Case Examples
Annual Vacation
A large European manufacturing operation had been faced for some years with a complex and increasingly expensive problem.
There was an annual ritual, amongst a particular slice of the engineering personnel, a tier of senior technicians and their managers, to arrange their annual leave. They were each entitled by law to five weeks’ holiday per year, of which three weeks, as of right, could be taken in succession. The school holidays every year were a five week period, and everyone wanted to take their three–weeks’ consecutive leave during the school holidays. And it was required under the very tight European environmental safety regulations that there must in each case be at all times a minimum of 50% plant coverage, or the corporation could face massive exemplary fines, with disciplinary action being brought against top management who could potentially face criminal charges for negligence.
Each senior manager was responsible for about 40 of these technicians. And every year, each manager was involved in scores of hours of expensive management time negotiating and arranging the leave, and it always went wrong.
Across the board, hundreds and hundreds of expensive man–hours were wasted this way every year, and to no avail in any case. For complaints to the national workers’ council over broken leave agreements were numerous, and not infrequently led to bitter industrial relations crises.
And it often transpired, particularly during the summer, that in spite of best efforts having been made, there was well under 50% coverage on a considerable number of days. Last minute changes in holiday plans of course caused total havoc. Armies of consultants were hired. Numerous solutions had been tried, including complex computerized solutions. Millions and millions had been spent. But everything had failed.
The successful, minimalist action required took each manager no more than 20 minutes in total to implement, and the results were perfect every time, with complete flexibility to change holiday arrangements around whenever people wanted to alter their leave dates. And there was always 50% coverage. Now the biggest constraint, obviously, was ensuring that 50% coverage and making that compatible with a degree of free choice as to when to take their vacation days. The situation, in fact, was as simple as can be.
The situation was this: how do we ensure that every technician on holiday is matched by someone who is back at the plant? The action required was equally simple—asking them all to choose a partner and pair up. They were told, "book your leave days for whenever you like, so long as your partner covers you; and change it around later and as often as you like, subject only to the same proviso." And, by the way, they were advised to pick as a partner someone they disliked, so that they could avoid running into each other in France, and so that they could be sure of at least 10 weeks a year without the other chap in their hair!