Employee Engagement and Workforce Development

Our processes are aimed at engaging employees at all levels of the organization including the workforce. Employee engagement and workforce development are a fundamental focus of all our organization development projects. Specifically, we try to create an environment conducive to participation, trust, teamwork, empowerment, leadership, personal growth, and pride in performance. 

The role of the leaders is to develop a unified sense of direction and create the environment necessary for a continuous improvement system and a performance culture in line with company values. The focus of our work with management is on getting their commitment and on setting specific project goals. The emphasis of our projects, however, and the bulk of our time, addresses the team leaders or supervisors and the workforce. These levels are where the value is being added and are essential to the achievement of sustainable and measurable culture change and productivity improvement initiatives.

A typical project is implemented in the following stages:

Information Gathering (includes project planning and preparation)

Stage 1            Leadership team (top team in target area)

Stage 2            Team Leaders or Supervisors

Stage 3            Core Workers (where most of the work is done)

Stage 4            Follow-up, anchoring and the establishment of audit systems

The project stages listed above can be shown graphically as follows:

Information Gathering

The purpose of the Information Gathering Stage of the Project is to agree the scope and the specific deliverables of the Project.

Stage 1: Leadership Team Intervention

Our company tailors solutions specifically to client problems and therefore information gathering needs to precede specific objectives.  For example, our workshops and other interventions can focus on building, unifying and aligning teams, on cascading strategic planning systems through the organisation, on accountability, eliminating blamefixing and managing performance etc. Once Stage One is complete, the focus of the project is targeted.

At the conclusion of the intervention, the Leadership Team would take ownership of Stage Two of the project and determine the way forward.

Stages 2 and 3: Cascading our work down

Once the system framework is in place and leadership commitment and understanding gained, we begin to cascade the system down the organisation. Sacher Associates acts as hands-on implementers who work with the Leadership Team members, who now lead their teams and the systems are cascaded down to appropriately match each level in the organisation.

Stage 3 will involve the rest of the employees in the area. This would involve working with natural teams on the specific components necessary to improve and sustain performance.

Stage 4: Follow-up, anchoring and establishment of systems

All of the above can result in a workforce culture described by one of our clients, a plant manager, as follows:

"We all work smarter.  We discuss things more.   More operators want to be developed and show commitment and enthusiasm. The shift supervisors are now less "hands on" but more committed to the development of their teams. We have been able to introduce some unpopular ideas because the cost savings were agreed to by all operators.  The Supervisors (and most operators) are more professional - they realise the training of their operators and themselves is essential but must be carefully planned and conducted - they're committed to discuss and consult and give up power - they know what they get in return.  There is no going back - a new level of consciousness has developed."

Dennis Sparrow

Tto discuss your specific needs, please contact us.