Membership on Problem-Solving Team Raised Worker Output

Serving on a problem-solving team raised member work output by 3% on average and improved quality by 27% in a study in a parts-manufacturing plant. Researchers tracked workers for the three years after teams similar to quality circles were introduced there. The net loss of productive time was only 0.6%. There even appeared to be an impact on non-member performance, since plant-wide rates of output and quality improved. The effect wore off slowly over time, at a rate of 10% for output and 16% for quality per 100 days, supporting the idea that other changes would be needed to maintain the impact over the long term.

The study by two university economists accounted for a number of other possible explanations for the effects. No other major changes occurred in the plant’s technology, human resources policies, or economic conditions that might have helped or scared people into producing more. The researchers compared members to people not on the teams. They also looked at differences between those who volunteered for the teams and those asked by managers to join. The latter tended to be poor performers instead of top ones. The authors suggest those workers were asked to join in hopes their work would improve based on what they learned, which happened.

Each self-directed team consisted of an engineer and an average of seven workers, aided by a consultant. They worked on various “plant-wide issues and the specific problems that confront individual team members.” The teams were not functional work groups, instead drawing members from various groups. They were empowered to address any issues they found.

Their work was primarily done during weekly meetings lasting 30 to 45 minutes. However, net nonproductive time including breaks and sick time only went down a quarter-hour per week. In surveys team members reported working harder and a number of other subjective benefits compared to non-members such as higher job satisfaction and trust in management. The only significant difference between team members and non-members on basic traits like age and education level was that women were more likely to join.

The employees were from a rural area, mostly of the same nationality, and earned only $7.64 an hour on average in 2001. Only one-third had education beyond high school, and few had college degrees. Education played a role in the data. More-educated members were more likely to improve their quality. Downtime did not change much for less-educated members.

The researchers warned their results might not be the same with other kinds of companies and workers. But, they wrote, “our findings support those who argue that participatory practices such as offline teams are best viewed as investments.”

Source: Jones, D., and T. Kato (2011), “The Impact of Teams on Output, Quality, and Downtime: An Empirical Analysis using Individual Panel Data,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 64(2):215.