More Than Half of Manufacturing Plants Rarely or Never Move an Underperforming Manager

Census asked manufacturing plants how they handle the people who underperform. The answer depends on who it is — and managers get the softer deal.

Two standards for the same problem

MOPS asks each plant in its sample a set of plain questions about how the site is run. Two of them are the same question asked twice: when a non-manager is identified as underperforming, how soon are they reassigned or dismissed — and the same for a manager. The answers do not match. For non-managers, 39.9% of plants act within six months and 44.6% rarely or never act. For managers, 27.2% act within six months and 55.1% rarely or never do. Every one of these gaps is many times its margin of error. The difference runs the other way on rewards: 50.1% of plants pay non-managers no performance bonus, against 38.6% for managers. Managers are more likely to be paid for results and less likely to be moved when the results are not there.

Managers were more likely to be paid for results, and less likely to be moved when the results were not there.

Where structure arrives as a plant grows

Census turns sixteen of the survey’s questions into one structured-management score, from 0 for the least structured answers to 1 for the most. Across all plants it is 0.532. By size it climbs from 0.402 at 1 to 4 employees to 0.742 at 2,500 or more, but not evenly. The three bands under 20 employees sit within 0.036 of each other and do not separate on their margins of error. From 20 to 49 upward, every band is clearly above the one before it. The score gains 0.207 between the 10-to-19 band and the 100-to-249 band, more than twice the 0.097 it gains from there to the largest plants. The single biggest step is from 20-to-49 employees to 50-to-99.

What does not matter: how old the plant is

It would be natural to expect older plants to have settled into more structured habits. The survey finds no sign of it. Plants up to five years old score 0.539 and plants 26 years or older score 0.531. The four age bands span 0.013, and no two of them differ by more than their margins of error. In this data, structure follows headcount, not years.

What to take from this if you are building a team

If you run a company that is heading past 20 people, this is the stretch where the structured-management score climbs fastest — and the score is built from questions about targets, the measures someone reviews, and what happens when someone falls short. The manager question is the one to settle early. Decide before you promote or hire your first manager how long an underperforming manager gets, and make it the same clock you use for everyone else. In this data, underperforming managers are left in place more often than the people they manage.

Four limits worth holding. MOPS covers manufacturing plants only, and its frame is multi-plant companies plus large single-plant companies, so small single-plant shops are outside it. The figures are estimates from a sample and are treated as different only when the gap clears both margins of error. The manager-versus-non-manager answers are national; Census does not publish them by plant size. And the survey records practice, not reasons: nothing in it says why managers are moved less often.

Published by The Lonely Entrepreneur — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. lonelyentrepreneur.com

This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.