Visual Management is an investment for your business that may just be one of the best you make, but it is important not to waste the opportunity and to make the most of your visual management investment.
Investing in Visual Management may just be the best business move that you made, but it is important not to waste the opportunity. Visual Management that is not engaging or badly placed is potentially just as bad as not investing in the first place. To get the best return on your investment, we have put together 5 simple guidelines to follow.
The location of your visual management is vital to the success of it. Is it in a position that is easy to access and read? KPI boards should be placed somewhere that people will see through-out the day. Placing it in a meeting room or the MD’s office, where the main bulk of the workforce will not see it, will not help to motivate the team to reach their daily goals. Likewise, an SOP display needs to be easily accessible and near to where the procedure takes place. If you are expecting your employees to walk to another part of the building to reference the task in hand then you are more likely to encourage guesswork and thus inconsistent results.
Are your health and safety signs deliver key information to the safety of your staff, so ensure that it is somewhere that is unlikely to be covered up, and placed somewhere visible to all? Your shadow boards need to be accessible to the people that use them the most!
Badly located Visual Management is more likely to become forgotten about and neglected, it becomes wallpaper! And, from our expertise, wallpaper will not deliver results to you.
Who is responsible for updating your boards/documents and do they know that the task lies with them? Giving one individual personal responsibility, rather than a general team effort, is more likely to ensure that it is completed. A board with out of date information is unlikely to inspire or engage your team to strive for improvement.
Do your staff know the purpose of your Visual Management and why it is important? This point requires understanding from the leadership team to the team on the frontline. If the system is installed without communication, workers may see this as just another task on the list. Engage your staff and make sure they are as excited about the benefits of your visual management as you are.
Are you including these boards into your daily tasks. KPI Boards should form part of your daily meetings to help set tasks and strive for improvement. SOPs should be regularly referenced and reviewed and displays regularly kept up to date. Including these into your regular tasks will make sure they receive regular engagement and make the difference they were intended for.
With businesses regulations and procedures frequently changing and improving you need to treat your visual management with the same flexibility so that it can lead the changes. Regularly reviewing your VM will ensure that you are tracking the right information, your procedures are up to date and most importantly the information is still relevant to your work environment. Schedule regular reviews of visual management and just as you would with your company’s policies and procedures to make sure that you are still delivering the right key messages to your staff.
Here at Clarity Visual Management our team are highly trained in making your visual management work for you. So, if you are looking for effective and engaging visual management, visit our online store today!
Here at Clarity Visual Management, we consult with clients both far and wide about how they can use visual management to achieve their goals, exceed their targets and make financial savings which would otherwise be lost to waste. We work with our clients to create a bespoke strategy that ensures visual management is set up for success before providing specific, high-quality Lean products to sustain the visual management programme and make Lean work in the organisation long-term.
You can read more about the work we’ve undertaken with our clients by browsing through our Visual Management Case Studies.
Download our ‘Introduction to Clarity Visual Management’ if you’re unfamiliar with Clarity and want to learn a little more about our products and services.
Get in touch and speak with a Visual Management Specialist to answer any questions you may have on our products, consultancy or business.
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