Workshop A - Session 3

Title: Employability and Competitiveness - Working with SMEs Chair: Tom Cannon, Management Charter Initiative, UK Alan Ward, LGG Charlesworth, UK

Alan Ward is the Director of Quality and Business Development for a company that has in the jargon of today 'walked the talk'. LGG Charlesworth have transformed themselves by implementing in the company a true lifelong learning strategy.

My own role within my organisation is Director of Quality and Business Development not Director of Training or Personnel. My organisation employs 170 people and we design and manufacture components in engineering plastics and electronics. We deal with a diverse range of markets ranging from aerospace and defence through to consumer products. Something like 55% of our products are either directly or indirectly exported world-wide.

In the 1980s, we focused particularly on technologies, processes, systems - all to underpin our financial and operational policies. In the '90s, we were forced - by quality management systems and the procurement criteria of our customers - to recognise the importance of our people.

Why should quality management systems focus our attention on people? After practically applying standards and continually reviewing the effectiveness of those standards, eventually you can eliminate the systematic errors. The analysis of failures then began to highlight problems with ambiguities and perceptions. We recognised that the quality of our products was essentially dependent on the subjective skills of our people. So we needed to enhance their skills and promote their awareness if we were to remain competitive.

At the same time that we recognised this, things like high quality, responsive delivery, effective prices - things that we thought gave us a competitive edge - were now assumed to be present. Customers would not set foot on our premises unless we could satisfy those three criteria. So, in order to sustain our existing business and gain new business, our customers were demanding much more. They were demanding a total flexibility in our approach, and at every level that they interacted with, whether it was the chief executive, the van driver or the receptionist, they wanted a swift and informed response.

We classed this as service. It was only the recognition of people as our most important resource, that would allow us to underpin the dedication to service that our customers were demanding. In the early '90s we adopted mechanisms to assess the perceptions of our people to tap into their potential and to release it and we have seen in doing so substantial business benefits.

Key mechanism

What was the key mechanism that we used in 1990? It was a project that was based on three separate but supportive lines:

• a staff management audit where we were looking at tapping into the perceived management style and culture within the organisation to ensure that our people would be receptive to change
• a continuous and progressive education liaison where we were looking at working in partnerships with the experts in learning, the educationalists, to see how we could create an effective learning culture
• and vocational qualifications, our ability to look at what our workforce, including managers, was doing and the competencies involved, to ensure that we could effectively give people credit and recognition for the skills that they have.

In doing this, we substantially reduced things like lead times. We were able to sustain growth within my organisation without initially employing more people. We were able to push down responsibility and accountability, allowing our managers to have more vision. And this is a continuous process.

In conclusion, I would like to share with you my organisation's philosophy, which is relatively straight forward and, I believe, no different to most of the small to medium enterprises that are out there, particularly those that are privately owned. We have to satisfy our shareholders. In order to satisfy our shareholders, we have to satisfy our customers. The only way that we can continually and effectively satisfy our customers is if our people join with us and commit to our business goals and objectives. They in turn need the right information, the right technology and the continual training and development at every level to use them.

In looking back through the last 15 years, we focused initially on key financial and operational issues, but in the 1990s we recognise, perhaps belatedly, that it is people who count at every level.

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