Business leadership

Turning productive factory workers into effective business leaders

The brief

It’s common for good performers on the factory floor to be promoted to a supervisory role. Unfortunately, the skills that make them productive in their former role don’t always translate into people management skills.

Nalco was finding that team leaders in its Hamilton aluminium joinery factory were struggling to delegate tasks and effectively manage workforce issues such as absenteeism. Even worse, their unfamiliarity with the performance management process was exposing Nalco to the risk of expensive personal grievance claims.

The solution

You can learn a lot by walking around a factory and asking people what they think. Talking to Nalco’s site manager and key staff, we gained insights into the issues facing team leaders and workers. From these discussions we identified the key skills required, and developed a series of half-day workshops to deliver them to team leaders. Workshops were held three to four weeks apart to avoid information overload and give the learners time to embed the new skills in their everyday work.

Key to the success of the programme was finding the right facilitator. The Learning Wave identified the right person from amongst our team of Associates and introduced him to the business. Having a facilitator who really connects with learners is one of the most important indicators of success in any learning programme.

The result

As a result of the learning programme, Nalco staff now have a common language and set of tools for frontline managers. There’s a sound knowledge of the performance management process, giving supervisors the ability to nip problems in the bud and minimise the risk of expensive disputes. Team members are now receiving effective feedback, and morale is up as a result. Minor but time-consuming issues such as absenteeism are dealt with sooner, rather than being allowed to detract from factory productivity.

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