New Ideas    May Save Your Business

How does an old fashioned, out-dated manufacturer save itself from the junk heap? If your business or organization is struggling — or if you simply want to do even better — consider these actions taken by an employer that had to change to survive:

1st - The employer cleaned house. Example: The workforce was cut from 1,250 to 600 employees. In addition, everyone took a 10 to 35 percent wage or salary cut.

Though the workforce was pared down, productivity shot up. By the end of the first year, the firm's productivity doubled!

2nd - The firm moved to 12-hour work shifts. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Employees work four days one week, three days the next. The schedule requires that laborers work every other weekend. But in each 30-day cycle, every worker has seven consecutive days off.

How does the 12-hour shift make for a sharp boost in productivity? Time-consuming shift changes are cut from three to two per day.

And workers are big advocates of the 12-hour work shift. One advantage is that longer shifts cut down on commute time.

Example: Instead of traveling to and from work 20 days a month, a worker commutes only 14 days out of the month.

Younger workers like 12-hour shifts. They get to spend more time with their families. And older workers appreciate the change too because they have more time to shop, run errands, and pursue hobbies.

3rd - To boost productivity, the firm introduced generous wage incentives. In short, a worker was rewarded with an incentive of about 40 to 60 percent of his base pay.

Here's how it worked. The firm identified weekly goals for individual production units. Workers in a unit receive bonuses based on a dollar value produced over 50 percent of the production unit's targeted goal.

But there are tough rules to qualify for incentive pay.

1. If an employee is 30 minutes late for work one day, he cannot receive incentive pay for the day.
2. If a worker doesn't work a day during the week, she can't receive incentive pay for the full week. (The only excuse allowed is a death in the family.)

Incentive pay even cuts down on work injuries. Workers know they lose incentive pay if they're home recovering from an injury...even an on-the-job injury.