In inspection firms, what makes the difference between a high client turnover rate and a satisfied client base? Unreliable inspectors.
I am thinking of quality controllers who don’t point to problems (because they take shortcuts in the procedure and/or get bribed by factories). That’s what turns clients away.
But how to manage Chinese inspectors to make sure their reporting is accurate?
There are basically two kinds of human resources strategies:
1. Carrots and sticks
How it works: hire from other inspection firms, pay a little more than the competition, audit regularly, fire when there are problems/claims.
Results: hire mercenaries who hit the ground running, who are motivated by money, who might get occasional bribes, and who will quit after 2 or 3 years.
2. Internal motivators
How it works: hire for behavior rather than experience, take the time to train new hires, increase salary predictably over time, keep developing their skills all along.
Results: pay more in training and less in auditing, the first months are not very productive, salaries tend to be lower, turnover is much lower, staff is much more dedicated.
Does this second strategy really work?
It does. In 2008 we hired a Chinese girl from Hunan who was 20 or 21, knew a bit of English, and was working as internal QC in a garments factory. At the beginning she was simply helping other inspectors get the job done faster. Then she started preparing parts of the reports.
Now she understands the clients’ specs and she prepares full reports without any problem. She is still paid 25% less than her colleagues (and catching up), but she never complains. I trust her to never ever cut corners or take bribes.
On the opposite, last year we hired an inspector with 5 years of experience in a larger company. Not only was he more expensive, but he was working for our competitors as a freelancer nearly every time we gave him a rest day. Sometimes he was expediting one of our inspections to do a job for another client!
We had to fire him because he had the wrong behavior and he was projecting the wrong image on the rest of the team. He even argued about fine points of the labor law, to get more money out of us.
Now I hope we can hire much more of the Hunan girl, and much less of the experienced guy. The way I see it, we need a pack of loyal dogs rather than a bunch of selfish wolves. I love dogs, so this is really not an insult.
Has anybody got experiences to share?
Veronika,
You are absolutely right. Training them at the beginning is not enough! You have to keep pushing them to improve little by little, and make them part of a team–I’d nearly say part of a family.
Hello Renaud,
I’d like to add our experience. We have a guy who used to work for our competitor, a big company, for few years. Now he’s responsible for the inspections. He got a responsible and challenging task, and with a cooperation of a manager, he managed to get the team running few years ago. The inspectors under his supervision are developed internally, similarly like your Hunan girl. I know few of them personally, and they are very honest and hard-working. They see their supervisor as a role model and although the work is stressful sometimes, they seem to be contented in their job. Perhaps it’s also by the firm culture which makes them feel they’re a part of the company’s success.
So, to sum it up – In my opinion, it’s very good to have people trained internally and then it’s really important to make them stay. Experienced employees who think about their career and ambitions need more challenges and need to feel they develop. If there’s no such challenge, they might be easily distracted and not feel committed, which is a big drawback for the whole company.