Factory workers: A Simple Formula for Employee Feedback
Happy Factory Workers?
As more companies turn to pulse surveys to check in on their people morale, some workers are left behind by apps and computer-based surveys:
How can you collect employee feedback to get happier factory workers?
Many factory workers and other blue-collar employees don’t have access to computers to fill in surveys or give continuous feedback on how engaged they feel at work.
And during COVID, our data show that employee engagement is dropping, worldwide.
Asking staff to install a mood app on their personal phone might work for those reasonably happy at work.
Others would give the are-you-insane? look (I’m visualizing how some colleagues at my previous workplaces would have reacted. It wouldn’t have been pretty 
) .
Employee Feedback – When factory workers don’t have computers or phones
There are many nice ways to gather employee feedback manually on manufacturing sites.
Some hang ideas boards where coworkers bring forward suggestions.
Next, they publicly vote on which should get priority, in order to improve employee morale.
The next step would be to measure if the implemented actions are having the desired effect on the factory working conditions.
Are you improving the maintenance schedule for the machinery?
Production line updates? Shift changes for a new product?
Would morale increase at your company after these actions?
Using wall-mounted devices, shop floor workers at manufacturing companies like Unilever and BASF give their opinion in 2 seconds as the shift is finished.
The factory workers answer the question ”How was your day?” by either hitting the green or red button as they finish their shift.
- Related: Best Gifts for Shift Workers
An opportunity to open up a dialogue
To achieve a baseline of how the factory workers feel, the question always remains the same.
The Employee Mood KPI means you know what results to expect on a normal day (“67% press green in the production area”).
Now try to move the needle and achieve some more green!
The Mood KPI is a neutral number to jump-start conversations with your factory labourers.
We need to get better at listening to each other at work.
Let’s learn from those who truly know what happens on the job!
What do your workers think of their job? What can be improved in production? On the line?
As you listen to your employees, reach conclusions, and start taking action, you can act fast and continuously to issues brought up by your employees.
In other words, fix what makes your factory workers press red and keep doing what makes them press green.
A lot of red? Your business is losing money
The reasons behind the red are what makes production levels lower than necessary at your manufacturing plants.
It’s what keeps safety incidents unnecessary high, and in the long run: what will make your most valued factory staff leave your company for another.
Too much red has a negative effect on your bottom line.
So, you won’t be able to fix ALL the red reasons of course.
But people tell us even just having these conversations will have a positive impact on your shop floor workers’ happiness.
Or as the Factory Manager at Unilever puts it:
“We want to have an open conversation about how we can make everyone feel better about entering and exiting our workplace”.
Predictor of business performance
The Mood KPI baseline is used as a predictor of business performance.
Our users crosscheck it with other KPI’s in their factories like daily productivity, safety incidents, sales, manufacturing levels, etc.
Companies can automatically pinpoint that “last Tuesday at the morning shift there was a problem in the factory”, so they can act on the machinery equipment that brought the Mood KPI down.
Something that otherwise perhaps wouldn’t have been escalated.
Or gotten lower priority.
How can you get the truth into workplace surveys?
And start the conversation with the employees of your factory in a neutral way?
An open communication climate at factories is key:
“We’re simply all better at communicating now,” says the Site Manager at BASF, a year into the company using the Celpax device to get employee feedback in their factory in Belgium.
Interested in our simple way to get Employee Feedback in factories?
Hej! I’m Rebecca. Co-owner at Celpax, a for-profit company where we believe that a great workplace is everyone’s job. I might appear in our chat, or say aloha on Twitter and we’ll talk about happy factory workers?
