Business coaches need to get managements firmly on-side in the battle for survival
Business Coaching founder John Harney says 'we're not advisers, we actually go in there and do the work'
KEEPING workers smiling might seem like a warm and fuzzy fad best cast onto the post Celtic Tiger scrap-heap, but business guru John Harney insists the happy worker remains a vital part of Irish businesses even in these changed economic times.
After decades of going into companies and turning their processes inside out to deliver efficiencies, Harney has had a hand in his fair share of job cuts and the Business Coaching founder seems an unlikely member of the warm and fuzzy brigade.
Productive
"Happy workers are more productive workers, it's as simple as that," he explains, confirming group hugs after team meetings aren't what he has in mind when he talks about improving the quality of people's working lives.
Harney's modus operandi is to go into a client business for an "assessment" period of anything between three weeks and three months, to work out how productivity can be boosted, often by as much as 20pc.
The assessment process involves observing the day-to-day workings of the business, and its staff, with everyone from SME's to mega corporates like Bank of Ireland featuring on Harney's client list.
"After the assessment, we can go back to someone and say something like, 'we can improve productivity by 10pc, this is how we're going to do it," says Harney. "We're not advisers, we actually go in there and do the work."
It's at the "doing the work" stage where the worker happiness concept plays a part.
Having worked across scores of industries in 15 countries before setting up Business Coaching in 2000, Harney has discovered something he likes to call "the theory of interruptions".
"People can waste 10, 20pc of their day because they take phone calls and are answering questions they shouldn't be asked, because if the system was working properly the other person could find the answer," he says, talking with a precision that betrays his first calling as a civil engineer.
"A question may only engage you for a minute or two, but research shows it can then take three minutes to get back to what you're doing. If you're doing that ten times a day you've lost nearly an hour, nearly 15pc of your day."
Harney's solution is to streamline systems so workers have all the tools they need to do their job without interruption. Supervisors are used to ensure and monitor productivity among lower level staff while timesheets are used by higher grades.
"It's pro-worker, because his life becomes easier, it takes away the frustration of a system that doesn't work and they become happier," he says. "You get very little resistance from workers because they want to do their job well."
Workers doing their jobs well means that "one out of two times", Harney concludes that companies "need less hours", a finding that often leads to job cuts. "It makes you less popular with the 10 guys out of the 100 that are going," he admits, "but you'd be very popular with the 90 who stay."
As well as driving work rates, Business Coaching also advises on ways to more productively direct a workforce that's already going at it flat-out.
"We're working with one firm now and their sales force is spending 80pc of its time talking to existing customers," Harney says. "Every company in the land is looking for new suppliers, and every sales force in the country should be on the phone making contacts with companies their firm has never dealt with before.
"That's the first thing we'll be changing in there."
While the bulk of the savings discovered by Harney tend to involve rank and file staff, the Corkman says managerial buy-in is what makes or breaks companies' transformations.
"Going into this, we make it very clear that managers have to change their behaviours too," he says. "They have to instal new systems, they have to review people's progress, they have to commit to a new way of working.
"Often when there are problems they're due to a lack of initiative at management level and a lack of follow-up. They can be the hardest people to change."
Carnage
Given the carnage that's swept across the country's businesses in recent months, a resistance to change is a luxury companies are unlikely to be able to indulge in these days.
"We expect it to get very busy by the autumn," he says of the changing environment.
As for companies' continued enthusiasm for paying for the services of Harney and his colleagues rather than just getting in there and making changes themselves, Harney seems unconcerned.
"Companies can do this kind of work themselves but they won't get the same results and it will take them a lot longer," he says. "If we can save a client €1m a year and only charge him a quarter of that, of course he's going to want that."
- Laura Noonan
