John S McClenahen retired from IndustryWeek in 2006

The Recession's Empowerment Lesson

March 8, 2013

Data from the IW Best Plants winners demonstrates the value of engaged employees, notes John S. McClenahen, former IndustryWeek editor.

John McClenahen

I am not by education or inclination a narrow numbers person.

I like to look behind data.

That's why some statistics from North America's best manufacturing plants, collected by IndustryWeek as part of its annual Best Plants competition, have my attention. They deserve your attention as well, for these numbers underscore the vital importance of empowering employees.

Among the manufacturing plants judged to be America’s best in the year 2011, more than 70% of production employees, on average, were members of self-directed or empowered work teams. At 94% of these best plants, teams handled training responsibilities; at 88% workers were involved in quality assurance decisions, and likewise at 88% of the plants, team members made safety and compliance decisions. Some 75% participated in production scheduling. More than 80% were involved in communication between teams, and 81% in daily job assignments.

Learn how to lead an empowered, engaged workforce at the IW Best Plants Conference.

Keep in mind the context for these numbers. As impressive as they would be in almost any year, these numbers are more remarkable because they come in the context of economic recession and a still-ragged recovery.

America’s recent Great Recession could have been an excuse for plant managers and company executives to trash teams, impose direct control, and strip employees of any substantive decision making.

At America’s best plants, managers and executives did not do that.

Why? Because for more than two decades, sharing responsibility for production decisions has proven its value—and continues to do so. Whether you label the practice employee empowerment, self-directed work teams, employee engagement, or enlightened management, sharing production decision responsibilities has proven its value at the bottom line and in increased competitiveness.

And, just as important, for more than two decades at America’s best plants—and those aspiring to be the best— shared decision responsibility has dramatically boosted trust between managers and production workers. In plants where responsibilities are shared, there is much less of “they” and “us” and much more of “we.”

Why do I write these words with such conviction? I have been in North America’s best plants. I have asked hard questions of managers and production workers. And I have listened to their unvarnished answers.

To be sure, in America’s best plants, there is exemplary use of metrics. But they are humanized numbers. They are a very important product of people exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, implementing best practices, and learning from mistakes. In the best of America’s plants, managers walk and talk with the people who work with them and who report to them. Virtually everyone talks the talk. And just about everyone continuously puts the talk from the walks into informed actions.

Are you?

This is another of a series of occasional essays by John S. McClenahen, who retired from IndustryWeek in 2006 and remains an interested observer of global manufacturing.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.