By R. Bruce Wright, CPCU
Getting employee “buy-in” on decisions made by management is a constant issue for many management teams. All too often, managers make decisions, decisions that they believe are in the best interests of their employees and their company, and then try to figure out how best to get the employees to accept the choice willingly rather than grudgingly, if at all.
Many times, proceeding this way is to get the cart before the horse. Of course, there are issues that management must address through “executive decision” because of the need to act in a timely manner on important issues. But, how many of these are there really? Managers often think that every decision they need to make requires an executive decision. (I used to think this too, when I had to justify my existence in the organizational chart!) Few decisions are like that. Most of the issues that managers struggle to achieve acceptance on are issues that could well have been addressed through employee participation. And, if employees have a say in the decision, they will nearly always “buy in” automatically. They’ll even work hard to sell the idea to their co-workers since, after all, it was their decision and they want to show it was a good one.
I was reminded of this recently when I visited one of our systems and sat down to talk with their safety officer. He explained to me that one of the duties of their safety committee was to select various types of equipment to buy for use in the field. The safety committee reviewed lots of items, including among them safety glasses, hard hats, FR clothing, and climbing equipment. In each case, the committee was given the same breadth of information that a manager would have had access to – the same samples, specifications, costs and delivery times – in short the same data any manager would use to evaluate and select an item. They were told what the budget was for the purchase, and if their choice was likely to exceed the budget allowance, they also had to prepare a presentation for the CEO explaining their reasoning, selecting a member to present it. But, after giving them the information and detailing the range of options, the committee chairman stood back and let them run with the process of evaluation and selection.
Pretty scary huh? Are you imagining a committee run amok, gone giddy with this authority, trying to spend like drunken sailors on high end equipment, and consuming valuable CEO time spent listening to special appeals? If so, think again. As we at Synebar say from time to time, many managers find it surprising to learn that when given responsibility and authority, employees act remarkably like regular people, even darned intelligent regular people. There’s a reason for that. They are in fact, intelligent, regular people! After all, didn’t we select them for those qualities?
My contact told me that by giving this authority to the safety committee was one of the best ideas they had tried. The committee made good, sensible choices, weighed its decisions carefully and used the budget wisely. And, this process had virtually eliminated the need to make a PR effort each time an item was selected, since the members of the committee almost always all bought into the choices that they participated in, even when the eventual choice was not their original personal preference. Furthermore, the committee members themselves were the most effective sales representatives for these decisions that could be imagined. And, since their union nominated the non-management members of the committee, union opposition to the committee’s choices had dwindled away. Now, isn’t that amazing?
Now of course you can’t simply turn over everything to a committee and walk away; it has to be managed just like an individual does. In fact, a committee needs every aspect of management that a single employee needs, including a specific task (a job description if you will), leadership, coaching, communication and feedback. Note this last item. Evaluation of performance is crucial to success. No business activity continues effectively without feedback. But turning to a well managed committee of front line workers can make management’s job easier, not harder, when employee buy-in is required for the effective implementation of decisions.