As process owners, team members had decision-making responsibility and accountability for such day-to-day decisions as work scheduling and for larger decision such as hiring and performance reviews.
The new responsibilities created some problems. Work-group members were expected to make decisions, but they often lacked relevant information.
In response, Xerox created a management information system to track and summarize key business indicators.
Most of the busuness information is updated monthly.
Some information, such as expense report, is updated weekly.
The system also provides teams with indicators of customer satisfaction levels several times a month.
At each team meeting, member share information about the company's business plan and its financial performance.
The communication system wasn't the only thing that had to be modifued to support high-performance work systems.
Teams had to be tied together by common objectives and incentives. They had to be compensated in a way that fostered collaboration between team members and motivated them to work toward team goals.
As result, Xerox moved to a pay-for-performance compensation system called "Work-group Excellence," which rewards the performance of a team as a whole.
Then, within each team, rewards are distributed on the basis of such fortoes as experience.
Some managers struggled with the new work systems.
To increase their understanding, some were sent to Xerox's service operation in Phoenix, Arizona, which had also been experimenting with empowered teams.
There they learned that the key to managerial support for work groups was to have managers structured into the workgroups themselves.
Only after experiencing team dynamics and acquiring the skills to work in teams were the managers able to address the needs of the teams they oversaw.
The Ohio CBU is now the top service organization within Xerox.
It maintains customer satisfaction levels around 94 percent on service calls.
It also has the lowest maintenance expenses per vehicle ofany service unit within Xerox.
Evidence of success for other high-performance work systems at Xerox is easy to find.
Service organizations report increases in all their target areas.
Customer satisfaction has increased by as much as ten point, with each point representing millions of dollars of business.
Employee satisfaction has improved 15 percent.
Increases of 10 to 15 percent inresponse time and reliability have occurred as well.