Podcast: How to challenge problem employees with reliability excellence

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, is a former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, and he is now president of Lean Driven Reliability. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight into how managers deal with employees’ bad attitudes.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

PS: So important topic we're talking about today in terms of workforce and workforce development. There are a lot of factors affecting the manufacturing workforce right now. In general, the theme is bleak. We're short on workers, specifically technically skilled workers, and that level of skill is on a continued rise as manufacturers are adopting more technology. Unfortunately, at the same time, less younger workers are entering manufacturing, while older generations are retiring and taking with them that historical knowledge—the brain drain, as they call it. So with holes that manufacturers may have in their current workforce. Do you ultimately think that this makes other employees a little more valuable, or when it comes to managing your workforce, do you think employers might put up with attitudes or behaviors that they wouldn’t normally because knowledgeable workers are so hard to replace? I want to just bring this specific topic a little bit to our readers and explore a specific instance of how this might affect reliability practices.

So, say you have a planner or a supervisor or a technician, you name it, and he or she has been at the plant forever. This worker overall rates maybe a five out of 10 on worker contribution and generally has a bad attitude. However, this is a long-time employee that's been there for a long time and knows the history of the plant better than anyone else, and consistently saves the plant during emergencies. So bad attitude, maybe poor day-to-day work ethic, but shines bright when there's emergency. So if that person leaves or is asked to leave, that knowledge leaves too. So as a plant manager, what do you do? And what does this situation mean for reliability practices?

JK: This is a great question. I don't know that I've ever been asked this question before, but I had to deal with it all the time. It was a regular part of the efforts in the plants that I've worked in. What do you do with that hero that really is not buying into the best practices? They're holding on to what's made them successful for several decades, and they're holding on to information, actually quite often, because that’s what makes them valuable. They know how to do something, and they're not willing to pass that on to others.

So let me tackle this problem. It starts off with this fear, just like you said, this fear, say, ‘Oh my gosh. There are not as many people going into being a technician, a mechanic, electrician, brick mason, whatever you have, facilities or maintenance technician. There are not as many people going into that. So we just have to accept what we got.’ Let me tackle that a few ways. Number one is the vast majority of plants, and I'm wanting to say 100%, but I'm being nice, but 100% of the plants that I've walked into are inefficiently going through their day. They're typically, I'll find a wrench time and effectiveness, (it’s just a measure, but it's not perfect, of how well we're utilizing the craftspeople) and it's around 15%. Okay, now, some people say best in class is 50%. That's a dream, I think. I've never seen anything close to that with great running plants, but 15 is pretty bad. The good news is it's pretty easy to improve. So I'll walk into a plant and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, we got all these problems with in maintenance and with reliability of equipment, and we need to hire five people before we can do anything. We're just drowning here.’ And then after, I would spend a week with them, doing observations, making sure they understand how inefficiently they're using people. By the end of the week, they're concerned they may have too many people. That's happened 100% of the time for me. So they went from wanting to hire five to ‘oh my gosh, I can clearly see a year from now, we may have five, 6 or 10 too many, and that's because you understand waste and inefficiency from observation. That's the power. Okay, so my first thing is, I've never been into a plant where not having enough people ended up being the problem after understanding waste. Never. Forty-two plants, I’ve never been in one that had that as a problem. Inefficient use and hiring people and putting in them into your existing culture. Yeah, that's a problem. You're hiring people, paying them 100% of a salary and utilizing 15% of that. Yeah, that's a problem that doesn't solve. You have to fix that. Observation, fixing waste best practices, solves that pretty easily.

Now let's move on to say, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to hang onto at least the people I have, and this person's got a bad attitude. Oh, we think about firing them every year, and we don't, because soon as we talk about firing we need them. For me, I've done this wrong a few times, and I've hung on to them. The right thing is to never be held hostage to one person. Okay, I like to say the cemetery is full of irreplaceable people. Everybody's replaceable. This person won the lottery and left. You'd figure it out. Okay, so give yourself a little credit for being able to figure it out, but you don't want to cause some pain that you don't have to have.

First thing I would do, is accept that this isn't acceptable in our organization. They're probably having a bigger negative impact on the organization than just them. They're dragging others down with them. So the first thing I would do is I'd talk to this individual. I'd challenge him. I'd say, ‘Hey, you've got this background, you got this expertise, and you're not showing up with the right attitude. You're not showing up with, how can I help? How can I teach the next generation? How can I solve this problem permanently, so I don't have to come in like a hero.’ Heroes are not what we're looking for in the maintenance organization. We're not looking for those people to come in and just do one great thing and save us from the abyss. We're looking for the real heroes, the people that prevent problems from happening, preventing emergency work from happening, solving problems, helping equipment run faster, run longer, lower cost. So I would first challenge that person, and it's an uncomfortable conversation. You have to hit it right between the eyes. ‘You're doing great here, here and here, but I'm telling you, there are a lot of people that don't want you in this organization. I've had those thoughts myself. I don't want you in this organization. You're not culturally adaptable to where we want to be, and I'm challenging you to be better than that.’

I'd also expand that conversation into what's wrong. Is there something going on at home, outside of work? Why are you so bitter? Why are you so angry? Is this really the legacy you want to leave? And there may be something there. Don't dismiss that the problem could be the company's fault. If you treat somebody a certain way, so let's say it's a planner, you treat somebody a certain way for 20 years, they're going to start acting bad. Okay, so some of this is owned by you, the boss, the manager, coming in and saying, ‘Hey, here's the culture I'm trying to create. I want you to be a part of it. I know the past hasn't been great, and we've made some missteps. You got passed over for promotions, whatever it happens to be.’ Challenge them to be better. Once this person starts to see culture change, starts to see some successes, ‘Hey, we're actually going to plan a job next Tuesday, and we're actually going to shut down the job next Tuesday. We said we wanted it for eight hours, and we're actually going to give it to you for eight hours. We're actually going to problem solve. We're going to buy the parts and pieces, and not duct tape and bailing wire.’ Once this person starts to see some successes, you go back to them and connect the dots for them say, ‘Hey, this is the culture we're trying to create. I'm telling you, 75-80% of the people I've dealt with will change. They'll change because they see, ‘Hey, maybe this time is different.’ And I've been called out. I've been called out and told, my attitude is hurting the organization.’ I've seen 75 to 80% of the people change.

I've also seen 20% of them not, okay. And you got some choices then on what you do with that individual. My belief is they're not good for the organization. They're not good for the organization. If they are, for example, this person is a leader inside of the technicians. Maybe it's an elected union official and somebody that’s just going to be around, but they just got a bad attitude. Hey, one of the things I've done, and this is a takeaway, is I developed with my team a touch plan. We call it a touch plan, so instead of going through, communicating change and successes in large meetings, which is very efficient, but it sometimes ineffective, because you have the negative people that dominate those meetings. ‘You know, say, back in 1975, you guys did this. In ‘82 you did this.’ We developed a touch plan where each person on my staff was required. We held ourselves accountable to this, to go out and touch, I say touch. We just call it a touch plan, but we'd go out and have a one-on-one communication with every single individual in the organization. So if you have 100 people in your organization, you have 10 management people. Everybody gets 10 people a month. We divided by name. I had 10 people. I'd go out and I talked to them about what changes we're doing. What have they noticed, anything? What ideas do you have? And try to get engagement one at a time, okay, one person at a time. Personal relationships and that touch plan was big, and we also another best practice that I'll share with you, one the touch plan, go out talk to people one on one. Okay, everybody is engaged, one person at a time. It's more efficient just to give a talk to 100 people, but it's less effective.

The other thing we did is made sure that we really doubled down on recognition. Here's another best practice—a thank you letter, a handwritten note to an individual that did a good job. Maybe they solved the problem. Maybe they did an install the pump, and they did it in, 25% less time. They found the root cause to why that pump was failing. They modified the design. You write a letter thanking them for the result, thanking them for their craftsmanship, their creativity, their dedication, and show how it impacts the business. Say, ‘Hey, we came back, made more product, and we'll have 10% less downtime next year related to pumps,’ whatever it is, and mail that to their home. Mail that to their home, looks like a birthday card coming to them. They get family recognition for that. So one, recognize people. Okay, one-on-one. Number two, I'm going backwards here. Develop a touch plan. How are you going to engage people, one at a time?

And then back to this individual. Challenge that one individual to be better. Call them out, because right now they think they're being passive aggressive. Nobody's really noticed them. Call them to the carpet. And as you're doing that, make sure you're open to yourself being the problem, the culture that they have worked in for 20 years. It’s a good chance that's the problem. Okay, so that's how I deal with problem employees with a constrained resource of technical staff right now in your current culture, I 100% agree, but putting your head in the sand and being held hostage to that situation is always the wrong answer.