UNTRAINING™ EXAMPLES & APPLICATIONS

Issues

• Return to Work after COVID-19
• Not all employees able to return after pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Medical Supplies Distributor was deemed essential and maintained operations, with 33 of its normal 40 plant employees working 10-hour shifts while office staff worked from home. As the firm welcomed all employees back to its facility –

• These 11 employees unable to return represent nearly 20% of the 63-employee firm
• Management determined they wanted to find a solution for these 11 employees

Our 2-Week Solution

One of our coaches embedded with the client for 2 weeks. She spent half of each day with the Operations Warehouse group, and the other half in the Office. We readily saw problems result because of the 11 key employees missing, like –

• Customer calls not returned timely
• Many orders returned, shipped to the wrong customer
• Incomplete orders shipped
• Many irate calls to the Customer Service line
• Invoicing clerk had incomplete information about which customers to invoice and for what

We saw things in disarray, and employees said over and over, “there’s only 1 person who knows how to do this, none of us have a clue,” referring to 1 of the 11 employees missing. Things got worse by the day.

Our coach saw how critical the 11 missing employees were to the proper functioning of the whole company. She organized a virtual meeting with them to hear what they needed to be able to return. The need for all 11 was the same! They couldn’t return to work after the pandemic because they needed child care – a new issue in the pandemic with schools and day care closed.

Raising this with the company owner, he figured there must be a child care facility in the area which could accept kids ages 3-12. Discovering none existed, he said he’d investigate more over the weekend.

During the second week, our coach organized daily 30-minute meetings with each of the 7 departments to help the groups communicate and get on the same page, during which she provided coaching on –

• Time management, to help prioritize the work
• Active listening, to help everyone listen better to what other employees were asking
• Conflict intervention & resolution, as finger-pointing got ugly
• Bad behaviors, helping turn “naysayers” into productive helpers
• Language of Accountability, helping clarify the Who, When and What of assignments
• Clear Communications, confirming people heard the same thing

The coaching reduced finger-pointing, lowered tempers, built teamwork and work was getting done.

Back on the child care, the Growth GPS Research team surveyed other companies in the same industrial park and found many were missing employees due to child care. Our coach organized a lunch with leaders from 7 companies. They agreed to co-fund a Child Care center in a large unused room at one of the companies. Parents could return to work, drop kids off just down the street from where they worked, and be close-by should they be needed. It was a win-win.

Results

All 11 employees at our client returned to work the same week the new Child Care center opened. They were welcomed back and things returned to normal by the end of the week. By the middle of the next week, daily Operations metrics were back on track to pre-pandemic levels.