We were running, once again, 5 hours after the deadline. \u00a0I’d already been at work for twelve hours and people were leaving before the work was finished. \u00a0I remember feeling miserable. I can’t remember if it was despair, depression or fatigue. \u00a0I think despair was probably the best explanation. \u00a0I’d been doing this for over a month and the 80+ hours week was killing me. \u00a0I didn’t know if was going to be able to survive.<\/p>\n
In October of 1996 I was asked by my company to take over a QC process in the Philadelphia office. \u00a0We were doing work for a large multi-national company. \u00a0There were 22 vendors doing this same work. \u00a0My company had 8 offices and we were trying to get more of this work from the multi-national. \u00a0Missing deadlines and poor quality was not helping our cause. \u00a0We were having similar problems in all of of offices and the stress was causing significant turn-over in the offices with both managers and employees. \u00a0We had been working on this process for over a year and the situation wasn’t getting any better.<\/p>\n
My knee jerk reaction was hire more people. \u00a0We already had 25 people and 25 computers. I requested more computers and started running an add in the paper. \u00a0People seemed to be quitting at the same pace I was hiring. \u00a0Down deep I knew was the solution was \u00a0and I started to put a plan in place<\/p>\n
Here was the root of the problem.; We were in a production environment and we needed to motivate speed and quality. \u00a0However, we were motivating them to be slow and not care about quality. \u00a0 If you pay people hourly, most people are motivated to go slow and get the most hours possible. \u00a0If they make mistakes and have to do it again, that just means more time on the clock. \u00a0I had worked in a production environment where I was paid by the amount of items I produced. \u00a0I had made a lot of money because I learned how to be very productive. \u00a0I knew the answer was putting that motivation in place. \u00a0 I knew a system like that would help us accomplish the goal; fast and quality.<\/p>\n
I created a plan and began to move forward. I got the necessary \u00a0buy-in from the boss, even though he wasn’t comfortable with it. \u00a0I was way too desperate to care about comfort. \u00a0I worked out a rate for the work. \u00a0 My boss suggested twice what my rate was.<\/p>\n
On December 1st I put my plan into action. \u00a0I was young and didn’t really know how to present this to the employees, most freaked out. \u00a0There were three women that quit the first day. \u00a0 \u00a0I continued to hire people. \u00a0 The people were paid $8 an hour before I put my system in place.<\/p>\n
Here were the results it took about 3 months to take effect. \u00a0The staff reduced from 25 to 12. \u00a0I did not fire or lay anyone off. \u00a0They either quit or moved to a new area. \u00a0The average wage improved to 12$ an hour, one innovative fellow was making over 20$ an hour. \u00a0We were beating the deadline by 2 hours everyday. \u00a0The most amazing thing for me was that my system reduced payroll from $32,000 to $16,000 per month. \u00a0WOW!<\/p>\n
Now for Marriage<\/p>\n
You might ask what does this have to do with marriage, well my marriage was seriously strained working on those hours. \u00a0With the reduced work hours my marriage was much better. \u00a0 Because of this success, the company nearly doubled my pay. \u00a0Also relieving some of the stress on my marriage.<\/p>\n
Surprising results<\/p>\n
I thought that type of result was a fluke. \u00a0However, I continued to work for the company for 8 more years. \u00a0I implemented my strategy many times, and watched others implement similar strategies. \u00a0Surprisingly, with similar results. \u00a0 After leaving the company I started studying motivation strategies at companies. \u00a0I was surprised to see similar results across many different industries. Harvard Study<\/a>,Fredrick Taylor<\/a>.<\/p>\n