Improve Your In-plant

In an article in the January issue of IPG, columnist Wes Friesen, manager of Billing, Credit & Special Attention Operations for Portland General Electric, offers seven suggestions to help in-plant managers improve morale, motivation and productivity.

1. Build Credibility. Constantly enhance the reputation of your operation to improve the probability of acquiring the resources you need.
2. Communicate. Employees want to know how the team and the organization are doing, and the person they most trust for this information is their immediate supervisor.
3. Give Your People Hope. Napoleon said that “Great leaders are dealers in hope.”
4. Give out verbal, written and even physical “hugs” to our team members to build camaraderie and ease a bit of the pain that people are feeling.
5. Manage Your Costs. One key is to invite your employees into the process and listen to their ideas.
6. Consider Insourcing or Outsourcing. If you have a well managed operation and have available capacity, bringing in external work can leverage your assets and provide a means to subsidize your costs.
7. Build Morale, Motivation and Productivity through Recognition. Sincere, regular and positive recognition and rewarding of desired behaviors is common sense, but not common practice.