Workplace improvement

According to our Bridging-the-Dual-Gap Model, a core element of successful change is a comprehensive change approach. Only by actively and continuously involving executives (top down) and employees (bottom up) in improving their workplaces and functions can learning experiences and willingness to change be induced to facilitate successful realisation of the next steps and ultimately of the whole change process.

Years of experience have taught us that most change processes imposed from top down either fail or achieve only a small fraction of their goals. Reasons are:

• a pure top down approach neglects integrating employees and, in so doing, provokes resistance instead of desired willingness to support change;
• management does not master the choreography of change processes or does so only to a limited extent;
• management and employee sensitivity to disruptions, waste, mistakes etc. and their consequences is not adequately developed 

In involving employees, they experience that they are no longer left alone with their problems and worries. To the contrary, they are taken seriously and are provided an opportunity to contribute their ideas to finding solutions. Since cooperation plays a key role in the way we approach the change process, intensive communication between employees and management takes place. Accordingly, solutions for the problems identified are jointly developed and promptly implemented.

The individual methods and concepts for improving the workplace and mobilising employees offer a high degree of flexibility in terms of range, content and time horizon of change.

• Interactive information meetings for large groups of 50 up to 5000 employees
• Employee workshops in small groups of 5 up to 15 participants
• Interviews of individuals or small groups
• Integrative task analysis and workplace improvement
• Employee programmes focused on specified areas of action (e.g., conflict resolution, cost reduction)
• Internal multipliers/change agents to mobilise and motivate employees
• Introduction of regular ongoing communication, a culture of conferring with one another and of facilitated team meetings
• Ongoing improvement programmes (e.g., CIP, idea management, SOS, TPM)