EMC: Great day of networking and best practice sharing at Spartech Color

Over 50 people across 3 events had the privilege of touring and sharing best practices at Spartech Color in Stratford.  They are working on their Continuous Improvement (CI) journey and used the CI group to help them create their CI strategic plan?  During this event we looked at considerations including support from various areas of the organization; scepticism; ‘seen it before’ or flavor of the month mentality and resource constraints (time and money). The Plant Manager, Dale McCormick talked about Spartech’s history; their efforts, failures and successes when it comes to lean, 5-S, safety and employee engagement programs.  The group did a great job providing suggestions on how to structure their CI program and 3-5 year plan.

During our Human Resources SIG we focused on the challenge of performance appraisals.  We reviewed some great examples of performance appraisals from our member needs help database.  We also discussed if you should you use a four or five point likert scale.  (I love using that word since it’s one of those things I remember from statistics and research methods in university).  Some of the other questions we discussed included:

• Who in your organization receives regular performance appraisals?
• Are performance appraisals tied to salary/wage increases in your company?
• Do you regularly struggle with getting managers/supervisors to complete performance appraisals?  Have you tried any strategies to get these completed?
• Do you require performance appraisals to be completed by a set date for all or by anniversary date of the employee?  Do you think one is more successful than the other?
• What other challenges or issues are you faced with regarding the performance appraisals in your organization?

What challenges does your organization face regarding your CI strategic plan?  Who do you involve in the process?

How old is your current performance management forms?  Are they effective and completed in a timely manner?  What areas would you like to change?

For more information on the EMC KW/Cambridge Consortium and local happenings please contact Laura Gibson at lgibson@emccanada.org or 226-388-3894.