Get our team building take on Undercover Boss!
The Channel 4 show, Undercover Boss, focuses on company CEO’s donning a disguise and arriving as a new employee in one of their sites. Using wearing a dodgy wig the top dog of the company will get their hands dirty taking on all manner of jobs, from cleaning toilets to dealing with customers, in order to get a good perspective of what is actually happening in their business at ground level.
Whilst the program is obviously staged to selected workers who obviously excel at their roles (and those selected to work alongside the CEO rarely have anything particularly negative to say about ‘head office’), it does show how going back to basics in your business can help you resolve issues, improve customer service and perhaps more importantly, make your staff happier. Because, happy staff are loyal, more productive and more willing to make future projects a success.
The great thing about this idea is that you don’t actually need to be undercover, in fact in a smaller company or a one-site business it would be impossible anyway, but just be willing to spend some time with your staff. Finding out how they do their job, the stresses and strains they face and listening to their ideas on how things could be improved is a win-win situation. Not only will the staff feel appreciated and acknowledged, but also any potential problems can be fixed and working conditions improved for many.
Most of the time, the people who best know how to do their jobs better are the people actually doing them, yet they are set a series of directives from faceless people in what’s often conceived as an ‘ivory tower’. Staff will complain that ‘management’ don’t understand what they have to deal with, and are often asked to complete tasks that they feel have little or no benefit to the overall company.
By investing time in working alongside people in different roles within the company, the communication can truly start to run both ways. Not only can the employee air their views in a safe environment, but you also get the chance to explain why some of the jobs they do are important to the company even if they don’t think so.
Only by spending time doing these lower roles will you truly understand the dynamics of the company, and this knowledge gained will more invaluable in future when setting new agendas and projects in the board room.
Thanks for reading our article! Be sure to check out all of the reality tv show-inspired team building events that Accolade Corporate Events offers!
Tags: Undercover Boss