Any advice for operators not following steps in a post lockdown/ high turnover world?

I work for a family owned company whose procedures worked when the co was 400 people, but not so much with rapid growth to 1200 people. Our asm line is designed with computerized step processes, but the operators often just pencil-whip the instructions & batch build, causing incomplete or incorrect units built. While some places would just fire them all, in our current climate we cant even hire enough people to be fully staffed, esp. when they can go work at McD's for $15/hr. & not work very hard comparatively.
Any recommendations on how best to get the operators to follow the instructions provided & not "do their own thing"?

DMIquality said:

Any recommendations on how best to get the operators to follow the instructions provided & not "do their own thing"?

Click to expand...

The issue at hand is an outcome of corporate culture which cannot be changed easily. Skilled workers are at a premium now, but one must find ways to only hire people who have pride in their work and when they are perceived as a $/hr figure only, it translates into bad behavior.

A place to start engaging with them is to ask for honest feedback on why they don’t follow the expected process. And DO LISTEN.

Good luck

My Boss (CEO) went to a CEO conference and the general consensus among numerous CEOs trying to get employees back in the office is....they wont. They refuse and some CEOs fired those employees and behavior remained unchanged among the remaining employees. Part of the problem is if you dont offer me Working from Home most of the week your competitors will and Ill take less $ to work there.

What Sydney said is good advice. Listen to why they arent following them and adjust. If you simply begin a labor battle within your own team it wont end well, especially if there are easier jobs to be had elsewhere.

What a nightmare. We need a good old fashioned Depression to instill work ethic back into people.

As for what you can do, I agree ask and listen to those who will give actionable feedback. Second thing, would focus on making the assemblies idiot proof. You'll really need to go down to lowest common denominator -- I don't see the labor pool getting any better any time soon. Automation, where possible, would be on my list as well. Good luck.

We struggle constantly with our Operators not doing things correctly. Though, we did have a break through for our second shift by translating hundreds of Standard Operator Instructions into Spanish. Our second shift is at least 50% Spanish speaking/reading.