Leaders Work Hard and Volunteer for The Tough Assignments

By Dr. Tom DePaoli

See my book on Amazon Leadership by Storytelling for more leadership stories.

 

I was working for a fortune 500 company as an employee relations manager, in human resources, in a large midwestern plant. The company had just undergone a very tough period. It had gone to war with its employees and tried to break the current union and implemented a take it or leave it contract. All this did was infuriate the employees and create a giant slowdown in the plant. Fortunately, the company decided to reverse this approach and work with the union and employees as a partner. One of the goals was to reduce the number of skilled trades in the plant from the current 29 classifications. This created much inefficiency and complicated rules. It literally could take three people to change a lightbulb.

The company hired a consultant in creating partnerships and improving employee relationships for three days. The fee was over $10,000 for the sessions. I sat in on the sessions. I soon realized that I was much more knowledgeable about our union, the culture, the skilled trades and the approach that we needed to implement pay-for-skill than the consultant. I decided to do research on my own and discovered some articles on pay-for-skill and skilled trade consolidation. After a discussion with my boss I volunteered to lead the skilled trades consolidation and implement a pay-for skill compensation system. This was a tough and contentious project. I was to be the first in the company to lead the implementation of the compensation system.

Despite the company’s attempts to destroy the union, the union president and the union committee still trusted me, and considered me fair and open to compromise. I decided to become an expert on pay-for- skill compensation and started researching the concept. I had always considered getting a PhD, and now I investigated options for a PhD, and made a dissertation proposal to a university. I would research organizations that already had similar pay-for-skills systems and study the factors that made them successful. They accepted the proposal. My logic was since I had to do the research anyway for my work-life, why not jointly take an academic approach to pay-for-skill. I received help from the local university in my research and the use of a super-computer to analyze my data. After working long and hard with the union, we jointly reduced the skilled trade classifications from 29 to 5. Crafts persons could also become multi-skilled and have multiple skills such as welder pipe-fitter and carpenter combined! The more skills, the higher pay they received. Crafts persons were not pressured to have multiple skills, but if they did not, their pay would not be as much as a crafts person with multiple skills.

Their skills training was subsidized by the company and we established an on-site tech-school for them to gain the skills. We also extended the opportunity for skills training to production workers and management.

 

I finished the PhD in four years and published the results of my data. The overall knowledge and understanding of the workforce improved dramatically. Pay-for-skill is a long-term investment in employees that is exceptionally successful. The project gave me a reputation for volunteering for tough assignments. Leaders work hard and volunteer for the tough assignments.

 

Dr. Tom DePaoli, (Dr. Tom) is currently an independent management consultant, the Principal of Apollo Solutions, which does general business consulting in the human resources, supply chain and lean six sigma areas. His organization was self-founded in 1995. He retired as a Captain from the Navy Reserve. In other civilian careers, he was a supply chain and human resources executive with corporate purchasing turnaround experience and lean six sigma deployments. He has worked for over ten major companies and consulted for over fifty organizations throughout his career. Some of his consulting projects include: information systems projects, re-engineering organizations, transformation, e-procurement, e-commerce, change management, global sourcing and negotiating. His industry experience is in the chemical, paper, pharmaceutical, IT, automotive, government, consumer, equipment, services and consulting industries. He has been published extensively in journals, magazines and books. He is the author of eleven books all available on Amazon.  He has instructed at six education facilities in numerous roles. He is active in supporting the YMCA, Wounded Warrior, and the prevention of the bullying of children.

https://www.amazon.com/author/tomdepaoli    = Dr. Tom’s Amazon author’s page

http://www.apollosolutions.us  = website of Apollo Solutions his business

drtombooks.com  = more information on Dr. Tom’s books

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-thomas-depaoli/0/736/6b3/  = LinkedIn home page

 

 

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