This is a machine-assisted translation of the original Dutch version.
Disengagement and Absenteeism
"I don’t feel like it." You hear this on the shop floor. "Absenteeism is too high," I often hear leaders say. They are two sides of the same coin. Most of the time, this has nothing to do with how strong your process is. It has to do with how the work is designed.
Think back to the best onboarding experience you ever had. You knew what to expect. You might have had a buddy. Your manager or HR guided you. After a few hours or days, you knew your responsibilities and who to contact for help. This applies to any industry, no matter how much tech is in your operations. It is about designing a system that brings out the best in people to deliver lasting business results.
The guidelines below are a necessary addition to your standard lean tools for process simplification. You can build a great process, but if employees do not want to cooperate or fail to show up, you achieve nothing at the end of the day.
The best process is not necessarily the most mathematically optimal one. It is the process that sustainably gets the best out of your people, teams, and available technology. It is not something designed in an isolated room with engineers.
Pukkelpop: Good Planning, Poor Execution
During the Pukkelpop music festival, a small town is transformed into a massive event. A whole structure of local clubs and volunteers is set up to run bars, manage parking, and direct traffic.
My assignment was clear: keep specific access roads open by preventing illegal parking so emergency and detour traffic could pass. After months of planning and multi-stakeholder meetings, I knew my task.
Just before my shift started, a coordinator arrived and told us we were "reassigned" to block incoming traffic on a major road and explain the detour. He repeatedly emphasized that we had to do it, or our volunteer club would lose its funding.
A few hours later, as a total beginner, I was directing traffic at one of the busiest intersections. I faced endless edge cases: "I'm a VIP, can I go through?", "I'm dropping my daughter at the Kiss & Ride," and drivers insisting they needed to pass. Police officers told me to move traffic faster, while other officers scolded me, saying I wasn't authorized to direct traffic at all.
It was complete chaos. Despite months of preparation of many stakeholders and professionals, I likely sent 70% of drivers the wrong way because I received zero operational details on where VIP entrances or turnarounds were located.
The issue was not the high-level plan. It was the total neglect of the human factor during execution. The result was customer frustration, stress, and a volunteer who decided never to help again. This happens in companies every day: employees disengage. Some loudly, others quietly.
Three Rules for Better Process Design
I stood in the rain for ten hours on a high-stress intersection and quit. That happens every day on your shop floor. How do you prevent that? By applying three rules to your process design:
Safety First
What do you need to do to keep people safe? Both physically and mentally. This applies across the entire employee lifecycle: from onboarding and daily work routines to illness and offboarding.
Give Clear Goals, Support, and Follow-Up
When is someone successful? How do you make that measurable (both the end result and progress along the way)? How can employees ask for help? Who do they go to? When must they ask for help? And who checks in to offer course corrections or a pat on the back?
Build Processes Together with Operators, and Link Them to Personal Growth
Leverage the knowledge and strengths of your people. Use operational process problems as opportunities to develop their skills: root-cause analysis, process design, project management, public speaking, influencing others, and deep domain expertise. This always applies.
Pukkelpop Part 2: Same Process, Different Human System
I was completely new and had no experience managing festival traffic, so I had no strengths to leverage. A veteran volunteer could have easily adapted.
The coordinator could have approached us like this:
"I’m Jan. I need your help with an important task. Is this your first time, and do you have experience with traffic on this side of the grounds?"
This simple check creates psychological safety and gives Jan immediate insight into our stress level and knowledge.
Depending on our response, he could adapt his communication:
For Beginners:
"No worries if it’s your first time. Your goal is to get the right people to the right place. Let VIPs, the Kiss & Ride drop-offs, ambulances, and police through. All other cars follow Detour A. Here is a simple map and rule sheet. You’ll see the Kiss & Ride is 100 meters on your right, and VIPs drive to the end and turn left. Call me at [number] if you have questions. Before I go: any questions? Can I grab you a chair?"
For Experienced Volunteers:
"Great, then I don't need to explain that the goal is getting people to the right spots. Do you recall who is allowed through? Nothing changed this year. Here is the reference card. Police and ambulances know their way, Kiss & Ride is still on the right, and the VIP entrance is at the end. Call me if you get stuck. Before I go: any questions? Do you have a way to get a chair or umbrella since you won't be using your bikes?"
This approach calms people down, establishes psychological safety, sets clear expectations, and provides a clear escalation path. It also shows empathy by acknowledging that the job changed and that volunteers might need chairs instead of bikes.
It takes only a few sentences. This is not a massive leadership investment; it is basic operational management.
Notice that both scenarios deliver the exact same core information: goal, key focus areas, support options, and standard work instructions. Only the delivery style changes. In practice, different people need different amounts of time and repetition, but you always cover these core points.
If something goes wrong, the coordinator is accessible, not as an intimidating boss, but as "Jan, who helped me out." Jan can then update the reference sheet at the end of the shift to reflect new edge cases for next year. That is built-in continuous improvement.
What this means for your organisation
This example highlights an indivual's behavior (Jan). Identify and empower the people in your organization who work the right way, and it will pay off a hundredfold1.
However, this is not simply about "being nice to one another" or the isolated impact of a single manager. When you design processes using these three rules, something compelling happens on the shop floor:
- Problems Are Escalated Early: Employees feel comfortable asking for help sooner, allowing you to deliver the right support.
- Costs Become Predictable: Quality improves and lead times stabilize because everyone understands what to do and why.
- Absenteeism Drops: Employees no longer quietly disengage; instead, they feel genuinely involved.
On top of that, recruitment stops feeling like an uphill battle. Managers who embed these habits often find that talented, enthusiastic candidates apply proactively. They hear from friends that your company is the place to be. That isn't luck: it is the direct outcome of good, human-centered process design.