Your Approachability Policy
approachability culture employee engagement employee recgonition follow-up management manufacturing supervisor leadership open-door policy problem solving problems progress
Almost every company has an open-door policy. In theory, this policy allows employees to access company managers in order to openly discuss all and any workplace topics. Topics are deemed important by the company's employees.
An open-door policy is foundational to employee engagement and empowerment. It demonstrates good teamwork. It tears down the wall between managers and workers by creating a culture that says, “we’re all in this together” or “your problem is my problem”. The idea is that if a worker has a problem, management can be informed and hence participate together with the employee in solving that problem.
The fact that this policy is in affect in almost every US company, demonstrates how far we’ve come from the days of the industrial revolution and theory-x managers. As a long-time manager, I’ve seen how effective an open-door policy can be. As a manufacturing manager, I know that operators have firsthand knowledge of operational problems and as a manager accountable for plant results, knowing the operational problems is an important first step in correcting the plant issues.
An effective open-door policy can be the cornerstone of problem-solving, culture, engagement, teamwork, continuous improvement and morale.
Having an open-door policy is only the beginning of the story though. Like any policy, it needs to be enforced. Wait, what? Open-door policy enforcement? Well, whenever a policy is created, it is useless without enforcement. Regarding your open-door policy, every individual manager needs to adopt it and they do this by being approachable and committing to follow-up. When you have an open-door policy, Managers need to follow-up on every issue that employees present to them. Or it is like not having a policy at all.
First, an open-door policy is worthless if managers are perceived as being unapproachable. I mean it is one thing to publish an open-door policy, but if the managers’ body language, demeanor and unfriendliness say, “the door is closed!”, then employees aren’t going to engage in worker-manager conversation about workplace issues. When a manager has a closed-door demeanor, they are slamming the door closed on progress too.
Second, managers need to take notes during these worker-manager conversations too. Then managers need to develop action plans to correct the discussed issues. And lastly, they need to commit to following-up with the employees after their meetings. Although managers can’t correct, improve or change every situation, it is critical that managers let the employee know what they can do and what they can’t do and explain why. When managers fail to follow-up with employees, then employees see the open-door policy as ineffective and worthless, and they won’t use it as a vehicle to solve workplace problems.
An open-door policy is only effective when managers are approachable and commit to follow-up. Open the door to employees and open the door to progress!
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