Why Getting Buy-In From Frontline Employees is Key
Nobody knows the job better than your frontline employees. So, when you’re instituting new efficiencies to improve the processes and procedures that they use on the job every day, one vital key to success is getting their buy-in from the get-go.
At USC Consulting Group, helping companies find process improvements is what we do. We work with companies in industries like manufacturing, mining and metals, oil and gas, food and beverage, transportation and logistics, and others to become more efficient, effective and in the end, profitable. We strive to empower your performance and help you reach your highest potential by uncovering greater operating excellence across the entire supply chain. It’s about identifying and eliminating wasteful practices and procedures.
One big difference between us and the other guys is how we go about doing that.
We sell our methodology and our process, not just a solution
Nine times out of ten, when companies come to us, they already have a pretty good idea of what their challenges are. So we don’t go into a client engagement telling them what we think they should do. We have over 50 years in this industry behind us, but all of that experience doesn’t mean we provide cookie-cutter solutions. Most of our clients are looking to us to break bottlenecks in their operation, find out if they can do more with what they have, or even do more with less. But every one of our clients is unique. Every one of those bottlenecks has a different cause. The only way to find the best road that will lead to more process efficiencies is not to rest on our laurels and do what worked for the last client, but to roll up our sleeves, get into your operation and see what’s going on.
A big part of that is listening to your frontline people.
Your frontline employees are the key to the success of the project
We don’t simply sit in your boardroom and pontificate with your C-suite about how to do things better. At USCCG, we believe it’s about effecting change at the point of execution. That means we involve your frontlines. Ferreting out new processes and solutions that can increase efficiencies starts with the people actually doing the job. It’s the only way it’s going to work. Here’s why:
A single source of truth. By talking to your frontline employees, we get the lowdown on what’s happening in your operation day to day. We hear what’s going right, and at times, what’s going wrong. They often can see what the problems are, but not know how to fix them. We can get the single source of truth from your frontlines and implement plans to fix the issues and improve productivity. It’s crucial to finding where efficiencies can happen.
From resistance to change… We get it; change is difficult to accept. More than that, it can be threatening. Frankly, it’s completely counterproductive to swoop in and tell people that the way they’ve been doing their jobs for years is inefficient at best and wrong at worst. You’ll lose their cooperation. They’ll be resistant to any new ideas, because those new ideas mean the way they’ve been working has been wrong. If you don’t get their cooperation, it can be difficult to implement any sort of process changes. And if you have their opposition, it can be downright impossible.
…to drivers of change. That’s why involving your employees in the process from the start is so important. It ensures they’ll feel listened to and respected. It won’t be something that’s happening to them. Positioning this process as a way to harvest their wealth of frontline information in order to make the company more effective and efficient is the key to making it work. We involve employees from the get-go, and time and time again, we’ve seen them become the drivers of change.
Making the changes stick. Initial buy-in is only the beginning of the importance of your employees to this process. It goes further than that. It’s about making sure those changes stick. Your employees need to feel invested in the process changes in order for them to stick to them, on the job, every day. That’s why we don’t come in and hand them a new playbook. They’ll help write it. And that’s crucial to the success of implementing change.
At USC Consulting Group, we understand how important employees are in the process of change. We will respect them, listen to their institutional knowledge that only years on the job day after day can provide, and create a collaborative approach to finding the hidden opportunities for greater efficiency in your operation.
For more information about how we work during this time of COVID, download our free eBook Times have Changed – USCCG Can Help You Adapt.
