“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” Benjamin Franklin
By Dana Slagle – All businesses face two major challenges to success. First, they must constantly detect inefficiencies and apply corrective action to stay competitive. Second, they must find a way to hold team members accountable for completing these corrective measures to ensure improvements are made. When you take into account all the moving pieces of a company — regulation, compliance, risk management, employee satisfaction and customer experience — the task of improving a business (especially a franchise with multiple locations) seems like a daunting, if not impossible, task.
Thankfully, there are corrective action systems available that help address the challenge. These systems come into play after a manager has completed an evaluation of his or her store and is ready to put corrective measures into play. Company executives should consider the following four key characteristics of an effective corrective action system:
- Efficiency
- Accountability
- Transparency
- Legal Protection
Imagine that a store manager has just completed a store evaluation. As we analyze what happens next, let’s look at how these first two values come into play with an effective corrective action system.
1 – Efficiency
An efficient evaluation system gets a store to the corrective action stage as quickly as possible. Oftentimes when an evaluation is complete, a manager has to then return to his or her office, fire up a laptop, input each item of data individually into a spreadsheet, and then send it to the next person on the corporate food chain.
Let’s stop here for a moment. We’re already seeing a major issue in this process. It’s taking forever for this store to get to the corrective action stage. The manager is spending too much time by having to first complete the evaluation, enter the information, and then send it to the regional manager. The longer it takes to complete, upload and submit evaluations, the longer it will be before stores can address the issues with corrective actions.
Solutions: By taking the pen, paper and spreadsheet out of the equation entirely and replacing them with mobile evaluation software that can be used onsite on any smartphone or tablet, you can reduce wasted time, increase productivity, and improve employee satisfaction. This streamlines the evaluation process. Having a system that will automatically send these evaluations to the correct person also helps make the system more efficient and gets stores to the corrective action stage more quickly.
Let’s continue with our scenario.
2 – Accountability
After the store manager sends the report via email to the regional manager, a few things can happen. First, the regional manager might not even read it. Second, the manager may read it, but not really know the corrective action to prescribe. Third, the manager may read it and respond to the email with the appropriate corrective action. This is only effective if the company has a system in place to ensure the store manager then completes the corrective action.
The problem with this part of the evaluation process is the lack of accountability. When evaluations are stuck in an endless cycle of emails and spreadsheets with no centralized hub of information, there is no realistic way for upper management to track the corrective action. This means things could fall through the cracks.
Solutions: All companies need a system that makes each person along the evaluation process accountable. Such a system would give store managers a certain amount of days to complete evaluations and auto notifications would remind them if they had surpassed their time. The system would also remind regional manager to review evaluations, determine corrective actions, and follow up with the stores making those corrections. Finally, all of this information should automatically be transmitted to corporate headquarters, where company leadership can see trends in real time.
In summary, an effective corrective action system will provide stores with a user friendly tool to manage their corrective action workflow process. I’ll cover the next two characteristics of an effective corrective action system — transparency and legal protection — in my next blog post.
Dana Slagle is a Regional Vice President Sales at Steton, partnering with some of the most innovative brands in the retail and hospitality industries. She’s an expert in mobile audit, data analytics, social responsibility, business intelligence, compliance, corrective action and operational excellence. Leaders like Sears, Limited Brands, Marriott, Academy Sports, Wendy’s, McDonald’s and many others recognize that robust data capture software is a key driver to the success of their organizations. If you’re passionate about your brand and want to brainstorm with someone who has 10+ years of experience driving positive change in large, national and international organizations, contact Dana at dana.slagle@steton.com.
