We have many long term employees who have shown little desire to progress and are happy with the position they hold within the company. This is fine and for the majority they maintain output as per the general ebb and flow.
I am constantly aware that some technicians in this position may become too comfortable in the role, know their day to day tasks inside out and start to lack motivation. With these technicians, I try and talk to them and consult with them to try and involve them in what the company is doing and current improvement ideas which sometimes works but it can be quite time consuming for little gain. We also have the long term employees that have all the ideas and want to shout about them this is good and many conversations I have had could have positive outcomes BUT. They want somebody else to action these. I have lost count of the number of times that a technician has had a good idea to improve day-to-day activities on production cells but will not pursue it themselves. We are not a big team so the resource is short most of the time and no matter how much I try and sell the idea to them helping to implement an improvement would be a bonus for them, that perhaps they could work overtime after their shift to make the improvements I have not yet had one Technician follow through on an original idea and make it happen.
I am currently changing the structure of the manufacturing department and with the opening of new positions it will be interesting to see who will apply for the roles, there seems to be a lot of people with ideas and what changes to make however when the chance to act upon this arises few people will step forward.
