Share the wealth
While Burke may have initiated it, the avalanche of OFIs didn’t
continue on its thunderous rush without some additional prodding. A few ambitious employees did offer suggestions right off the
bat, but the majority was far less enthusiastic.
It wasn’t until 1999, when Burke tied the program directly into
Fire-Dex’s newly instilled profit-sharing plan, that it really took off.
“We said to the employees at about the middle of ’99, ‘We’re going to
have profit sharing; in order for you to be eligible, you need to write
up one OFI. That’s it,’” he says.
Participation increased in a predictably dramatic fashion after the
announcement. Even though Burke now requires his 105 employees
to fill out eight OFIs per year — one per quarter individually and one
per quarter with their departmental team — there has still only been
one instance in which an individual chose not to participate.
“Most of them are like, ‘How simple is that?’” he says.
Whether you offer profit sharing or a similar form of encouragement, Burke suggests keeping the submission process simple. At Fire-Dex, for example, an employee need only fill out a one-page form
describing the opportunity and its root cause. The OFI is then turned
in to one of two employees who spend a portion of their time reviewing them.
Though Burke says that devoting so many man-hours to the program is a considerable expense, he also says the benefits you’ll
reap are well worth the investment.
“It’s clearly an investment,” he says. “Fire-Dex has a couple of
people that spend a portion of their life on OFIs. It’s probably
equivalent to half a person at 30 to 40 grand plus benefits, but I
think it’s phenomenally invaluable.”
To help weed out the good ideas from the bad, Burke also suggests giving employees some guidelines before they’re even submitted for review. First, is the suggestion more of a complaint than
an improvement? Second, does the suggestion provide a permanent benefit to a process, product, work group or environment?
Finally, will your customers benefit from the suggestion?
Other than that, the only distinguishing criteria involves pay and
benefits.
“The only thing you cannot do on the OFI is you cannot change
pay or benefits,” Burke says. “You can’t say, ‘Pay us all a dollar
more,’ or, ‘We need free health insurance.’”
Once a given OFI gets approved, most are passed to the supervisor who oversees the department in which the suggestion will be
implemented.
“Most of them, I don’t even see,” Burke says. “They’re just implemented on their own from a supervisor level. I can’t see them all
because there are too damn many of
them.”
The supervisor must then check in with
the employee who first came up with the
suggestion to make sure he or she fully
understands it: “‘All right, I think I got it.
What you’re saying is that if we got this size
box versus the size we have today, then
this would fit perfectly, and we would save
a half a buck a box or whatever. Is that
right?’ And the person says, ‘Yes. That’s
exactly what I meant.’”
If a certain idea would prove too time-consuming or costly, it must instead be
passed up to one of Burke’s direct reports,
if not Burke himself, to get the go-ahead.
“Supervisors can do $500,” he says.
“Their boss can do a grand. Any of my
direct reports can do 10 grand. There’s a
chain of command and a process for
approving. Anything over 10 grand, I’ll
sign.”
