HELP EMPLOYEES UNDERSTAND HOW THEIR JOB FITS INTO THE BIG PICTURE

Think about how this Employee Engagement Mission Statement could help create the organizational culture that would enable greater employee engagement to exist in your organization. What this mission encourages is for employees to think beyond their current job responsibilities to what occurs in the entire organization; or in other words, to think outside their job. As stated in this mission, it is important that everyone who works for you has a sense of ownership for the performance of the entire organization and a focus on the ultimate customer.

Think about the perspective that you have of the organization as a supervisor or manager. In your job you need to look at a broader perspective. You see how each employee’s job fits into the bigger picture and how each person’s job is important to the other jobs in the organization. You think about how employees can work better together to enable each other to perform their jobs and how the organization as a whole can operate more effectively to achieve its goals and objectives.

Now think about your employee’s perspective of his job and the organization as a whole. What does he focus on as he performs his job? Most likely, he is focused mostly or entirely on his own job. He may not be thinking about the broader perspective that you have in your role as a supervisor or manager. His concern is probably primarily on his own work and not so much on how his work affects other employees’ jobs or ultimately, the customer.

Your employees can easily lose sight as to how their job fits into or is important to the final product or service of the organization. Regardless of their role in the organization, their work can still seem insignificant or unimportant if they don’t have the opportunity to see this bigger picture. Employees on all levels need to understand just how critically important their work is to the organization as a whole. Introducing employee engagement can help employees gain a better understanding of this broader view of where their jobs fit into the process. They will begin to see their jobs in much the same way as their supervisor or manager, looking at how they fit into the entire process rather than just a single function. This makes the supervisor or manager’s job easier as their employees begin to view the workplace more holistically, understanding just how important their jobs really are to the end product or service of the organization.

For example, consider a carpenter, working on a project, who had a foreman who never told him what the end product was supposed to look like. The foreman did not show him the plans or any drawings of what the finished project would look like in the end. The carpenter satisfied the requirements of his job, given the limited information he received about his work. When the project was completed, however, and he saw the end result, he realized that if he had been told about the end goal, he could have performed his job differently to help better achieve this final objective—without having to work any harder or use any additional resources.

Think about how much information you share with your employees about the end product of the work they perform, and ask yourself if it is enough. What if your employees had the same access to information that you do to make decisions about their work and the workplace? Do you think they would make the same decisions as you? What would happen if you began to share this level of information as appropriate? What difference do you think this would make? Think about how providing your employees with more information as it relates to their jobs could enable them to do a better job. What would be the benefits to you of expanding the scope and understanding that employees have about the operation and functions of your organization?

In Figure 3-1, we see how an employee typically understands her job in relation to the rest of the organization. In this limited perspective, the employee basically only has a good vision of her job (shown as A) and perhaps those jobs with which she has the most direct contact (B). Think about the levels C, D, and E, as shown in this model. What perspective does this employee have of these jobs? How important is it that employees have this broader perspective about their jobs and understand how they fit into the bigger picture in the organization?

The following is an example of how the lack of this broader perspective can be a limiting factor for an employee as he performs the responsibilities of his job.

The employees at Ace Manufacturing each had very specific job assignments as production workers. A product would move from one work station to the next as each employee added certain components to the product as part of the assembly process. The production area was designed with walls between each station, which were intended to reduce noise and other interferences between jobs. Although this design did accomplish this objective, it also prevented almost any communication between employees during the process. Compounding this problem, each department in the manufacturing process was located in a different part of the facility, with its own physical barriers separating it from the other production areas of the plant. This created separateness between employees in each production area, and even more between each production department. The result was that employees had no knowledge of what was occurring in other parts of the plant during the manufacturing process, and no vision of how their work affected others as the product moved to other areas toward its final assembly. What Ace Manufacturing thought was creating an efficient work process was in actuality creating barriers that greatly inhibited not only communication between employees and even departments, but also inhibited awareness of how each employee’s job was important to the final product.

The plant manager was becoming concerned about some serious quality problems reported by customers, as returns from the field were beginning to significantly increase. He noticed this was a trend that had been occurring for many years, but had not been adequately addressed. There had been several initiatives to try to trace back to where the quality problems originated in the process, and corrective actions were put in place, but nothing was done to truly identify the root cause of this problem. For some reason, no one had identified the separate nature of the locations and work as the cause of these problems. It only happened when a production worker stopped the plant manager as he was walking through the factory one afternoon and suggested to him that the quality problem was being created by this design of the manufacturing process. It was as if a lightning bolt hit the manager. It just made so much sense once this problem’s real root cause was identified to him.

He immediately realized how the design of the plant was preventing employees from understanding how each of their individual jobs fit into the final product. Each employee was basically isolated from the rest of the process and employees. Employees had little or no understanding of how the way they performed their jobs affected the next work station the product moved to in the production process. As he began to discuss this problem with more employees, he realized that many of the quality problems could be fairly easily prevented if employees had a better understanding of how the way they performed their jobs affected the subsequent steps in the process. He was amazed at how much time and effort was being expended reworking the product as a result of this lack of communication and visibility between job stations. Employees were basically working in the dark when it came to making certain decisions about how they performed their responsibilities at their step in the process. A subtle difference, such as the positioning of the product as it is moved ahead to the next work station in the process, could make a big difference in the efficiency of the operation. Positioning the product in alignment with the way the next employee needs it to be placed saves delays in the process and makes that employee’s job easier to perform. As the plant manager was beginning to understand, employees didn’t understand the connection between their job and the operation of the rest of the organization. In most cases, each employee could just as easily perform their job in such a way that would make the next employee’s job easier to complete, if they only understood what to do to allow this to happen.

The plant manager’s first instinct was to call his department heads together and tell them to develop a plan to correct this problem. However, as he thought about how this discovery had come to him, he began to realize this might not be the best way to solve this problem. After all, who would know better than those performing these jobs what needed to be done to make the process more efficient? He realized that he needed to get his management team involved, and the employees themselves. So he set up a team consisting of both groups that would develop a plan to redesign the production process to allow each employee to better understand how his job was important to producing a quality final product. At Ace Manufacturing, without realizing it, this was also the beginning of their employee engagement process.

Upstream/Downstream Job Integration

What was needed at Ace Manufacturing was actually upstream and downstream job integration. Employees need to have an appreciation for what happens both before and after they perform their job as it concerns the product—or in other cases, the services being provided to the customer. Depicted below is a view of this upstream/downstream job integration.

In a manufacturing process such as the case at Ace Manufacturing, envisioning this integration as fairly simple illustrations is a bit easier. In this case, there are distinct and sequential steps in the manufacturing process. At Ace Manufacturing, employees were working in isolation due to numerous factors, including the physical design of the manufacturing process. In this example, it was shown just how important it is for employees to have this understanding or vision of each other’s jobs both before and after they perform their jobs. In this situation, product handoffs should be like a relay race, with runners passing the baton to one another to enable smooth and seamless transitions between jobs. Even in non-manufacturing types of jobs, the handoffs between job processes should be handled smoothly and effectively, establishing necessary context.

Understanding what happens in the work process both before and after a person performs her job enables that employee to do a better job, more completely. When she gains an appreciation for how others’ job performances influence her ultimate job performance, it makes all the difference. Simply becoming more aware of these factors can be enlightening, as in the story about employees at Ace Manufacturing. Realizing how you may be affecting someone else’s job in your work can save the next person a great deal of work and frustration, not to mention how it improves the ultimate quality of the product or service being provided.

Moving Away From Job Tunnel Vision

Here is a different story of an employee who worked at a manufacturing facility for nearly 39 years, where batch material was heated and then immediately transferred to the cold end of the process where it was formed into a final product. He spent his entire career in the hot end of the process. These two different operations each had distinct functions, but were connected because the product needed to be transferred quickly to the cold end of the process while still hot, so that it could be molded. Curiously, this particular employee hadn’t ever visited or seen the cold end of the process. Each day of his career he came in an employee entrance at the hot end of the facility and never was given the opportunity or the occasion to step foot in the cold end of the factory. The plant manager heard about this situation on this employee’s last day before retiring and personally escorted him to the cold end of the process to show him this part of the operation. The employee was amazed at what he saw during this visit to the “other side.” He realized there were many things he could have done over his nearly four decades of sending hot materials to this cold end, which could have made others’ jobs more efficient and easier if he had only known. All agreed that it was almost a tragedy he never saw this part of the operation until the last day of his long career.

Think about how this concept of upstream/downstream job integration can help you in your role as a supervisor or manager. What value could be added to your work processes by creating a work environment in which employees gain a better appreciation for each others’ roles and responsibilities? How could this help improve the performance of each employee? What would be the value of this increased employee vision that could add to the ultimate success of your operation or function?

For example, think about how processes in your operation could be made more efficient and less redundant. What paperwork is currently required that may not really be needed or could be routed to fewer employees? What approvals may be currently required that do not need to be required? What similar tasks are being performed by different employees that could be consolidated? What problems are currently allowed, without finding the root cause and correcting it, so that employees don’t have to deal with them over and over?

Perhaps even more importantly, what suggestions or recommendations might your employees have to improve not only their jobs but also how their jobs interact with other employee jobs to make your operation more efficient?

There are countless other examples of when employees gain this better understanding of how their jobs affect the jobs of others. Factors or functions such as labeling, speed, delivery, accuracy, consistency, communication, maintenance, and many other factors all can be significantly improved when employees gain this better understanding of how their jobs interrelate.

Collaboration Job Model

It is customary for most organizations to create specific jobs, each with its own purpose and function. Jobs are typically designed as independent entities specific to a particular function or area of the organization with certain qualifications required for incumbency in these roles. Distinguishing or separating these jobs further forms the hierarchical relationship that jobs have to one another in the organization. Jobs are evaluated in relationship to one another by such factors as the skills required to perform the job, responsibility assigned to the role, accountability of the position, and many others. Inherent in this design is a job independence that distinguishes each job incumbent’s performance in relation to each other’s. As a result, everyone sees each particular specific job independently of one another.

In Figure 3-4 (identified as Job A or JA, Job B or JB, and so on), we see the typical relationship between jobs that exists in most organizations. Each incumbent in each position works essentially independent of one another in this typical organizational design, except for occasional collaboration, as these jobs may at times share common objectives on certain projects, or may hand off work in the process.

But what if you were to look at your organization or function differently? What if you moved away from this traditional job design to one that would inherently create better communication and encourage more interaction between incumbents in these positions? In Figure 3-4, you can see a view of a different job design in which jobs are engineered to work more as a team than independently. In this design, the jobs are in more of a work group in which there is constant interaction and communication being shared amongst incumbents in these jobs. Think about how even changing the physical setting of jobs to align more with this collaborative design could make a difference in how these employees interact and communicate with one another.

The Work-Cell Concept

Figure 3-6 shows the work-cell concept. In this design there is no distinction between the responsibilities and functions of each incumbent, but rather the responsibilities of these jobs are shared by the employees in the work cell. In this case, each employee has cross-functional job responsibilities and learns how to perform each job in the work cell. Specific jobs may be rotated or the responsibilities of these functions are shared in some other manner, usually determined by the members of the work cell. This can be a very efficient job design, as each employee can assume the responsibilities of the others at any time. Employees also gain a much better appreciation for each other’s responsibilities as they perform these duties themselves. They also learn new skills and find their work more interesting and challenging as well. They begin to truly understand how each job interrelates and affects the performance of other jobs because they have performed each of these roles. They learn to appreciate how even the smallest details about how one job is performed can have great impacts on other jobs.

There can be many variations of this work-cell concept, ranging from a full integration of multiple jobs together to simply connecting them is some way, such as moving them physically closer or having them report to the same manager or supervisor. Another example might be creating an open office work environment in which by design, employees see and hear what is going on as their colleagues perform their jobs throughout the workday. In this type of workplace environment, employees are much more aware and knowledgeable about things that occur outside of their job by the very nature of the design of their workstations. In any case, creating a work environment that encourages employees to better appreciate how their roles and those of their co-workers support one another or become cross-functional can make your workplace much more efficient and productive, as well as more interesting to your employees. Cell members are responsible for performing all of the responsibilities of the team, which includes the responsibilities of all the jobs covered by the work cell, not specific duties of one job.

Discretionary Performance

Although not every job deals directly with the customer (at least not in the sense of the buying public), staying focused on meeting the requirements of the customer is important in any job. Every function has a customer, even if it is an internal customer. Internal customers are those employees who receive other employees’ work product in order to perform their own job. It is critical that every employee in the process understands the requirements of their internal customers and meets these requirements all of the time.

As mentioned in the introduction, there is an important concept related to employee engagement called discretionary performance. Discretionary performance can best be described as that extra effort employees put into their jobs to ensure they are doing everything they can to meet or exceed the requirements of their job and ultimately the customer. This discretionary effort can make all the difference when it comes to the success of most organizations, and in particular the success of their supervisor or manager.

Engaged employees put this extra effort into their job to ensure the customer’s needs are met or exceeded. Think about your experiences as a customer when you purchase products or services in your personal life. Can you tell when an employee is engaged in her job? The difference is typically how much effort and commitment that individual puts into their job. A highly engaged employee will put forth this discretionary effort to try to ensure that you are completely satisfied as a customer. A waiter or waitress may work hard to ensure that you understand what is available on the menu and may also provide prompt and courteous service. A car rental agent might ask if you need directions to where you are going and provide detailed instructions on how to get there in the most efficient manner. A clerk in a store may give you advice on the best product to purchase for your hard-earned money and explain whatever services that will be provided after the sale. A customer service representative at a call center greets each caller with enthusiasm and a willingness to provide whatever information or services the customer is hoping to receive. There are countless other examples of employees giving that extra effort, which can make such a big difference in customer satisfaction, whether direct or indirect, such as in the case where the employee never directly interacts with the customer but still influences their ultimate buying experience.

Think about what a difference this discretionary performance can make in the jobs of those employees who report to you. Imagine how this could affect the ultimate performance of your area of responsibility as a supervisor or manager. How can you help employees better understand how their job performance affects how customers feel about the entire company or organization? Sometimes employees lose sight of this; they become disengaged and rationalize or justify poor performance because of how they feel about their role in the organization. They feel alienated, unappreciated, and left out of the communication loop. As a manager, you can definitely change or influence this behavior. Think about what type of information or even experiences you can provide for your employees that help them understand how important their job is to the organization and how performing their responsibilities to the best of their ability can make a big difference.

1. What would be some potential benefits of helping your employees better understand how their jobs fit into the bigger picture about your function or organization?

Just imagine if all of your employees put forth this discretionary effort in their jobs and what impact this could have on the performance of your function. What would that impact be and could it be measured? Although finding an exact measure of the effects of this discretionary performance may be difficult—if not impossible—to quantify, you should still be able to envision what its effects might be in the operation or function that you manage. Think about what some of these differences might be as a result. For example, if you supervise employees who provide service directly to customers or the buying public, list the potential benefits to this discretionary performance directed toward meeting or exceeding the customers’ expectations. Or if you supervise employees in an office environment, what would the benefits be if the employees put that discretionary effort in to ensure they perform to the highest standards possible in their jobs? In other words, what are the benefits gained from filling that gap between an employee who only minimally performs his job and an employee who expends the discretionary effort to perform at an excellent level?

List below the impact difference this could have and the results which could be achieved. In the first column, list an example of a basic requirement of someone who reports to you. In the second column, list what would be an example of this employee putting forth that discretionary effort to perform this requirement of the job at a higher level. In the last column, list the potential benefits which could be gained as a result of this discretionary performance.

Discretionary Performance Impact Analysis

 

Meeting Requirements of Job	Discretionary Performance	Gains/Benefits of Discretionary Performance

1. Think about how you can help your employees better understand just how important their jobs are to the end product or service of your organization. What impact could this potentially have on their performance and discretionary effort, and how can you show them this? List some of these engagement tips below.
2. What do you need to do to get started?