Do front-line staff understand how they impact bottom line? Do their leaders?

by Leslie A.Larson

It’s amazing how many companies continue to make major strategic decisions at the top levels without first getting input from front-line staff. Who else deals with customers day-in and day-out – hearing the good, bad and the ugly? Who else sees first-hand the impediments to providing excellent customer service?

Not only is it a recipe for failure from the customer perspective, it’s a recipe for failure for employee morale (read: declining productivity). So a lose-lose all around.

We’ve all worked someplace where decisions came down from “on high” — decisions that made no sense whatsoever and were difficult, if not impossible, to implement from a practical perspective. Not only were we not educated on the whys of the changes, we knew that the whats wouldn’t work. Too bad leadership didn’t ask for our perspective up front before spending time, money and other resources on a bad decision.

The health care industry is getting it. The Lean philosophy has taken off as the industry grapples to address health care reform and skyrocketing costs. Based on its successful use by Toyota, the Lean program is, as former hospital CEO Paul Levy explains:

“a long-term philosophy of corporate leadership and organization that is based, above all, on respect shown to front-line staff.  There are two essential aspects, training front-line workers to be empowered and encouraged to call out problems on the “factory floor,” and training managers to understand that their job is to serve those front-line workers by knowing what is going on on the front lines and responding in real time (when problems are fresh) to the call-outs.”

And hospitals are seeing results. According to a study by the American Society for Quality, Lean process improvement programs have positively impacted hospital operations in significant ways:

Clinical success (“somewhat” or “highly” successful)

• Operating rooms (95 percent of hospitals) and emergency rooms (86 percent)

Ancillary/support services success (“somewhat” or “highly” successful)

• Admissions and discharge (94 percent) and sterilizing/reprocessing (89 percent) and radiology/imaging (87 percent)

Non-clinical/support success (“somewhat” or “highly” successful)

• Information systems (89 percent) and administration (87 percent)

But an organization doesn’t need to implement a program like Lean to reap the benefits of working closely with front-line staff to ensure that changes in processes, services and products support what the customer needs, first and foremost.

And those who do so won’t just see improvements in customer satisfaction, efficiencies and morale; they’ll see additional benefits including:

~ Preparation of the next generation of management;

~ Advocates to ensure buy-in companywide;

~ Managers who have time to think more strategically instead of being mired in operational issues;

~ Empowered staff who can solve general, common issues on the spot.

To me it seems a win-win.. what about you? Anything I’m missing??? Please let me know your thoughts.

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