Dear Abi, Help! I have mounting financial pressure due to quality defects and I don’t know if my employees are incompetent or defrauding me.

Dear Abi, 

Help! I have mounting financial pressure due to quality defects and I don’t know if my employees are incompetent or defrauding me. 

I run a small start-up. The production team is making mistakes that lead to quality issues and rework. I have progressively trained them, incentivised them and sanctioned them for mistakes. I have written clear processes for making our goods to help them avoid mistakes. But the same things keep happening. I have asked for reports to be filled in to track who does what so I can identify where things are going wrong. But often my Production Team Leader “forgets” to fill in the reports, and it seems nobody is responsible or there are endless plausible but exasperating excuses. 

I am really frustrated. The costs of rework and the production delays are creating financial pressures on the company, and some of the defective products that have reached customers risk our brand image. 

I really do not know if my team is incompetent or if someone individual or clique of individuals is working together to make these mistakes as there is something in it for them eg. kickback on purchased supplies. 

I don’t know how to find out what is going on, why and how to change things. I don’t want to accuse anybody as I don’t have facts, but my frustration is turning to anger and will impact morale. What can I do?

Sincerely, 

Chinwe B

Dear Chinwe,

You state that you have continually trained your staff and yet they are still making mistakes – collectively. There is very likely more going on than meets the eye.

The fact that the team leader always forgets to fill in the reports is also a red flag. The first thing you might want to consider is to change this team lead (and perhaps one or two others) to see if anything changes. Also, why not have a one on one with each of the “actors” to try to gain some insight?

If things remain the same, you should seriously consider external professional help starting with an audit of your systems, processes and controls to ensure that they are adequate and if not, to remedy the situation. A professional third-party view helps. This “intervention” should also include a discussion with all the responsible members of the team who contribute some action to the process. It will cost you some money, but you can always negotiate fees. If you get the right firm to do this work, it will be money well spent.

I hope that this advice is useful and that you manage to resolve all issues. Please let me know how you get on.

Sincerely,

Abi

What would you tell Chinwe B. to do? Have you had similar experiences?

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