{"id":32294,"date":"2021-02-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/the-problem-isnt-the-employee-its-the-business-system\/"},"modified":"2024-01-04T05:51:11","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T05:51:11","slug":"the-problem-isnt-the-employee-its-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/employee-engagement\/the-problem-isnt-the-employee-its-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem Isn’t the Employee, It’s the Business System"},"content":{"rendered":"\"The<\/a>Here\u2019s a true story shared by a friend and speaking colleague. The short version is that there is a doctor, who is probably a good doctor. But he\u2019s a terrible boss.\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen a patient \u2013 as in his customer \u2013 complains about something, he listens and then goes back to his employees, and in a knee-jerk reaction, he berates and punishes them by taking away their incentives. You can only imagine what that does to the morale of the team. And what happens next? The employees quit, which is understandable.\r\n\r\nThere are plenty of employee surveys that point to the number one reason people quit their jobs. Many people think it\u2019s money, but it is actually due to a lack of appreciation<\/a> from their boss.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s okay for a boss to be hard to work for. But the boss who has high expectations can still show appreciation and support employees. Receiving a complaint from a customer doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s time to turn on your employees. On the contrary, it\u2019s time to sit down and find out why it happened. And here\u2019s the interesting part. It\u2019s usually not the employee\u2019s fault. And it\u2019s not the customer\u2019s fault either. Most often, it\u2019s the process or business system.\r\n

Here\u2019s a simple example.<\/h3>\r\nLet\u2019s make the assumption that the doctor has hired employees who are friendly and competent. The doc is running behind and patients in the reception area are becoming impatient. One of them becomes angry and complains. This doctor doesn\u2019t understand the real reason behind the delays, which are due to overbooking. Instead, he thinks the delays are due to poor management by the front desk personnel. Yet it is the doctor who insists they book \u2013 actually overbook \u2013 patients back-to-back.\r\n\r\nWhen there is a problem, even if it appears to be the employee\u2019s fault, you need to understand why<\/em> it happened. If it\u2019s related to an employee\u2019s attitude, that is a coachable moment. Managed the right way you\u2019ll get the employee back on track or you\u2019ll quickly learn he or she needs to go to a different position \u2013 or another job in another company.\r\n\r\nIf it\u2019s because the employee didn\u2019t know what to do, then it\u2019s simply a function of training<\/a>, which is tied to your business system or process. If employees aren\u2019t properly onboarded and trained for their jobs, you can\u2019t expect them to perform at their best.\r\n\r\nOr maybe it\u2019s just a bad process or system that needs to be fixed. This is something that needs to be discussed, managed and corrected. And here\u2019s the interesting part of all of this. The late Dr. W. Edwards Deming, renowned professor, statistician and author, stated that 94% of problems are the fault of the system. People can\u2019t perform better than the system allows.\r\n\r\nSo, in most cases, it\u2019s not the people. It\u2019s the system or process. If you work together with your people, you can focus your efforts on fixing what\u2019s broken.\r\n\r\n