Over the last few weeks I have been watching Undercover Boss a series on Channel 4 where the CEO of a failing company goes undercover in disguise to mix and mingle with the employees to try and uncover problems that might be causing its demise.

This week the CEO, Peter Harvey, of Quicksilver, a chain of gambling outlets visited four slot machine outlets to discover why the profits the company had been making in previous years had turned into a loss.   Changes in government legislation had not helped eg the smoking ban, but the CEO managed to uncover a lot of tricky HR issues that needed to be dealt with.

Quicksilver have always consider itself to be “people centric” but in reality the CEO discovered that was not true.  Many of the staff were disengaged and thinking about seeking other jobs.  A young female manager in Maidstone was made to feel very vulnerable having to regularly deal with drunks since the company’s decision to operate a 24 hour policy without thinking through the security consequences.

A talented engineer had been told to shut up by management after putting forward the idea of having a workshop to mend the machines, even though it would save the company money.  He was so disengaged that instead of covering the nine sites that were part of his patch on a daily basis he was only visiting two or three sites to fix machines having been allowed to manage his own time. That meant that some sites had machines that were not working therefore losing the company money.  The manager in Newquay had also had his good ideas for improving the business quashed by senior managers.

Another manager had successfully grown her business by tweaking company policy about giving free bets only after customers had paid out for sessions themselves.  She was considering not returning to work after her maternity leave due to the two hour commute to work.

Staff engagement is key to business profits.  If staff are engaged then they work harder which builds on the bottom line.  The programme demonstrates that senior managers are key to encouraging engagement particularly through listening to staff and taking on board their ideas.

The CEO recognised the need to encourage staff motivation and due to his discoveries informed the staff that there would be reward scheme introduced where staff could receive £250 in vouchers for good suggestions.  The engineer was informed that a bonus scheme would be introduced to incentivise the work.  Small changes like this can make a huge difference to staff morale and ultimately business profits.