A key step in improving your lab’s efficiency and productivity is reducing rework. Most labs are busy work environments with too much work to do, priority queues, and insistent stakeholders. Lab staff invest significant time and effort to conduct the technical work, analyze the results, and report it. They want to move on to the next project, and there is always the next stakeholder needing results. Unfortunately, too much lab work requires rework because it wasn’t done right the first time. Lab managers can develop a culture of quality that enables staff to deliver more work right the first time and reduce the cost, irritation, and frustration of rework. Here are some tips:
#1 – Clear expectations
Use all the available tools to set clear expectations for the work. This starts with your expectations around following protocols, asking for help, maintaining equipment, and performing high quality technical work. It is the lab manager’s responsibility to set the standard for the level of quality expected from the lab. Set a level that is achievable but challenges the lab to strive for excellence. Lab managers can model behaviors that promote attention to detail, so that staff will build habits around double-checking work, organizing their workspaces, being observant of results. These expectations are then grounded in clear and concise written documentation in standard operating procedures that standardize the work and remove ambiguity.
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#2 – Continuous improvement
Explore the reasons for rework and take action to prevent these situations from recurring. Engage staff to be open about any challenges they experience executing the work, create an environment where they feel safe to speak openly, and then take action to solve those issues. Build a learning culture where issues and mistakes are viewed from how the individuals and the lab learns, grows, and improves. Over time, these actions will improve the processes and behaviors and reduce the rework.
#3 – Celebrate success
Be diligent to seek out success. Recognize, praise, and celebrate meticulous work and staff who are consistently doing it right the first time. Too often, lab managers focus on all the things that are going wrong and need improvement. Taking a little time to celebrate success will reinforce positive behaviors, encourage staff to take pride in their work, and remind everyone why high-quality execution is important to the lab.
Doing it right the first time brings important benefits to the lab through satisfying stakeholders, reducing conflict and costs, and improving quality and performance. To quote Kevin Owens, PhD, from Drexel University, “If you don’t have time to do it right, how will you find the time to do it again?” Developing a culture of quality enables the lab to produce more, which benefits everyone.
