This one is for employers and employees as well.
No business, no matter how well the owner may run it is not in need of new and fresh ideas.
Employees are a potential wealthy source of these good ideas especially when it comes to feild work and SOP’s that guide the feild staff daily, the procedures that enable materials to show up correctly and on time as well as subs. The procedures that help eliminate the need for a call to the office with a question, particularly a question similiar to one asked on the job before last.
So, as an employer, how open are you to the suggestions of the trusted employees that you compensate each week? What if anything do you do to encourage their input and once you have recieved it what do you do with those ideas?
As an employee, does your employer encourage you to offer sound ideas to the betterment of all in the company? If (s)he doesn’t, what can they do to encourage your input and how does it make you feel if you are in a situation where this type of input is not welcome?
Looking foward to all your replies,
Eric
Replies
Good thread idea. Here's my take.
The smaller the company, the less formal the SOP 'book' needs to be. In really small companies, it doesn't even need to be written down and usually isn't. But as the company gets larger and larger, that book eventually winds up being the responsibility of an admin type who often has lots of admin experience but none in the field. It's at this point that the input from field people is critically needed.
But the reality is that in the great majority of cases, it's the foremen and supervisors who get tasked with writing up roughs for the SOP manual, which they try to squeeze in between 'real' work. So the job doesn't get the attention it merits, which is the first problem; and when it's turned in to the suits in the office, it'll get the balls edited out of it anyway, especially if the company lawyer gets his hands on it....
But there's another reason there is often little front-line employee input to SOP manuals in large outfits.
I've worked for a very large corporation every winter for the last 15 years. This outfit uses all the modern HR tricks to try to persuade the employees it really cares about what they think. There are company 'award' programs which put one employee from each department in the company newsletter every year. There are annual training and refresh programs for almost every department. And the supervisors constantly solicit our input on operating procedures.
But what happens is this: You see a problem, you come up with a solution, you write it up and submit it through your supervisor who thanks you very sincerely...and nothing changes.
Then, two or three years later, you see your idea being put into use, but credited to your former supervisor...who just got a promotion to department manager....
Sound familiar, anybody?
Dinosaur
A day may come when the courage of men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...
But it is not this day.
I used to live in the land of SOPs, working for the Department of the Interior. Our crew followed national, regional, local and our crew SOPs. Personally I really like to have SOPs for everything and have the entire crew follow them all.
Practically it seems as if it takes so much time to formalize SOPs that the costs are prohibitive unless there is a lot of downtime, such as our helicopter/fire crew.
If I were to formalize SOPs for a construction crew, starting with the large issues and working down in detail is probably the way to go. Also, don't focus on things that don't need to be formalized. Focus on the important areas that benefit the most from the SOP.
It would also depend on the personalities and leadership of those in charge. If the leads and managers run a tight ship, they are probably teaching and enforcing their versions of a SOP. Formalizing this might be counter productive since the end result won't change.
If the end result is to make operations more consistant across various crews then I can see how a one to three page outline of the most important points could be useful if done with restraint and continuously updated and actually used.