E-News for April 2000
Greetings ALMA Members,
Since the beginning of the year, I have been corresponding with many of you by e-mail to discuss topics that I hope will be of interest to lab mangers. With this message, I am expanding the distribution list to include more of our members. The idea is to maintain an informal newsletter where I will summarize issues or pass along ideas while preserving confidentiality to avoid upsetting any of your companies or lawyers. Feel free to e-mail me with anything thats on your mind—I’m always glad to hear from one of our members. If you do not want to receive these e-mail messages (about one per month), let me know and I’ll remove your name from the distribution list.
Many of you may have heard about a serious safety incident in the Houston area that involved two fatalities. Two contract maintenance workers who were cleaning a tank were found dead. Investigation revealed that the breathing air packs that they were using were improperly mixed and contained insufficient oxygen to support life. Also rather disturbing was the fact that the vendor did not have a positive recall system in place and did not know who received other cylinders from the same batch. I have found that many labs in the area are now checking the oxygen content of all breathing air cylinders that come into their facility. But the whole issue of gas cylinders can have other serious consequences for labs. One lab manager reported that their gas vendor had called late at night to ask them to take some recently delivered nitrogen cylinders out of their inventory since they were suspected to have been inadvertently filled with oxygen! Imagine the catastrophe that this mistake could have caused in the right circumstances. Several managers have reported receiving propane or carbon dioxide cylinders fitted with dip tubes so that liquid was expelled rather than the gas that they expected. As managers, perhaps its time we invited our gas vendors in for a visit to have them tell us about their QC programs rather than just asking about price and delivery.
Those of us who hold monthly safety meetings are always looking for ideas to make them more interesting, especially topics such as the annual or semi-annual review of safety rules. Let’s face it, reading safety rules in a meeting can be downright boring. Some time ago, one of our chemists used the “Jeopardy” game show format to present safety rules and other safety information and the meeting was very popular with the staff. Several other managers have also reported using this idea with similar success. Anyone have any more innovative meeting ideas to share?
For those who are looking for ideas to help your staff to think more creatively, take a look at Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko. This is not a book that you are likely to read from cover to cover but it contains numerous puzzles, illusions, and other exercises to illustrate and encourage “out of the box” thinking. I found some of the ideas to be a bit weird but the puzzles are good.
On the management front, there is an article in the Jan-Feb issue of Harvard Business Review that has some interesting perspectives on retaining talented employees. The article maintains that the market and not the company is most responsible for turnover and the goal should be influencing who leaves and when rather than trying to retain everyone. The author suggests that premium compensation be paid for “hot skills” but cut the premium when the market labor supply catches up—he mentions the premium paid for SAP programmers that is now disappearing. He also gives examples of redesigning critical jobs to give low skill tasks to other employees who are more readily replaced while putting all effort into keeping the few with the valued skill—this may increase turnover but moves it to an area where it doesn’t hurt the company. Another strategy is to adapt to attrition by focusing on recruiting so that replacements are always available. As I read this, I wondered if the same companies that are having trouble retaining good employees are the same ones that were terminating people a few years ago. It would be interesting to compare the turnover rate for these companies with those that have a good record for managing their workforce so that they don’t have layoffs during the economic downturns.
If you have any comments, cost saving suggestions, opinions, etc. let me hear from you .
Wayne