Onboarding System Impacts Retention

Q. Does your workforce have a way to connect the day-to-day work of operations with the business big picture? Can your supervisors rely on getting new people up to speed in an efficient and reliable timeframe?

Client

A German jam and confectionery manufacturer with headquarters in Germany and a plant in a small town in Indiana. 

Challenges

The North American business was going through a major restructuring several years after acquiring a new plant. Operations across plants were similar, but plant cultures were distinct, and they used different processes and terminology for core work. Standard operating procedures were in place, yet in practice, the core work lent itself to variation. Operators were left to manage the variations on their own in an environment of increasing regulatory and food safety requirements and hundreds of recipe variations. 

The Midwest plant was faced with a "catch-22" - type recruiting and retention problem for frontline workers, leads, and supervisors. Leaders believed that the plant was located in the wrong geography, without access to desired labor pools. The plant was also in a demanding, mandatory overtime situation, so the workforce was exhausted and morale was very low.

Solutions

We created several programs that worked together to impact retention and support standard work.

Exemplary operators were engaged as subject matter experts (SMEs), where we began with observations and discussions about standard work. Our knowledge-capture process clarified the core process standards and terminology—and revealed where knowledge was missing. Outputs included standard work illustrated in user-friendly documents that trainers could also use to organize their training plans.

Once SMEs approved of the documents, we began recruiting capable volunteers to be trained as trainers. To get around the mandatory overtime constraint, we created a cross-functional plan that would recruit expert trainers from associated departments. This group helped us launch the effort and acted as our first set of trained trainers. The group, although cooperative, was also fairly cynical, and they brought their concerns to our train-the-trainer course. After completing our practical, activity-based course, the group was cautious yet enthusiastic, and they described their new knowledge and skills as “the missing piece” for training others.

In addition to this growing, skilled training network, we designed and implemented a new employee orientation program that included a process overview, company history video, and quality and safety basics. The process overview provided new hires with the big picture and terminology basics to reduce time to competence and prevent errors down the line. This foundational knowledge also helped make the trainers’ jobs easier, as they didn’t have to start from nothing.

Results

The new network of skilled, paraprofessional, one-on-one trainers took on a mission to orient new employees. Supervisors and leads were prepared to run training assignments, while at the same time, build their capability to manage standard work. The result? Better control of standard work in a coherent system focused on improved execution, waste reduction, and improved performance.

We also identified four drivers impacting the retention issue, including a competitive marketplace, mandatory overtime, and lead turnover and relations. The fourth—the inadequate training system—accounted for only 25% of the problem. However, after our solution was implemented, grouped qualitative data suggested that there were nearly immediate improvements in morale and retention results.

Our solution exceeded its contribution toward the retention goal. After the intervention, the data showed a trendline with a diminishing number of open positions on the plant floor.