TWI Job Relations and Fair Decisions

Why it matters

In a production environment, a delay or a disagreement often becomes visible first through one person's account. This account is valuable for starting a review; accepting it as evidence of the whole incident, however, can lead to a wrong decision. Who spoke first, who is more experienced or which shift produced more does not determine the truth by itself. In the job relations approach of TWI (Training Within Industry), the aim is to deal with the problem before it grows, to gather the relevant facts and to monitor the effect of the decision. Instead of guessing the person's intention, it is made clear which behavior took place under which condition. This distinction is at the base of a fair decision; a statement of good intentions alone is not enough.

A fact is an observation or verified record whose source and scope can be shown. An opinion is the meaning, judgment or attribution of intent drawn from that information. The statement "The operation start record was made after the planned time" can be tested against the time record. The statement "The employee does not care about the job" does not follow directly from the same record. The employee's account is also a record; it must be stated separately whether the incident described has been verified. An assertion repeated by several people may not mean independent verification. They may all have heard it from the same source. For this reason the number of records and the independence of the evidence are assessed separately. Missing information is not filled in with a silent assumption against the person; what is not known is written down openly.

Fairness is not applying the same treatment to everyone without seeing the conditions. Different tasks, instruction, material and competence may call for different support. On the other hand, making different decisions on similar incidents without an explanation damages trust. The decision criteria should be understood before the incident, and the people concerned should be given the chance to be heard. In meetings, the concrete incident is discussed instead of labels that force the person to defend themselves. If reporting a problem or asking for help is paired with punishment, later problems may be hidden. The manager considers both the result and the effect of the decision process on the employees. Protecting the relationship does not mean loosening quality and safety conditions; it requires applying the conditions fairly.

In some situations a hazardous job has to be stopped without waiting for all the facts to be gathered. This temporary protection is not a judgment that the person is at fault. For a lasting job decision, a comprehensive review is carried out separately. The same distinction exists between setting a wrong product aside and making a decision about an employee. Follow-up after the decision does not aim only to reduce the number of incidents; it also monitors whether reporting continues and conditions improve. The stopping of complaints does not always show that the relationship has improved. If employees no longer speak, a situation that looks calm but is unresolved may arise. The four incidents in this lesson show how numbers help to make a decision and at which point they are not enough alone.

Formula