An operator started showing up late. His supervisor saw it in the first week and moved him to a job where the start time mattered less. A lead raised it with the plant HR manager a few days later, and she spent most of a day reconstructing his time records. The VP of operations asked about it at the end of the month.
Four people worked that problem. His supervisor could have closed it in week one with a five-minute conversation at the machine. Ask an HR leader why her teams lack accountability and you will hear a version of that story.
The problem travels up and somebody has to catch it
We at Trinity hear a version of that story nearly every week. A supervisor sees a performance problem and hands it to HR or to a lead, and it keeps going.
The plant HR manager absorbs it. She spends a day reconstructing time records for a conversation that belonged to the supervisor, and she pushes the staffing plan for the new line to next week.
The crew is watching the whole time. They see an operator come in late for a month and move to an easier schedule, and they take the lesson that showing up on time is optional.
What it costs when the standard is soft
Gallup compared business units in the top quartile for employee engagement against those in the bottom quartile across 183,806 work units in the eleventh edition of its Q12 meta-analysis. The gap in absenteeism between the two groups ran 78 percent.
Accountability shows up first and cheapest in attendance, which is why that number belongs in this conversation. Your absenteeism numbers move months before your turnover does.
Accountability is a supervisor skill, and it is teachable
A supervisor hands the conversation off because he has watched two kinds of correction: the kind that turns into a shouting match and the kind that waits a month. Teach him a five-minute version he can run at the machine and he will use it. That’s because he would rather do that than answer the VP at the end of the month.
He can learn that in one session. His own manager works on it the weeks following the session. The supervisor who practiced the conversation in a classroom needs that manager to ask how the real one went. And somebody in HR has to tell the manager to ask.
Start with the report you already have
Pull your absenteeism and your written warnings for the last six months and sort both by supervisor rather than by department. In almost every plant we work with, two or three supervisors account for most of the gap. Those same supervisors usually know the equipment better than anyone else on the floor.
Adam Boyd, President of Trinity Training and Development, is running a free session on the 90 days after supervisor training, Thursday, November 5 at 10 am CT on Zoom. Bring the crew where your numbers run worse than the rest of the plant, because he works from live examples in the room.
Everyone who attends leaves with a 90-day plan, a 30/60/90 scorecard, and ten questions to ask of any supervisor program. Register at frontlineleadershipprogram.com/supervisor-training-webinar.