When the new general manager was appointed it was obvious that things were going to change.
The company had been doing well, but the new man felt things could improve. Moving around the various departments, chatting to staff, there were a few complaints. He felt that there could be a greater level of satisfaction within the company. Based on these findings, he issued a directive stating that a programme of increasing staff satisfaction would be implemented over the coming weeks. A policy was drawn up and posted on all floors within the building. Staff Satisfaction Forms were produced and issued to all staff, where individuals could rate their own personal level of satisfaction on a scale of one to ten. These were to be filled out daily. Each floor had an appointed monitor whose job it was to collect all completed forms at the end of each working day and distribute new ones first thing on the following morning.
The manager decided that the project should run for a month followed by an overall review. An employee was given the job of taking the information provided on the individual forms and entering it into a dedicated database, where results could be analysed on a daily basis, with weekly reports going to the manager. The staff had mixed feelings at first, but this went downhill rapidly. It was at the end of the third week that the programme fell apart.
On the Friday, as a result of a general consensus among the entire company’s staff, satisfaction forms were used to give each staff member’s immediate notice to quit.