Employee Need to Know

Last week I was fortunate to tour Blue Origin’s fabrication facility as part of PNAA (Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance). Very nice, clean, and modern with some of the most advance manufacturing technology I’ve ever seen in one place.

What I found most interesting about the event, occurred as the group was being escorted back to our cars (across the street and down the road at their second location).

Our escort said he had worked at Blue Origin for a couple of years and had never been allowed in the factory building. He wanted to know what it was like.

This really struck me as weird, and very sad. The company is using the very latest technology, striving to break new ground in space travel. All the while not allowing their employees to see how it is being accomplished. Isn’t this attitude a little incongruous towards how to build a ’TEAM’?

Is this another case of ‘management by numbers’ alone? Or is it another example of American management’s extreme reliance on hiring specialists to perform specific tasks and not showing how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture?

This example is only one data point, so extrapolating this experience to a company policy may be a harsh conclusion.

However, it is an opportunity for re-evaluating how your organization treats trusted stakeholders (aka employees). Especially if there is an attempt at creating transparent management in the company.

I’ve worked with other companies that took people upstream and downstream of their work, even to the point of sending final assembly workers on an overnight trip to the automobile manufacturer so they could see how their product (transmissions) was installed in vehicles on the assembly line. They returned with great new insights and dedication to the company they never had before.