Background
Like many good employers, those managing Factory Five believe that communication between their employees and the management team is critical for success. They know that employee engagement is correlated with employee productivity and overall company performance. That is why they set up “input boxes” located in their facility’s restrooms, as well as a hotline to call, and encouraged employees to communicate directly with their department’s manager if they had questions or grievances. But although Factory Five had taken these measures, managers only collected around 60 questions and grievances through their input boxes and 21 from their hotline in the span of a year. This seemed like a small number for a factory with a workforce of over 16,000. Labor Solutions was called upon to help improve communication.
Outcome
When we came in to help Factory Five, we understood the challenges the company faced collecting, understanding, and responding to employee grievances and questions. After learning of its benefits, Factory Five decided to implement communication technology used in the WOVO platform. This platform ensures anonymity and provides a more convenient method of communication between employees and management through text messages.
Upon implementation, Factory Five saw an extreme boost in employees’ willingness to communicate. They received a total of 1417 messages, 344 of which were labeled as grievances, in only the first quarter. This is equivalent to almost a 7,000% annual increase in communication compared with the previous results. Managers said that their employees were more engaged, and less hesitant to provide feedback because their messages were anonymous. Employers also took advantage of the broadcasting feature that enabled them to reach their workforce with announcements through text messages. Previously, they had broadcasted messages using flyers or audio announcements.
Not only was communication streamlined, but grievance and question management as well. We calculated that Factory Five took an average of 5 days to close a single case, a huge improvement from their monthly basis resolution.
On average, we see a 90% reduction in response time to workers’ questions and complaints. Through the platform’s case management feature, Factory Five was also able to measure the frequency of certain question and grievance case types, allowing managers to broadcast information to reduce the need for employees to ask additional questions. This increase in efficiency of communication enabled them to create a stronger work culture and improve engagement.