
The journey of continuous improvement is on-going.