Hold employees accountable
Autonomy without accountability is a realm few executives
should dare tread. Yes, Kaniuk gave his employees the freedom to
address problems. Yes, he allows them to form committees to start
initiatives and address changes today. In each and every instance,
he demands transparency to make sure his employees are churning along the same track.
“Everybody has a communication board up, and they list all of
their initiatives and where their status is and what they are doing,”
he says. “They routinely report their progress and sometimes ask
for our assistance. In all these cases, communications is frequent
and open.”
To facilitate that open communication even further, Kaniuk also
practices diligent transparency on his end through regular correspondence.
“In my monthly communication meetings, I keep all employees
up to date on progress,” he says. “In this manner, others can get
and give feedback on any initiative. In this way, there is greater
buy-in by all employees.”
But while transparency may help track progress, it certainly isn’t
the end all for Kaniuk’s highly autonomous approach to employee
relations. You can communicate as often as you want with your
employees, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll approach
such responsibility with gusto.
Kaniuk says one way to get employees to really take charge is by
setting up an incentive or gain-sharing plan. At Zircoa, the company went about it as it would any other initiative: A group of employees formed a committee and got to work.
“The biggest mistake people do is when management does it and
puts it in place,” Kaniuk says of gain-sharing plans. “We let the people decide what was critical. It was their system. They said, ‘Here’s
what’s important, and here’s how we are going to do it.’”
Letting your employees decide what’s important can often create
problems if their goals don’t align with those of the company. To
help minimize that risk, Kaniuk says to articulate and continually
communicate the company goals before that committee is formed.
Repeat yourself again and again and again in meetings and during
informal correspondence. This will help ingrain the business’s
objectives in the minds of your workers.
When it comes time to actually form a committee, he says to hire
a consultant to help guide it. A skilled third-party representative is
usually able to keep the proceedings on track.
Finally, Kaniuk says to trust that your workers will do what’s
right for the business. “We’re not telling them what’s best,” he says.
“We trust them to hopefully make the right decisions.”
If you do those things, your employees should emerge with an
incentive plan outlining goals that are firmly aligned with those of
the company. The next step, then, is to implement a system to
monitor progress toward them.
The Zircoa committee based its gain-sharing system on productivity gains and yield gains. Management already kept track of this
data, so it was simply a matter of communicating it frequently and
efficiently.
To do so, Kaniuk posts appropriate data on a large board near
the employee entrance. The information is broken down by
department and is updated every week. He also holds a meeting
every month to share a companywide update and address any
questions or concerns.
“I have monthly meetings,” he says. “I meet three times a day.
Each shift as well as all the [salaried employees] can go to any
one of them. I go through what’s going on monthly financially as
well as what’s going in sales and development so everybody
knows what we’re doing, where our problems are, and if they
have any questions, they can ask me.”
While Kaniuk also posts a monthly update on that same board
with the weekly information, he says it’s still important to set regular sessions to communicate with employees face to face.
“In a public forum, people can ask questions if they don’t understand something,” he says. “No matter how good you are, two-way
dialogue is always the best. People trust you more whenever
you’re looking them in the eye and talking to them.”
In the end, that trust can make all the difference when it comes
to turning a company around.
“A business leader has to look at his business, and they have to
decide how important your people are,” Kaniuk says. “If you
decide your people are critical in getting you to where you need to
go in your goal, then you have to put trust in them.” <<
HOW TO REACH: Zircoa Inc., (440) 248-0500 or www.zircoa.com