Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence, 11 th Edition

Summary of Key Points and Terminology

Chapter 4 – Workforce Focus

 The human resource is the only one that competitors cannot copy, and the only one
that can synergize—that is, produce output whose value is greater than the sum of
its parts. Employee satisfaction has a strong correlation to customer satisfaction, so
organizations are learning that to satisfy customers, they must first satisfy the
workforce.
 Workforce refers to everyone who is actively involved in accomplishing the work
of an organization. This includes paid employees as well as volunteers and contract
employees, and includes all team leaders, supervisors, and managers at all levels.
 Key workforce-focused practices for performance excellence include understanding
the key factors that drive workforce engagement, satisfaction, and motivation;
designing and managing work and jobs to promote effective communication,
cooperation, skill sharing, empowerment, innovation, diverse thinking, and an
organizational culture conducive to high performance and motivation; creating a
supportive and safe work environment; developing compensation, recognition,
reward, and incentives that support high performance work and workforce
engagement; assessing workforce engagement and satisfaction and using results for
improvement; assessing workforce capability and capacity needs, recruiting and
retaining skilled and competent people; making appropriate investments in
development and learning; and managing career progression for the entire
workforce and succession planning for management and leadership positions.
 The Taylor system, upon which much of modern manufacturing is designed, failed
to exploit the knowledge and creativity of the workforce. TQ and many of
Deming’s principles have provided a renewed focus on the role of people in work.
 Workforce management (also known as human resource management, or
HRM) consists of activities designed to provide for and coordinate all the people of
an organization. These include determining the organization’s workforce needs;
 recruiting, selecting, developing, counseling, and rewarding employees; acting as a
liaison between unions and government organizations; and handling other matters
concerning employee well-being.
 Strategic human resource management is concerned with the contributions HR
strategies make to organizational effectiveness, and how these contributions are
accomplished.
 High-performance work refers to work approaches used to systematically pursue
ever-higher levels of overall organizational and human performance. High-
performance work is characterized by flexibility, innovation, knowledge and skill
sharing, alignment with organizational directions, customer focus, and rapid
response to changing business needs and marketplace requirements.
 Workforce engagement refers to the extent of workforce commitment, both
emotional and intellectual, to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the
organization. Key factors contributing to engagement include performing
meaningful work; having organizational direction, performance accountability, and
an efficient work environment; and having a safe, trusting, and cooperative
environment.
 Employee involvement (EI) refers to any activity by which employees participate
in work-related decisions and improvement activities. EI approaches can range from
simple sharing of information or providing input on work-related issues and making
suggestions to self-directed responsibilities such as setting goals, making business
decisions, and solving problems, often in cross-functional teams. Employee
suggestion systems are simple ways to involve employees in improvement
activities.
 Motivation is an individual’s response to a felt need. Many long-standing theories
of motivation have important implications in TQ organizations, and need to be
understood by all levels of managers. Content, process, and environmentally-based
theories and models provide a theoretical basis for managerial leadership.
  The design of work should provide individuals with both the intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation to achieve quality and operational performance objectives. Work
design refers to how employees are organized in formal and informal units, such as
 departments and teams. Job design refers to responsibilities and tasks assigned to
individuals. Work and job design affect motivation, satisfaction, and organizational
effectiveness.
 The Hackman-Oldham model helps in understanding how job design impacts
motivation, satisfaction, and organizational effectiveness. Several common
approaches to work design—job enlargement, job rotation, and job enrichment—are
supported by this model. Job enlargement is an approach by which workers’ jobs
are expanded to include several tasks rather than one single, low-level task. Job
rotation is a technique by which individual workers learn several tasks by rotating
from one to another. Job enrichment entails “vertical job loading” in which
workers are given more authority, responsibility, and autonomy rather than simply
more or different work to do.
 Empowerment—giving employees authority and autonomy to make decisions –
has been advocated by quality leaders such as Juran and Deming. However, it
requires significant changes in work systems, and requires managers to view work
much differently. Empowerment often requires a substantial commitment to
training and education, one of the hallmarks of TQ organizations.
 A team is a small number of people who work together and co-operate to share
work and responsibility. Common types of teams include management teams,
natural work teams, self-managed teams, virtual teams, quality circles, problem-
solving teams, and project teams. Each type has a different role to play, but all form
the foundation of today’s high performance workplace.
 Building and developing successful teams requires solid management support and
good planning. Self-managed teams, in particular are challenging because of the
level of empowerment that they possess. The key stages of a team’s life cycle are
called forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Understanding
what makes successful teams can help remove obstacles to effective team
development and smooth the transitioning process.
 Managing the workplace environment requires health, safety, and overall well-
being, including opportunities that contribute to the quality of working life.
 A strong workforce development system is vital to a high performance work
system. Training should address key organizational needs, contribute to the
organizational mission and vision, be delivered effectively, evaluated, and
reinforced on the job.
 Compensation and recognition refer to all aspects of pay and reward, including
promotions, bonuses, and both monetary and nonmonetary forms of recognition.
Extrinsic and intrinsic rewards are important to sustaining employee motivation.
Team-based pay and gainsharing are prevalent in TQ organizations, as are a
variety of non-monetary recognition approaches.
 Performance appraisal is a process for subjectively evaluating the quality of an
employee’s work. Traditional performance appraisal processes often are at odds
with a TQ philosophy. Performance appraisal should be based on quality-related
issues, problem identification, coaching, and continuous improvement rather than
being tied to compensation and merit-rating systems. One approach, 360-degree
feedback, focuses on two-way communication between employees and customers,
suppliers, managers, subordinates, and peers. Many companies are now replacing
performance appraisal with planning and development systems that often focus on
core competencies and mastery descriptions to describe the behavior that
employees should engage in.
 Measurement of workforce effectiveness, satisfaction, and engagement are
important to determine how work systems are performing and contributing to an
organization’s strategic objectives, and also to provide a foundation for
improvement.
 Typical measures to assess workforce effectiveness include outcomes such as
productivity improvement, defect reduction, employee turnover, and perceptions of
behavioral performance; and process measures, such as suggestion rates and
problem-solving effectiveness. Employee perceptions are usually measured
through surveys.
 Workforce engagement is often measured using the Gallup Q12 survey instrument
and classifies workers as engaged, not-engaged, or actively disengaged.
 Workforce capability refers to an organization’s ability to accomplish its work
processes through the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies of its people.
Workforce capacity refers to an organization’s ability to ensure sufficient staffing
levels to accomplish its work processes and successfully deliver products and
services to customers, including the ability to meet seasonal or varying demand
levels. Managing capability and capacity requires close attention to hiring,
learning, and career development.
  Meeting and exceeding customer expectations begins with hiring the right people
whose skills and attitudes will support and enhance the organization’s objectives.
Traditional hiring practices have been based on cognitive or technical rather than
interpersonal skills. The criterion is now shifting to attributes such as enthusiasm,
resourcefulness, creativity, and the flexibility to learn new skills rapidly.
  An important part of workforce capability and capacity planning for long-term
sustainability is succession planning for leadership and management positions.