Handling, my first brush with a
potential disciplinary situation as an entrepreneur, went in my
favour and set the tone in a good way. One morning, I noticed that
none of the workers had entered the factory even though is was time.
I went out and found the 10 odd employees standing in a group, one of
them brusquely told me that my supervisor had instructed them to
enter from a particular gate and since it was not open, he said they
were waiting, despite the fact that another door was open.
Two thoughts were screaming in my head,
how could this worker speak to me in this tone, was I not the Boss.
The other knowing he was making a point. One was a reflection of the
irritation I felt because the work had not started in time and the
other the voice of reason.
I suppressed the irritation and focused
on the reason. I ignored the tone and focused on what was being
said. I reasoned with myself that since he had no particular training
in speaking he was making his point as best he could and to his mind
he was doing the right thing following instructions while believing
the rule to be unreasonable. I asked him would it not be better to
talk to me about his thinking on the rule of using a particular door
rather than trying to grab my attention by stopping work. Would it
not be better to take 5 mins to discuss the issue while the shift
was on. He agreed. So I asked him to go in through the open with the
others and and start the shift, while promising to talk to the
supervisor and finding out why he made the rule.
This set the tone, one dialogue was the
key to resolving any issue, stopping or hampering wok was not a
solution and most importantly supervisors were important. Had I
focused on the tone the matter would have taken a different turn, had
I forced then to go through the open door, the supervisor would have
got undermined and in future when he said something it would be
disregarded. By shifting the focus to dialogue we set the tone and it
has worked for us, after 17 years of operations we have not a manday
because of stoppage of work.
The other interesting feature of man
management is an ability to accept that management makes mistakes and
these mistakes must be acknowledged and corrected if possible.
Increments are normally announced ¾ months after the due date due to
delay in evaluations, but they are paid w. e. f. the due date.
However once year it was brought to our notice that overtime was
calculated at the old rate and now since the new rates were
retrospective the overtime should be recalculated an difference paid.
The advice available that since it is difficult to recalculate the
same should be ignored as the amount would anyway not be much. What I
saw was the fact that “trust” was involved, the employees agreed
to a delay in increments to accommodate our evaluation procedure
because they believed it caused no loss to them. Therefore it was not
the amount in question but the principle. We recalculated the
overtime and paid the difference. A small amount but a large step
towards building trust.
I used to notice employees left on the
7th of the month after collecting their pay. I assume they
felt that if the quit earlier they may not have got paid. We made it
a point to pay the salary for the 7 days. The message went out to
those who were still with us, we were not going to short change the
employees. Never the less the practice of quitting on pay day no
longer exists.
Be firm and fare and your new years
will surely be good. Happy new year.
No comments:
Post a Comment