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Summary of Case Studies

As part of this study, Ekos Research Associates selected a series of firms for which there was information on innovation and workplace changes that they had already published. Ekos updated the information that already existed on those firms by contacting each firm. Once the information was updated and written in a case study format, each case study was vetted with the company’s management and its union when there was one. Only the case studies that have received full agreement are presented below with their names. As for the cases when we did not obtain approval or we only obtained partial approval, the information is still presented but without disclosing the company’s name.

Gennum Corporation: Gennum Corporation is a successful electronics company and active participant in the Sectoral Skills Council of the Electrical/Electronics Industry. The particular innovation examined here is their participation in the Sectoral Skills Training Fund and the establishment of a Skills Development Committee in 1990. The goal of the innovation was to provide high quality, consistent and focused training to Gennum employees, and to closely link this training to corporate objectives and individual employee goals.

Gennum distinguishes among three types of training: corporate, functional, and personal development. The focus of the training under the Sectoral Skills Training Fund is personal development training. Skills Development Committees were to undertake a needs analysis to provide responsive assistance to employees and to administer the Sectoral Skills Training Fund budget. The training funds are disbursed and training priorities are established based on a needs analysis.

Through their participation in the Sectoral Training Fund and the establishment of a Skills Development Committee, Gennum has provided employees with more and better opportunities for training. These opportunities for training have led to an increase in morale and job satisfaction, increase in the overall skill level of employees and the greater portability of employee skills. Gennum also attributes the decreased turnover rate and increase in productivity at least in part to the new approach to training and development.

Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra: Tafelmusik is an internationally acclaimed, 19 member orchestra specializing in the performance of baroque and classical music on period instruments. This case report does not concern the implementation of a particular intervention at a specified point in time. Rather, this case study focuses on an innovative and successful approach to management which Tafelmusik has been using for most of its history – an approach which features a flat, horizontal organization structure, participative management, teamwork, and a shared, consensus-building approach to decision-making. This approach began to evolve in 1981 at which time the current Music Director and Managing Director joined the organization.

The innovation was introduced by top management, but all orchestra members participated actively in all decisions and genuinely “bought in” to the managerial style of the orchestra. No assistance has been sought from outside, and the entire organization is affected by the innovation.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro: Adversarial labour relations led union and management representatives in two Newfoundland and Labrador hydro plants to set up labour-management committees to build new bridges between parties. With the help of a facilitator from the Ministry of Labour, the parties implemented the committees to smooth out their differences on many issues, including health and safety, work and maintenance practices, technological change, temporary appointments and other topics. Special training for committee members, top management support, and the presence of an outside mediator explain why the experience has been successful at solving many problems at these plants.

The committees were successful in rehabilitating the general working relations between local management and labour representatives, and the most immediate and observable impact of the committee was on the annual number of grievances, that fell from 51 in 1991 to 26 in 1996.

No other impacts were directly observed, but informal observations support the view that the committees’ work has raised productivity levels through the improvements in the physical working environment.

A scrap metal company: In an effort to improve labour-management relations and improve performance, this firm implemented Interaction Management (IM), which is designed to help develop and maintain dialogue between managers and their employees and thereby encourage a more collaborative working environment. The program was developed by Development Dimensions International (DDI) in the United States.

The implementation of IM did not yield the expected results, though management assessment of the program is more positive than that of employees. The program was intended to improve communication and involvement to increase performance. The company abandoned the program after two years. Uneven and selective implementation of IM at least partially explains the inauspicious results. As well, poor labour-management relations and a corporate culture at odds with the principles of IM undermined the potential effects of the program.

A computer systems firm: The innovation described in this case report is a labour management dialogue process, instituted in the early years of this successful computer systems firm. The innovation aims to create lines of communication between labour and management outside of the formal collective bargaining process. First introduced in 1988, the innovation has survived numerous changes in the company. The labour management Dialogue Process has now achieved maturity as an institutionalized, if not necessarily highly effective, feature of human resource management in the firm. While it has in the past achieved many benefits for workers and the firm, and has survived major upheavals in the firm as a whole, it is now in a period of relative quiescence. As the firm adjusts to its new corporate context and as changes occur in both union leadership and management, the role that this innovation can continue to play in labour-management relations will likely undergo reflection and adaptation.

Great Western Brewery Co. Ltd.: Facing a shrinking market and a plant closure, several employees at the Great Western Brewery bought the company from its owner (the merged O’Keefe and Molson breweries). Employee ownership has had significant impacts on human resources, industrial relations and work organization at the firm. The ownership transition has led to greater consultation and information sharing and increased employee involvement in decision making. This has demanded dedication and commitment from all.

The key challenges of the innovation have been to find an appropriate role for employee-owners within the firm and to manage divisions between employee-owners and employees. The key factors which have affected the outcome of this innovation are: efforts to shape the culture of the organization to focus on a “community of common interest” and downplaying differences between employee-owners and employees; goodwill and commitment of employees; and open and frequent communication between management and employees.

An international packaging company: This case report focuses on one of its plants. The plant is a greenfield^* operation, hence this case study does not address the implementation of a specific innovation. Rather, the case study presents an example of a self-regulating, self-designing SMT (self-managing teams) concept. Employees are given the authority and responsibility for running the plant. They are also directly involved in their performance evaluation and their compensation review. All employees at the plant are members of the self-managing teams.

A number of changes in the work organization were evidenced under the innovation. The organization is flat, the teams report to an operations manager who reports to the plant manager. There are no supervisors in the plant. Team members perform supervisory functions. Two to three levels of traditional plant hierarchy are not present in the plant. The organizational structure encourages initiative-taking and entrepreneurship among team members. The plant structure also allows employees to carry out a range of additional activities beyond producing the aluminium end products. Production teams are involved in, among other things, safety issues, communications and report writing. They also address human resource issues such as training, developing leadership skills, and motivational skills. Production team members assume a number of other roles (on a rotating basis) such as team coordinator, work scheduler, and health and safety representative.

City of Vancouver Fire Department: The workplace innovation undertaken by the City of Vancouver Fire Department was the establishment of a task force in 1993 designed to increase the representation of women and visible minorities in the department. At a minimum, the task force was charged with developing new hiring standards and selection processes that complied with the City’s Equal Opportunity guidelines. The task force was composed of both management and union representatives and was the first joint endeavour undertaken by management and the union. The task force was considered to be successful in meeting its primary objective. The task force demonstrated that management and labour are able to work together productively to accomplish specified objectives and to be involved in decisions regarding selection. It remains to be seen whether there will be any longer term impacts of the task force. The important factors of success of the task force included: clearly identified goals and objectives of the task force; joint labour and management representation; communication/ transparency and involvement of workers; patience and tolerance on the part of task force members; and use of an outside consultant to facilitate and mediate the process.

Zehr’s Markets/Clifford Evans Training Centre: The human resource innovation described in this case study is the participation of Zehr’s markets in a jointly-managed training centre. Zehr’s Markets is a successful retail grocery chain in southern Ontario. In 1981, the union persuaded the company to contribute $0.01 per employee per hour to a union-run education fund for steward training. Four years later, a negotiated agreement was reached to create a joint Training Trust Fund and the Clifford Evans Training Centre.

Zehr’s participation in the Clifford Evans Training Centre has developed from an innovation to an institutionalized feature of human resources management. During the 10 years since this initiative was started, the program has evolved constantly, not only in terms of the content offered but also in terms of how training is planned and structured. There is little doubt that the creation of a permanent training fund and management structure has afforded Zehr’s a solid foundation on which to build a flexible and comprehensive approach to human resource development. The continued success of the Training Centre has been aided by an excellent relationship between union and management that is surely partly cause and partly effect of the Centre.

A steel company: This company is an integrated steelmaker that produces structural steel (used for buildings, bridges and steel rails) as well as oil and gas tubular products. In response to major labour and financial problems, in April 1992 the union representing the workers and the company negotiated a Joint Workplace Restructuring and Employee Participation Process, which featured: a reduction in the number of supervisors (relative to hourly employees) and a redefinition of their role and function to emphasize coaching and coordination; a flattening of the organizational structure, resulting in fewer layers of management/ administration and a reduction of overhead costs; employee ownership of 60 percent of the company by 1996; and enhanced employee participation through voting shares and through involvement in joint labour-management committees.

At the time of the innovation (negotiated in April 1992), the steel industry was experiencing a downturn, which was followed by an upturn. It has not experienced another major downturn since then. In this sense, the timing of the innovation was ideal for observing positive post-innovation outcomes.

A small manufacturer in New Brunswick: Following a serious drop in sales, a small manufacturer in New Brunswick was taken over by a new management team that implemented a number of workplace innovations to improve the company’s market share and capital base. The changes consisted of capital-sharing and profit-sharing mechanisms, as well as quality improvement actions that included training and other measures that led to a 9002 certification. Most of these innovations reached their goals: the new workplace arrangements proved to be challenging for middle-management, the capital-sharing mechanism topped-up the company’s capital, the labour relations have improved, and the quality improvement measures were a success.

The capital-sharing arrangement and quality improvement strategies gave good results in general. The quality of the products have significantly increased over the last six years. Since 1997, the number of clients that have returned products because of quality defects has significantly diminished. The improvement is attributed to workplace training which has increased the skills as well as the workers’ pride in their work.

Since 1995, the profit-sharing arrangement only applies to management and middle management. In 1994 the workers preferred to bargain a wage increase through their trade union representatives. Management would prefer, however, to include the employees in the profit-sharing scheme and will probably submit this to their union counterparts during the next round of collective bargaining.

Most of the workplace innovations were introduced as planned. There were, however, a few obstacles to change. The middle-management resisted some of the workplace transformations because the new workplace relations and the quality control procedures are very demanding for the foremen and middle-managers. Despite these obstacles, most of the changes were successful and the firm became profitable again only twelve months after the workplace innovations were introduced.

A Canadian Forces Base (CFB): The innovation described in this case study report is a trial of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) work re-design conducted in the Construction Engineering section of a CFB. Although the base has since been amalgamated with another unit and changes made during the trial have been reverted to the previous work design, there are significant lessons to be learned from this ambitious, participative project.

The innovation involved major changes in human resource management practices, stemming from the decentralization and consequent increases in: autonomy; the participative processes of the worker-management committees; and the emphasis on quality of work life.

This ambitious sociotechnical systems job re-design was initially highly successful. Its design and implementation were extremely participative, and resulted in streamlined work, increases in productivity, and increases in client satisfaction.

However, it did not survive changes to the organizational structure, because of incompatibilities between the new management style and the joint, STS process. Whether such labour-management innovations can flourish within highly hierarchical management structures is thus still an open question.

An automotive parts company: The innovation presented in this case report is the Employee Equity and Profit Participation Program of this company with particular reference to its Canadian operations. It should be kept in mind that the financial participation program is but one aspect of an overall innovative human resource management strategy which is very well-entrenched in this highly successful firm.

The company’s greatest competitive advantage is the provision of management and employees with a tangible financial stake in the success of the business. Its competitiveness strategy is clearly evident in its Corporate Constitution, which beyond profit-sharing emphasizes both technological innovation and employee commitment. Employees are thus supported in seeking out and adapting to technological change and fostering a climate of innovation and commitment to the organization.

The overall human resources strategy at this company seems to value commitment to the organization and shop-acquired experience over high degrees of specialization. The overriding principle behind this strategic choice is a belief that employees should participate directly in both the successes and the orientations of the company.