During her visits to more than a dozen plants owned by the company, ‘Operation Transform’ team leader Christine found bulletin boards in the employee break rooms to be covered with performance scorecards. For the metrics tracked, these scorecards showed results comparisons to this year’s goals as well as the previous month, quarter and year. While each plant had its own way of organizing and displaying their results, most tracked metrics related to employee safety, plant productivity, waste and customer service. These were the headings found under the “key success drivers” in the corporate strategic plan.
She smiled proudly when she noticed a board for the first time thinking wow, they really get it here; not only do they track plant performance in many ways, they also publish it for the workforce to see. That smile soon became a grimace as she asked the first employee to walk by, “what does this mean to you?”
The woman, Cassandra, was surprised by Christine’s question. It wasn’t often that someone who dressed as though they were visiting from the home office engaged the front-line workers without plant management nearby. In fact, in her fifteen years at this plant in Jackson, Mississippi Cassandra could not recall a time when anyone from the home office asked her anything.
“Nothing really,” she answered cautiously. “I mean, it’s nice to know how well we’re doing, that our hard work pays off.” The red light on Christine’s internal bullshit meter flashed brightly – Cassandra’s delivery of that last line signaled she was saying what she thought Christine would want to hear. Cassandra’s cheeky grin confirmed it, serving as an effective ice-breaker between the two. They both smiled.
The dialogue continued with the two of them conversing about work-life and personal-life – “real-life” as Cassandra liked to say. Work was a game she played to make ends meet, keeping food on the table for her two teen aged girls as she prepared them for college. It was the path Cassandra chose for her girls and she was content.
Her story seemed cliché: Cassandra and the girls’ father married soon after high school. They both worked at the plant. Blessed with two girls, their “Irish-twins”, Cassandra and her husband agreed that she’d stay home while he climbed the proverbial ladder. Tragically, the girls’ father was killed in an auto accident. Single-parenthood commenced when the girls were 4 and 5 years old. She returned to the plant as a sorter in the receiving department.
They connected quickly on this topic, as memories of raising her own children as a single parent flooded Christine’s mind. “The sun set on those days a decade ago for me, dear. But I recall the challenge of balancing the family and the career like it was yesterday. There are days, weeks and months when I wish I’d chosen your path, focused more on my children while they were growing up.”
A cup of coffee or two later, the conversation veered back to work-related topics, the scorecards in particular. Christine pressed Cassandra about the metrics themselves and how Cassandra’s performance ratings were related to scorecards on the bulletin boards. Cassandra was puzzled by the line of questions. The results posted in the break room had absolutely nothing to do with how her performance was evaluated. In fact, Cassandra regularly asked her peers and a few supervisors how the results shape work schedules, training, and even hiring. Our supervisors don’t even review those figures with us, Cassandra thought to herself. Every month new charts appear out of nowhere. She explained to Christine that nobody seemed to know how to make the connection.
“What about your quarterly bonus? Whether you get one and how much depends on what’s on the scorecard, doesn’t it?” The news that employee performance ratings are conducted annually with bonuses paid immediately following did not surprise Christine, but what followed alarmed her.
Cassandra’s description of the plant’s performance evaluation system sounded like a bad imitation of what it must have been like in the 50s. Hourly wage increases and bonus payments depended upon three factors: unexcused absence and tardiness, sobriety and wearing the approved uniform! CEO Jack and the Company Board of Directors would be mortified to know that the terms quality, productivity, rework, safety, scrap rates, and through-put were not mentioned let alone used to guide the workforce.
And we wonder why most of our plants fail to deliver, she thought to herself.
That afternoon Christine opened the meeting with the plant’s leadership team [and subsequent discussions with leaders across the system] by saying, “it appears as though you’re rewarding your front-line workers for showing up on time, sober, wearing steel-toed shoes. Can someone explain to me why there’s absolutely no connection between this plant’s results and how you hold your people accountable?”
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