The Tangibles
I will focus today on some of the tangible impacts that I consider the Forums have already had on workers labor conditions trying to answer to some questions.
Are three meetings in each region per year and a few recently ongoing working groups enough to cause relevant changes in the companies that participate? Do these changes really affect and improve the working conditions of the workers? And what happens in the rest of the sector, is there an impact on it?
To be able to answer these questions we need to think about the types of changes and the types of impact that we are talking about and assess the time needed for each of these changes and impacts to occur, ensuring that these can really be measured, and to be aware of how they spread across the sector. Almost nothing!
Regarding the above questions and linked to my first opinion piece, we have discussed at the Forums several times about the necessary mindset change and leadership style, we have talked about professionalization and the evolution in management systems and we have even carried out workshops to learn how to set objectives, to establish practical indicators and to measure the performance and impact of changes at the companies. There would be a lot to write about all this but as I must be concise in these articles, I leave here below some information about the companies attending the Forums so that you can draw some conclusions yourself.
In 2015, the central theme of one of the events was communication within the company. In 2016 we carried out the forums dedicated to workers motivation. In 2017 and 2018 we delivered during the meetings workshops on motivation for middle managers, multicultural management and creation of induction protocols for workers. At all these meetings, materials and good practices were shared, many ideas were generated, and invited experts taught us and encouraged us to improve in these aspects. Were all those materials, workshops, ideas and knowledge useful to improve something?
Induction Protocols
Below is how the answer to the question about induction protocols evolved from 2017 to 2019:
It was found that the number of companies that do not really have induction protocols has been reduced from 28% to 12% in two years. In addition, the number of companies that are proud of their protocols is almost doubling, increasing from 16% to 28%.
Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the fact of going to the Forums has helped companies to elaborate their protocols since the percentage of those usually attending who stated having poor protocols was almost three times lower than those who attended the forum for the first time and admitted the same.
Motivation
Regarding the motivation style of the supervisors, although the data gathered indicates that only one out of every 4 supervisors receive training for team management, leadership and conflict resolution, the striking fact is that the number of middle managers that were trained properly doubled in two years.
Finally, to measure the impact on workers of these changes experienced, we asked about their level of motivation, and the data was aligned with the efforts made;
In just two years, companies have managed to increase the percentage of workers fairly or sufficiently motivated from 44% to the current 69%. There is room for improvement, but it was also possible to verify in this case that the percentage of demotivated workers in the companies of the usual attendees to the Forums was 7% while for those who came for the first time, the percentage soared to 17% .
The conclusions, as I said, are a matter of the reader, but comments will kindly be accepted.
Happy August.