Make necessary changes
If the feedback you’ve gathered suggests employees are unhappy or the customers are unhappy or both are unhappy, that’s your cue that changes need to be made.
“The best decision we make is when the customer says, ‘This is pretty cool,’ and the employee says, ‘I like it as well,’” Arquilla says. “If one or both think it’s a bad idea, then it might be a classic case of making a decision behind closed doors that doesn’t fly very well when reality sets in.”
In that case, you have to be humble enough to admit your decision was flawed.
“Culturally you’ve got to have a company that says, ‘There’s a lot of good ideas out there, but you can’t always be right,’” he says. “God knows, I have a long list of things that haven’t worked well for me and as well for the rest of the senior management team, so I’ve got to be willing to accept defeat every once in awhile because then our employees will view it a lot more real, having (admitted) mistakes along the way.”
Your employees aren’t going to believe that their opinion is valued if you ask for their input and do nothing to better the situation. Along that same line, you have to acknowledge a bad decision was made and show employees you’re willing to make changes. If change isn’t seen, employees will shut down and be reluctant to share future information.
“It’s your behavior; it’s what you do,” Arquilla says about acknowledging bad decisions. “You change a policy, you say, ‘Hey, we thought this would work and it didn’t. Effective today we’re not going to do it anymore. Based on what we’ve learned, we’re switching gears.’ It’s more not what you say; it’s what you do. Talk is kind of cheap, and I think the front line is somewhat guarded and skeptical of talk, talk, talk because that’s easy and that doesn’t require much.”
If in gathering feedback you’ve determined a policy or a procedure needs changed, sit down with the necessary decision-makers and your employee and customer input and make adjustments. In the end, the questions are the same: “Do the customers feel good about it? Do our employees feel good about it, and can they live with it?”
When a solution is made, again, go back to employees and communicate.
“Ultimately, our bias at Roto-Rooter is we think your immediate supervisor is the person that most people want to hear the change from or want the interpretation of what this change means,” Arquilla says.
Say, for instance, the change was made in the way Roto-Rooter operationally deals with residential plumbing; Arquilla makes sure the information is passed through the proper chain of command. It starts with a conference call with him to his direct reports. Then they’re asked to communicate the changes to their direct reports, so on and so on until it reaches the front line.
The important element is that it’s communicated to front-line employees in a way that opens a discussion and dialogue that explains why the change was made. Arquilla doesn’t find sending an e-mail or a written mandate effective from a buy-in standpoint. After all, the follow-up communication is a way to put a personal touch on the fact that you’ve listened to employees.
Arquilla thinks the new commitment will better position the company for growth and employee and customer satisfaction. Roto-Rooter’s North America annual revenue is around $700 million, $370 million of which comes from Roto-Rooter Services Co. and Roto-Rooter Corp., which make up Roto-Rooter Group Inc. The remaining revenue comes from independent franchises.
“It would be an awful feeling to say, ‘What you think and the questions you have don’t really matter to people higher up in the organization who made the decisions, so just deal with it and live with it,’” Arquilla says. “That’s why we feel we have the need to explain why.”
HOW TO REACH: Roto-Rooter Services Co., (513) 762-6690 or www.rotorooter.com
