If you’re not one who encourages employees to talk to you about ideas, you have to start in order for this to be effective. Morley should know. When he started with Lube Stop in 2004, there had been a fundamental breakdown between the corporate office and the field employees, and it had created distrust. Nearly immediately, he put together a paper survey and 15 percent of his employees responded in the first three days.
“They had a lot to say — they didn’t have a way to say it,” he says.
He took their feedback and created a section in the newsletter where he addressed their questions, concerns and ideas. Things that were easy to fix or implement, he did, while others were tabled for further discussion and review.
“It was demonstrating, very clearly, that employee comments were being heard, and to the extent that they were being acted on, they were being acted on,” Morley says.
Because he took the time to do those initiatives early on, he created trust with his employees, so now they do solicit him with their ideas, and those ideas drive innovative efforts in the business, such as his sustainability initiatives. He cautions executives to be prepared for a barrage of ideas, though, when they first reach out to employees.
“Once you get over the hump of doing this initially, then the ideas and concepts slow to more of a trickle, but initially, be prepared for a lot of feedback if you structure it right,” Morley says.
Once you get ideas from employees and customers, then you have to implement them. Albright has a three-pronged approach to deciding if he should pursue something.
“In the long run, is it good for your clients, is it good for your company, is it good for your employees?” he says. “You can’t do things that aren’t good for all three.”
He says sometimes people do something for employees, but it hurts the company or the clients, or vice versa and you do something for your clients that hurts your employees or the company as a whole.
And lastly you have to get buy-in when you’re trying new things. When Morley introduced sustainable initiatives, he explained to people that oil from one oil change could contaminate a million gallons of water — it resonated well with people in Northeast Ohio because of Lake Erie.
Morley says, “To give them a way to make them feel like they’re making a difference in their communities on a daily basis is a way to appeal to that emotional, personal side of this and get buy-in that way, as opposed to mandating it or trying to create a whole bunch of buy-in through financial incentives.”
The more you go through this process, the better your company will become — every little innovation you drive will make a difference.
