Leadership 7
Workplace Safety: Cutting Down Catastrophe
In as much as the business gurus might have convinced us of the benefits of tackling our working life with a battlefield mindset, it still stands to reason that nobody would consider a cracked spine ‘all in a day’s work’, nor should they ever. Today’s litigious society has made the aftermath cost (medical bills, court fees, and general disruption) of preventable workplace accidents almost negligible when viewed in comparison with the cost of investing in preventative measures. Here are some tried and true suggestions you would always do well to implement.
-
Knowing is half the battle
Workplace safety training and education should be a cornerstone of every organizational personnel doctrine. A well-formulated safety manual should read like a do-it-yourself guide; simple, straightforward, and explicitly clear, not leaving any room for personal interpretation. Training exercises should be undertaken regularly just to ensure everyone on the team understands and internalizes the instructions therein.
-
No autopilot
In a good number of court disputes resulting from workplace incidences and accidents, the classic defense on the employer’s part has been to attribute the accident to the employee’s absent-mindedness, or general lack of awareness. As flimsy a defense as it may seem, being inherently difficult to prove one way or another, it raises a pertinent and valid aspect of workplace safety – the employee’s presence of mind.
Depending on the industry and workplace settings, various methods have been employed in efforts to aid employees in maintaining high levels of awareness and engagement as they go about their tasks; shorter but more frequent breaks; rotation of duties to forestall repetition-induced fatigue; standing workstations; background music and various other measures. The goal simply is to have workers’ minds constantly and consistently present and alert.
-
Talk it out
A healthy communication culture is the hallmark of every successful organizational setup. Safety-wise, this comes into play in a big way. Whenever someone spots a colleague infringing upon one of the safety directives, it should be automatically communicated to them in a manner that would contribute to the overall safety of everyone involved, regardless of the respective positions of the parties involved.
A workplace safety culture should treat the entire organization as one body – injury to the most minor of functionaries will interfere with the operations of the entire body, and may be severe enough to destroy the entire organism.
Workplace safety is a perennially sore topic in the world of business. The demoralizing effects of injuries befalling colleagues in the workforce have long been acknowledged and this makes investments of time and resources in their prevention infinitely worthwhile. It’s just good business.
Succession Planning to Build a Lasting Business
Human nature is such that when we experience something good, we forget there’s a possibility of something bad happening. For example, when we’re in the perfect relationship, we don’t think of or plan for a break up. Similarly, when it comes to a business, people are so busy trying to make it successful, they don’t plan for a day when they won’t be around to run it anymore. Even if it seems unnecessary and retirement is a long way away, it is important to map out a business succession plan. There are many unexpected scenarios like divorce, disability and death that require a company to have a succession plan in place.
Before developing a business succession plan, be sure to consider the following:
Choosing a successor
Those who run a family business actually have a more complicated decision to make than many think. If the owner has more than one child who wants the role, emotions and ego can be at stake. If the owner has children who don’t want anything to do with his or her company, he needs to identify someone in the company to carry the business forward. Regardless of what the case is, there are steps in place to selecting a successor.
1.) Evaluate each potential successor’s strengths and weaknesses to assess if they are fit to fill your shoes.
2.) Make a plan for those who will eventually take over leadership and ensure they are experienced enough to succeed. In a family business, there will also be estate and inheritance tax issues to be resolved.
3.) If selling to a business partner, be sure to have a buy-sell agreement to create the financial structure for your exit.
Business valuation
If your company is privately held, a valuation should be conducted through certified appraisal or by an arbitrary agreement between partners as to how the business will be valued.
Business transfer methods
Cross-purchase agreements and entity-purchase agreements are the two most common ways of transferring business ownership.
1.) Cross-purchase agreement – Every partner in the company buys and owns a life insurance policy on other partners. Also, each partner is named as both owner and beneficiary on the same policy. If one partner dies, the policies are paid out to the remaining partners. The proceeds are then used to purchase the dead partner’s shares in the business at a formerly agreed-upon price.
2.) Entity-purchase agreement – The business purchases a life insurance policy on each partner and is named the owner and beneficiary for each policy. In case a partner dies, the business uses the proceeds to purchase the decedent’s shares. With this arrangement, the cost of the policies are usually deductible.
A Stitch in Time: The Implementation of Andon
Andon, adopted from the Japanese, is used in the manufacturing industry to refer to a communication system that makes use of visual and/or audio cues to notify all people of interruptions, abnormalities or general problems requiring attention in the manufacture processes.
Within the Lean and Six Sigma context, it has an evolved connotation. Here, it is manifested as a Help chain, efficiently ensuring the stability of your organizational processes by channeling assistance and support to problem areas effectively and in good time. This gives supervisory roles increased freedom to concentrate their energies on problem-solving rather than monitoring activities. Doubtless, it’s a valuable system to have in place, whatever the field of operation.
These are the essential steps and focus points towards building up an effective Andon system of your own:
-
Consensus
All involved must have a basic understanding and agreement on what exactly would constitute a problem or aberration requiring attention. For example, should a colleague believe a report is in good time if completed two days before it’s due while you think it should be ready one week beforehand, the resultant conflict effectively renders Andon pointless.
-
Well-defined parameters
Help chain triggering parameters refer to established milestones and reference points embedded into the very tasks or project processes allowing for the ready identification of obstacles and hold-ups. These mechanisms may be as simple as setting a time limit to how long inter-office e-mails are allowed to go unanswered.
-
Universally understood signaling
Good Andon systems allow for the communication of a problem’s severity, thus determining efficiently the response levels called for. In office environments, e-mail notifications and daily group meetings are effective ways of keeping track of all the various functions in action.
-
First responders
Rather than have every issue automatically sent up the chain of command, your system should allow for a worker’s discretion such as in instances whereby a colleague has handled an issue similar in nature to the one in question. This fosters cohesiveness among peers while allowing the higher-ups to focus on new problems.
-
Clarity in response
The nature of the response that your Andon triggers should be consistent and predictable in order to eliminate any possible anxieties workers may experience regarding their workplace comfort and job security. Remember, the objective is to smooth out your operations, not to seek out candidates for punishment. Making this clear to all staff will make it possible to implement Andon with maximum benefit.
Big Data: From the Ground Up
To remain competitive in today’s technology-driven economy, companies have become more and more dependent on data. Whether a company uses data in decision-making is no longer the question. The popular buzzword “Big Data” echoed in both executive and operational corridors. Of course, many questions are raised about this term. To understand what Big Data is, one must strip off all the hype that makes it an enigma in the big digital world.
What is Big Data?
Big Data is a term that simply means an aggregate of all pieces of data that an organization has stored since its inception. There is a common misconception about Big Data – that it’s complex data collected somewhere, probably in a cloud and only savvy data scientists can access and manipulate it.
Big Data includes everyday sales data in a retail store, whether structured or unstructured. It might be on hardcopy invoices or stored in a digital form. Think of all the bookmarked URLs in each employee’s computer and data continually generated by the Internet of Things (IoT), websites, social media platforms, and other sources. That too is part of Big Data that can be used in different types of analysis to influence certain decisions.
Big Data at the bottom levels of an organization
Most employees at the operation level of an organization thing that Big Data is “a thing of the executives”. They don’t realize that they are the ones who create and interact with Big Data on a daily basis. Workers in low management levels ought to realize that every figure or statement they use and store in the company’s database forms part of the company’s Big Data. They, therefore, have a responsibility of ensuring data accuracy at the operational level.
Challenge to executives
Big Data has become the new reality of the corporate world. Management must know that the decisions it makes concerning data affect the reputation and ultimate valuation of the company. Companies are committing large amounts of resources on Big Data analytics. The use, misuse, and governance of data have a direct impact on the goodwill of the company.
Cornell Study Shows Women Behind on Skill Training
In working-class towns, men find it easy to join the workforce as manual laborers and machinists. Cornell university research shows that the wide pay gap and lack of work pushes women out of blue-collar jobs.
Vocational education schools versus prep courses for college showed a male preference for vocational training, and therefore, a greater likelihood to find better-paid blue-collar jobs upon graduation, shows the Cornell study published in the American Sociological Review.
Touching upon the pay gap for women in blue-collar jobs – it can be as high as 22% less than their male counterparts. This is a significantly wider gap than that in white-collar jobs or service-industry positions shows the same study. The gender gap in employment and wages was more prominently visible in young people from blue-collar communities who completed high school.
In many ways, blue-collar jobs are still just as biased towards men as they were in the 50s. The condition of the female workforce in towns where jobs are mostly concentrated on construction and manufacturing is sharply distinguished from that of women over the U.S. generally, where women have a greater likelihood for going to college than men.
These communities are struggling to fill in the large amount of production jobs that need to be filled. More than 3.5 million vacancies across the U.S. have been estimated over the next 10 years. The present lack of skilled labor could cause a deficit in filling 2 million of those positions, as was predicted by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute.
This shows the need for educators to actively address these gender issues in discussions about vocational training while paving the way for college. Today, statistics show a preference for skilled jobs over advanced math. While men can definitely benefit from college prep classes, encouraging women to opt for vocational courses can do much for the economy in the future.
Google to Train 1 Million Africans for Job Readiness
Google Inc. is working on a project to start a series of digital skills training programs in the next year. These programs are aimed at skilling Africans who are suffering due to a slow global economy, with unemployment being rife.
The company is slated to train 300,000 people in South Africa, where the majority of millennials (up to 35%) are unemployed. 600,000 youth from emerging nations like Kenya and Nigeria will be given digital training at no cost, while another 100,000 will be chosen from other sub-Saharan Africa countries.
Google South Africa country head Luke Mckend said, “Google is in Africa for the long haul and we are making an investment in talent. We hope that the people trained will become pioneers in the field and do great things in digital for companies and for Google.”
He also said that this was only the first step in progress and to see Africa conquer the digital world much more needed to be done. He went on to say that the Internet is a great tool for starting new businesses and growing exiting ones, and Google is dedicated to its mission in helping Africa’s emerging markets maximize on the digital revolution.
To accomplish its goal, google has tied up with Livity Africa to create training programs and will soon be setting up an online education website for learners in the African nations. The company is also in talks with several other potential partners across the continent to expand the outreach of the digital skills program and be able to get to even more young learners across Africa.
A TeleGeography Global Internet Geography report has claimed that the internet bandwidth in Africa has gone up 41% between 2014 and 2015. Google has investigated the possibility of Africa having 500 million Internet users by 2020. This is a useful piece of data for the company as it can leverage the Internet users to create a strong workforce for the economy.
3 Things Successful Innovative Manufacturers are Doing
Reduction in cost and making manufacturing processes more efficient is the one of the top growth strategies of most manufacturing CEOs. This can be seen as change sweeping across the operating model like rearranging the plant layout, strengthening their footprint, adopting advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing to robotics.
Innovation in the business model is possibly the biggest challenge that manufacturing CEOs are facing. The fact remains that conventional operating models are undergoing a complete overhaul with agility being at the forefront to capture new market segments and sales channels.
Here are a few areas that sees innovative manufacturers targeting for maximum impact.
-
Race with technology
While most companies plan capital investments over a five-year period, technology continues to evolve at the speed of light. Therefore, the traditional modes of investment and payback, as well as managerial speed needs to be adjusted to sync with the rapid technology evolution. Consumer electronics companies, for example, account for flexibility in adopting new technologies in their product development models.
-
Keeping up with innovation
Innovation is the buzzword for manufacturers today. All too often, it is confined to a lab or small, focused team. Balancing profits from existing line of products versus getting employees to learn new technologies can be a tough situation for manufacturers. Today, innovative companies need to take in the various pros and cons of new technologies and focus on “continuous improvement” techniques.
-
Look long term
While no one can really predict how technology will evolve in the next 10 years, top manufacturers are trying to draw a parallel between their innovation investments and long-term business goals. Manufacturers are choosing investments that will lower operating costs, reduced risk and speed up operational performance for their clients. They are trying to relay their ideas to their employees, suppliers, customers, and shareholders for a 360◦ integration of their innovation investments.
