The amount of knowledge a worker receives about their own work performance. External feedback from management includes positive feedback when a job is well done, as well as constructive criticism when improvement is needed. Internal feedback results from work that is designed in a way that an employee is capable of seeing the impact of their efforts on the goals of an organization. 

 

Improvement Action: Give individuals responsibility for inspection and quality of own work

Sources:

P.G. Gyllenhammar, People at Work, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1977

  • GWT Analyst Summary of Volvo Torslanda: At Volvo's Torslanda plant, sanding and polishing bodies was an unpleasant task. Any defects in the process were sent to an elite team for rework by a team of inspectors. While improving the work for the workers, the responsibility was given to the sanders and polishers of inspecting their own work. The workers were trained as inspectors as well, and with improved jobs the work became more rewarding. The former inspectors were no longer needed and defects leaving the body shop decreased. Turnover in the department was cut in half.
  • Excerpt from text: “The grinding lines there [in the paint shop], where bodies are polished after their base-coat painting, used to have operators who went over the entire surface with water-cooled sanding machines - an unpleasant job at best. Four controllers inspected the sanding and then sent any defects on to the elite adjustment polishers. The department had the familiar problems of absenteeism and turnover. A working group including supervisors and workers was formed to see how they could made jobs on the sanding lines more interesting and improve the quality. The group surveyed all workers, and ultimately suggested that the people who did the sanding should inspect their own work and decide whether supplementary polishing was needed. This, of course, meant that the polishers had to learn more about the entire painting process and how their quality was judged. After a long training course and on-the-job training, they were able to take over the inspection tasks; the polishers were the first to do their own inspection, but later the machine sanders followed the same pattern. By this time, all the workers could switch between overall sanding and spot polishing, and the group began to share responsibility for the quality of the bodies leaving the polishing line. The extra costs of training were quickly recovered; the four inspection jobs were abolished, and the number of defects leaving the shop dropped from an average 3.2 percent to only 2.5 percent. Absenteeism dropped to levels that were about the same as those in the rest of the paint operations, but personnel turnover was cut in half, while it remained about the same elsewhere.” p93
  • GWT Analyst Summary of Volvo Kalmar: At Volvo's Kalmar plant, the myriad inspection stations were replaced with a system in which each team conducts its own inspections. Computer systems track which problems are persistent and in need of intervention. The tracking also alerts teams to when their work is especially defect-free. The result is a workforce that builds quality in, rather than relying on separate quality inspections at the end of the line when feedback becomes difficult.
  • Excerpt from text: To gain a sense of identification with the work, teams must also take responsibility for their work. Therefore, the myriad inspection stations that characterize most factories have been broken down at Kalmar. Instead, each team conducts its own inspection. After about three work stations, there is a special inspection station which has test equipment and people with special training. The computer based system for quality information takes reports from these stations and flashes results onto the TV screens of terminals at each group station if there are any persistent or recurring problems. The computer also stores and feeds back information about how that group solved similar problems before. Perhaps even more important than the fault indicator is the fact that the computer informs the teams when their work has been particularly problem-free. The computer is not monitoring their work, but helping them to do it better.” p65-66

Shimuzu, K (1994). Humanization of the production system and work at Toyota Motor Co and Toyota Motor Kyushu. In A. Sandberg (Ed.), Enriching Production: Perspectives on Volvo’s Uddevalla Plant as an Alternative to Lean Production (pp. 199-213). Brookfield, VT: Ashgate.

  • GWT Analyst Summary: The Toyota Production System is known for building quality into every step of an operation, rather than relying on a quality control inspection somewhere down the line, disconnected from the worker on whom the quality depends. Working groups at Toyota are responsible for a mini-line, each of which has a quality control post so that the group can assure the quality of their work before passing it on. This prevents defective work from moving, and also gives the workers direct feedback as the quality of their work.

Vanderburg, David, “The Story of Semco: The Company That Humanized Work”, Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 24, No. 5, October 2004, pp. 430-434

  • GWT Analyst Summary: At Semco's factories, worker groups were given ever increasing autonomy for how they performed their work. The workers learned more problem solving skills and their work was enriched with more responsibility. Workers took greater pride in their work and tracked their quality and productivity levels. Eventually, the quality control department was no longer needed.
  • Excerpt from text: “Workers began to take an increasingly important role in the plant, where they were at the heart of many decision-making processes. By taking the monotony out of their workday, and increasing their ability to make decisions, it was found that workers were much more effective in their job as problems with quality control decreased. Workers took up the initiative to set up scoreboards in the manufacturing plants so that they could keep track of monthly goals they had set versus production, which allowed them to control the demand aspect of their job. This had the effect of changing the nature of demand associated with most jobs at Semco, where it increased problem-solving demand. The healthier kind of control allows for increased learning and growth potential, thus benefiting Semco and its workers. They began to take pride in their work… Quality control was at never-before-seen levels, and soon the quality control department was no longer needed at all. It was now up to the workers to monitor quality control themselves.” p432-433

 

Improvement Action: Provide timely user feedback to teams

Source:

J.R. Hackman and G. R. Oldham, Work Redesign, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1980

  • GWT Analyst Summary: In the book Work Redesign, Hackman and Oldham suggest that feedback is crucial to high performance for workers. Relying on supervisor-provided feedback may not be as effective as designing a job so that the worker receives feedback from doing the job itself. Ways to design feedback into a job include establishing a direct connection with a downstream process. Quality control should be placed as near the worker, or if possible, performed by the worker. In addition to designing feedback into workflow, summaries over time should be provided to the worker to track long term trends. 
  • In virtually all jobs there are ways to open channels of feedback to help employees learn how they are performing and whether their performance is improving or deteriorating over time. While information about performance effectiveness can be obtained in many ways, including appraisals from the supervisor, it generally is better for worker to learn about their performance directly from doing the job itself. ”Job-provided feedback usually is more immediate and private than supervisor-supplied feedback, and it increases the worker’s feelings of personal control over his or her work in the bargain. Moreover, it avoids many of the potentially disruptive interpersonal problems that can develop when the only way a worker has to find out how he or she is doing is through direct messages or subtle cues from the boss. Exactly what should be done to open channels for job-provided feedback will vary from job to job and organization to organization. Yet in many cases the changes involve simply removing existing blocks that isolate the worker from naturally occurring data about performance rather than generating entirely new feedback mechanisms.” For example: 1. Establishing direct relationships with clients (See work dimension Value, Opportunity to know and interact with users) 2. Placing quality control close to the workers (perhaps even in their hands) 3. Providing summaries of performance records directly to workers.

 

Improvement Action: Give employees feedback about their performance, specifically how it relates to company goals

Source:

P.G. Gyllenhammar, People at Work, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1977

  • GWT Analyst Summary: In the book People at Work, Pehr Gyllenhammar describes how they inform employees about how their work affects the company: “One factor which seems to help create a sense of membership in the smaller units we are trying to create within Torslanda is the information various departments give employees about their own output related to company-wide results. Overall, Torslanda turns out a competent house journal, in three languages. At the end of the year the treasurer and I make a slide film for employees explaining the financial performance. This is also published in a clear and jargon-free form in the house journal.”
  • Excerpt from text: “One factor which seems to help create a sense of membership in the smaller units we are trying to create within Torslanda is the information various departments give employees about their own output related to company-wide results. Overall, Torslanda turns out a competent house journal, in three languages. At the end of the year the treasurer and I make a slide film for employees explaining the financial performance. This is also published in a clear and jargon-free form in the house journal.”