Inspection - Is it only a fault finding tour of the Boss?
No definitely not. But yes it is, particularly where the bosses happen to be driven by the urge to display their authority and subtle hubris over the field employees. The purpose is also to let people in the field see them in awe and know how powerful they are in the Organization. This category of officers, during their tours of inspection, cannot not resist the temptation to issue orders like suspension, termination or transfer from the very site of their field visit under the pretext of dereliction of duty or other lapses found by these bosses to be instantaneously punishable! This fault finding exercise in the name of inspection defeats the very objective of inspection.
The above insinuation is sufficient to drive home the point that fault finding should not the purpose of inspection, though for the most part of it, it happens to be so.
What is Inspection and how should it be used in the interest of the work, staff and the organization?
Before we dive deep into the topic let us imagine the following to find their answers--
1.Whether the personnel in the field are doing their assigned task properly and as per norms?
2. Whether the subordinate field offices expend fund in accordance with the rules of financial propriety?
3. Whether the output is upto the prescribed standards?
4.Whether the target set and communicated/circulated from the headquarter are being chased to achieve for the stipulated period?
5. Whether there is any wasteful expenditure or irregularity?
How do the supervisors in control of the things enumerated above ensure these? A little reflection would show that since they are stationed at the headquarter far distant from the field, mofussil or project offices they regularly call for periodic(mostly monthly in government) reports from the field to make themselves acquainted with the status of the work in progress or the state of affairs in the field.
Poring over the issue a little further would also suggest that getting acquainted with the state of affairs in the field with the help of these periodical reports is equivalent to seeing things through proxy. For we must know that reports so prepared by the subordinate officers at the field may contain to the extent possible only such things that are rosy and aimed at avoiding unpalatable facts to be presented to their bosses. Thus these reports which are sometime deceptive also prove misleading for the supervisors if their decisions are solely based on these periodical reports howsoever perfect the latter may appear to be.
Hence seeing a thing through proxy is no match to what can be seen through one's own eye. Hence Inspection. Thus inspection is nothing but seeing through one's own eye the employees at work in the field. The purpose should be to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the organization and to make it grow by the efforts of positive supervision through such inspection.
Apart from this, there are many things which can be discovered only through on the spot visit of the site of work or meeting with the people in the field office. This indeed is an important purpose of inspection. It is through field inspection that we actually come to know what actually is happening in the field or workshop or factory or other component units or offices in the field. Thus a visit to the site and on-the-spot study are specially necessary when dealing with big development projects, costly engineering works, serious accidents or grave incidents like murders, dacoities etc. in order to get a proper appreciation of what actually happened or what is required to be done.
Thus the above discussion clearly shows that fault finding should never be resorted to under the garb of inspection. Rather inspection is a tool with the help of which the seniors align the functioning at the field level with the policy, philosophy or target having been set at the headquarter.
1. Inspection - an education tour
As a matter of fact inspection should be utilized not only to detect irregularities and correct faults, but also to teach better methods of working, to improve workers' efficiency, to arouse their enthusiasm for work, to inculcate discipline and to raise their morale.
Apart from any verbal instruction which you may impart to staff during inspection, you also communicate unconsciously the subtle influence of your own example, which is infectious. It should be remembered that staff are naturally desirous to see their high ranking executives at work, to observe how they conduct themselves, how they talk and what they do. To satisfy their curiosity, inspections are indispensable. It provides opportunity to the field staff get to see their seniors at work.
Inspection should be an education tour for both the sides. It benefits even the person on tour for the purpose of inspection. It enables him to know about the location, people and their culture and predilection under which the field offices and the field staffs are supposed to perform. Surrounding environment, people and their relations with the employees and head of the field offices matter most in so far as smooth functioning of field offices are concerned.
Person visiting the field for inspection comes to know any wrongdoing or malfeasance of the field staffs through the locals. Only regular inspection can fill the gap in control through reports and returns. Besides, knowledge of locality and people go a long way to enhance the experience of the supervisors making inspections. They can make use of this experience in future in ways more than one.
Thus the educative value of your inspection will depend largely on how much time you spend in inspections and what you do during your inspection.
2. Inspection: should not be employed as a ruse to deceive or setting score with staff working in the field
Then it is simply misuse of authority.
Examples of extorting money from your juniors for his lapses detected during such inspection are not unknown. Some unscrupulous seniors of dubious character do resort to this tactics under the garb of inspection for supplementing their illegal income through corrupt practice. Needless to say this is exploitation in the name of inspection. If found true;this is an actionable misconduct of serious nature that must be taken cognizance of for it to be punished.The controlling officers of such seniors on inspection must seek information from other sources about the conduct of these inspecting officers.
3. Inspection: It provides opportunity to know the grievances of subordinates in the field ; as also exploring ways and means to solve them by the seniors inspecting the employees at work in the field.
Another object of inspection is to know at first hand the personal grievances of your staff. The bigger the undertaking, the larger is the list of grievances likely to be. If, on one hand, your function is to take up the staff for their failures, it is on the other hand equally your responsibility to look after them. There are many little things which may be worrying them and about which you will never know unless you actually go out on tour, meet them or enquire about their grievances. Of course, you will not be able to redress all their grievances - no one can- but the mere fact that you take the trouble to enquire about them would convince them of your sympathetic interest in their welfare and will go a long way in increasing their happiness and contentment and their respect for you.
4. Inspection: a method of knowing the capability of the field staff. Another indirect benefit of making inspection in field offices is that you come to know the capabilities of your juniors working in the field. This knowledge about your juniors enables you to give them some higher responsibilities at the field or headquarter. It is thus beneficial for the development of the staff of the organization as also the organization itself.
Not only this your own knowledge and experience may increase upon interaction with such efficient or knowledgeable workers working in your field offices. You would come to know the practical aspects of a job which you may remain unaware while spending most of your time in the headquarter.
5. Inspection indicates the priority of the office/site/work/people under inspection
An office or site or work being inspected gives messages of sorts. It suggests that site/work has been considered important for the higher executive. We must have noticed why sometime a foreign dignitary visiting our country manages to find time to visit such project's sites and meet project employees as are funded by his country's government.
Why? The reason is not far to seek. Such visit to the project make their staff feel happy. This enhances their good feelings for their leaders and compel them to think how caring their leader is who has not forgotten to meet them even during such a tight time schedule of the itinerary.
Conclusion: inspections are indispensable as opportunity for meeting the staff, workers, the clientele, or the public. In spite of this they seem to be falling into disuse because of increasing preoccupation with paper work or sometimes the mere disinclination to leave one's headquarters even for a few days. The tendency to run the organization through reports and returns has increased these days. It should not be surprising if one is duped through these reports and returns and takes wrong decision based on these reports only.
Though fault finding shall always remain one of the functions of inspections it should not be so if the inspection is done in the field by high ranking executives. In fact, a senior officer should try to make his inspections educational tours - educational tours for the staff, by trying to teach them better methods of working and correcting them their little faults and misapprehension. It should be an educational tour for himself also as indicated earlier. It will let them know about their men from close distance. It will enable them to get first hand information what is happening in the field, gathering valuable new ideas from the local staff as also the problem which awaits a solution or handicaps which may be hampering work.
R.R.Prabhakar.
08.12.2019.
The above insinuation is sufficient to drive home the point that fault finding should not the purpose of inspection, though for the most part of it, it happens to be so.
What is Inspection and how should it be used in the interest of the work, staff and the organization?
Before we dive deep into the topic let us imagine the following to find their answers--
1.Whether the personnel in the field are doing their assigned task properly and as per norms?
2. Whether the subordinate field offices expend fund in accordance with the rules of financial propriety?
3. Whether the output is upto the prescribed standards?
4.Whether the target set and communicated/circulated from the headquarter are being chased to achieve for the stipulated period?
5. Whether there is any wasteful expenditure or irregularity?
How do the supervisors in control of the things enumerated above ensure these? A little reflection would show that since they are stationed at the headquarter far distant from the field, mofussil or project offices they regularly call for periodic(mostly monthly in government) reports from the field to make themselves acquainted with the status of the work in progress or the state of affairs in the field.
Poring over the issue a little further would also suggest that getting acquainted with the state of affairs in the field with the help of these periodical reports is equivalent to seeing things through proxy. For we must know that reports so prepared by the subordinate officers at the field may contain to the extent possible only such things that are rosy and aimed at avoiding unpalatable facts to be presented to their bosses. Thus these reports which are sometime deceptive also prove misleading for the supervisors if their decisions are solely based on these periodical reports howsoever perfect the latter may appear to be.
Hence seeing a thing through proxy is no match to what can be seen through one's own eye. Hence Inspection. Thus inspection is nothing but seeing through one's own eye the employees at work in the field. The purpose should be to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the organization and to make it grow by the efforts of positive supervision through such inspection.
Apart from this, there are many things which can be discovered only through on the spot visit of the site of work or meeting with the people in the field office. This indeed is an important purpose of inspection. It is through field inspection that we actually come to know what actually is happening in the field or workshop or factory or other component units or offices in the field. Thus a visit to the site and on-the-spot study are specially necessary when dealing with big development projects, costly engineering works, serious accidents or grave incidents like murders, dacoities etc. in order to get a proper appreciation of what actually happened or what is required to be done.
Thus the above discussion clearly shows that fault finding should never be resorted to under the garb of inspection. Rather inspection is a tool with the help of which the seniors align the functioning at the field level with the policy, philosophy or target having been set at the headquarter.
1. Inspection - an education tour
As a matter of fact inspection should be utilized not only to detect irregularities and correct faults, but also to teach better methods of working, to improve workers' efficiency, to arouse their enthusiasm for work, to inculcate discipline and to raise their morale.
Apart from any verbal instruction which you may impart to staff during inspection, you also communicate unconsciously the subtle influence of your own example, which is infectious. It should be remembered that staff are naturally desirous to see their high ranking executives at work, to observe how they conduct themselves, how they talk and what they do. To satisfy their curiosity, inspections are indispensable. It provides opportunity to the field staff get to see their seniors at work.
Inspection should be an education tour for both the sides. It benefits even the person on tour for the purpose of inspection. It enables him to know about the location, people and their culture and predilection under which the field offices and the field staffs are supposed to perform. Surrounding environment, people and their relations with the employees and head of the field offices matter most in so far as smooth functioning of field offices are concerned.
Person visiting the field for inspection comes to know any wrongdoing or malfeasance of the field staffs through the locals. Only regular inspection can fill the gap in control through reports and returns. Besides, knowledge of locality and people go a long way to enhance the experience of the supervisors making inspections. They can make use of this experience in future in ways more than one.
Thus the educative value of your inspection will depend largely on how much time you spend in inspections and what you do during your inspection.
2. Inspection: should not be employed as a ruse to deceive or setting score with staff working in the field
Then it is simply misuse of authority.
Examples of extorting money from your juniors for his lapses detected during such inspection are not unknown. Some unscrupulous seniors of dubious character do resort to this tactics under the garb of inspection for supplementing their illegal income through corrupt practice. Needless to say this is exploitation in the name of inspection. If found true;this is an actionable misconduct of serious nature that must be taken cognizance of for it to be punished.The controlling officers of such seniors on inspection must seek information from other sources about the conduct of these inspecting officers.
3. Inspection: It provides opportunity to know the grievances of subordinates in the field ; as also exploring ways and means to solve them by the seniors inspecting the employees at work in the field.
Another object of inspection is to know at first hand the personal grievances of your staff. The bigger the undertaking, the larger is the list of grievances likely to be. If, on one hand, your function is to take up the staff for their failures, it is on the other hand equally your responsibility to look after them. There are many little things which may be worrying them and about which you will never know unless you actually go out on tour, meet them or enquire about their grievances. Of course, you will not be able to redress all their grievances - no one can- but the mere fact that you take the trouble to enquire about them would convince them of your sympathetic interest in their welfare and will go a long way in increasing their happiness and contentment and their respect for you.
4. Inspection: a method of knowing the capability of the field staff. Another indirect benefit of making inspection in field offices is that you come to know the capabilities of your juniors working in the field. This knowledge about your juniors enables you to give them some higher responsibilities at the field or headquarter. It is thus beneficial for the development of the staff of the organization as also the organization itself.
Not only this your own knowledge and experience may increase upon interaction with such efficient or knowledgeable workers working in your field offices. You would come to know the practical aspects of a job which you may remain unaware while spending most of your time in the headquarter.
5. Inspection indicates the priority of the office/site/work/people under inspection
An office or site or work being inspected gives messages of sorts. It suggests that site/work has been considered important for the higher executive. We must have noticed why sometime a foreign dignitary visiting our country manages to find time to visit such project's sites and meet project employees as are funded by his country's government.
Why? The reason is not far to seek. Such visit to the project make their staff feel happy. This enhances their good feelings for their leaders and compel them to think how caring their leader is who has not forgotten to meet them even during such a tight time schedule of the itinerary.
Conclusion: inspections are indispensable as opportunity for meeting the staff, workers, the clientele, or the public. In spite of this they seem to be falling into disuse because of increasing preoccupation with paper work or sometimes the mere disinclination to leave one's headquarters even for a few days. The tendency to run the organization through reports and returns has increased these days. It should not be surprising if one is duped through these reports and returns and takes wrong decision based on these reports only.
Though fault finding shall always remain one of the functions of inspections it should not be so if the inspection is done in the field by high ranking executives. In fact, a senior officer should try to make his inspections educational tours - educational tours for the staff, by trying to teach them better methods of working and correcting them their little faults and misapprehension. It should be an educational tour for himself also as indicated earlier. It will let them know about their men from close distance. It will enable them to get first hand information what is happening in the field, gathering valuable new ideas from the local staff as also the problem which awaits a solution or handicaps which may be hampering work.
R.R.Prabhakar.
08.12.2019.
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