I Can’t Take It Anymore!

Consider the 17 hours of downtime due to clarifying communications that SIS International Research study cited as an average weekly loss for companies with 100 employees. After spending close to two decades in a manufacturing environment, I see a lot through that lens. To me, that downtime represents time that couldn’t be attributed to anything else. The facility I worked in had special work order numbers, commonly referred to as “H numbers”, that were used to capture time for miscellaneous issues that fell outside the normal production process. When we had a special project, an H number was assigned to it. If a group of big shots were visiting from corporate, we generally had an H number to charge all the extra clean up time to. In fact, there was one young man who became so proficient in the use of those H numbers for writing off his unproductive time that he earned the nickname H-John, with only one H being silent…

That 17 hours of downtime certainly doesn’t represent the entire time there was no direct labor. To me, this is the time outside of expected indirect labor where production could have and should have been but wasn’t due to the need for additional clarification. This certainly wasn’t the only time communication would have been happening; I believe communication needs to be nearly constant - even during the production process. That 17 hours represents time lost because the initial communication wasn’t clear.

Here’s where I’ll challenge you to remember that this was for average companies… Just think of how much worse this can be for those that are well below average! Now just think about how frustrated the folks in supervisory and management roles likely get in those situations when they’ve had to repeat instructions over and over and over again, watching that downtime mount up…

All too often, this is where a supervisor or manager blows their top! But that rarely happens right away. The scenario I’ve seen more than any other over the last 25 years has been where the boss tells one of their team members what to do, then has to repeat a few things throughout the process or even correct a thing or two, and finally gets something close to the result they needed. That supervisor is a bit aggravated but doesn’t want to lose any more time by addressing the issue with their employee. This cycle typically repeats several more times, with no formal discussion addressing the real issue, before that supervisor storms into the HR Manager’s (or the owner’s) office yelling “I can’t take it anymore! They don’t do anything I tell them. We need to fire them!”

Having been that HR Manager, and having been in several owners’ offices when this has happened, the common theme has been that the issues leading up to this point have almost never been documented and have rarely been addressed head-on in a direct conversation with the employee in question.

Let’s not even consider how little engagement a situation like this could ever build. And let’s factor in the downtime that occurred leading up to this point. What I want you to consider here is how something like this leads to turnover, be that through termination or the employee getting fed up and leaving on their own. Now consider how it impacts everyone watching it go on… Do you think there’s any chance the folks in the immediate area watching this are likely to be actively engaged? Doubtful! I’d go so far as to say they’ll eventually start looking for a better environment too. When we’ve got all that mess going on, I’d bet there are very few employees inviting their friends to work with them and our recruiting process takes a hit then too!

Notice that I didn’t suggest that the supervisor had been communicating effectively with said employee… Telling someone what needs to be done and them understanding it are two VERY different things! Think back to the quote I shared from George Bernard Shaw when we started looking at the cost of poor communication, saying that “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” I’m also not suggesting that this is always the supervisor’s fault! In more cases than I can count, this has boiled down to not having access to the right tools so that’s exactly what we’ll dig into soon!