Allow room for autonomy
As important as it is to maintain consistency across an organization, you have to remind yourself that you’re not running a militaristic boot camp. Once you align everyone under the framework of your culture, you have to allow room for regional operations to flesh out what that means at their office.
Heaney wants to see things hanging on office walls that reflect the local personality — whether it’s employee of the month plaques or paraphernalia rooting on the local baseball team.
“Uniformity is actually something we’re not looking for,” Heaney says. “We want uniformity of the basic message, but communities are all different and we want our leaders to reflect their community. We don’t need them to be automatons. They can do it their way.”
For example, agency directors at Addus are required to create outreach programs to educate people in their communities about available government-funded elder care programs. The directors receive thorough training — and retraining, through Addus Learning — on what their outreach messages should entail. Their manual identifies outreach targets and which messages would appeal to each one — for example, it would note that employers want to hear that elder care programs can increase productivity for employees who care for parents.
But the key is that employees aren’t given a script on what exactly to say or how exactly to design their outreach programs.
“There’s uniformity in the training and messaging, but as to how they develop their business development plan and their execution of it, we don’t manage that,” Heaney says. “We look for people to play to their strengths.”
To make sure employees do stay within your corporate framework when you offer autonomy, it’s smart to have checks and balances in place.
A team setting can provide checks during a project, instead of waiting for an end review. For example, agency directors work together with salespeople and the regional director to create their outreach programs. That way, if one employee starts to veer off path, the multiple perspectives of others can bring him or her back on board.
But you should also have executives monitor their direct reports consistently. Regional directors check in with agency directors weekly and keep track of their numbers daily.
Heaney also relies on systems to keep employees in line, at least for back-office issues. He recommends centralizing all of the administrative transactions you can.
“It really comes down to a uniform, broad-based operating system,” he says. “Following the system requires you can’t wing it. It’s going to ask you, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Everybody’s following the same procedures so you have predictability.
“It allows us to keep overhead down. It allows us to keep manpower focused on customer service and business development as opposed to transactional production.”
Finding a balanced level of consistency is really about distinguishing where you expect rigidity and where you allow creativity. Clear communication and reinforcement make for a smooth operation.
“There’s a high degree of confidence that the procedures are being adhered to,” Heaney says. “You don’t allow the sites to follow nonstandard procedure because otherwise you have chaos. So we’re rather rigid in the back office but creative in the front office.”
How to reach: Addus HomeCare Corp., (847) 303-5300 or www.addus.com