Policies: gotta have 'em, gotta follow 'em

[HCHTech]

Please learn from our recent fail.

On August 14th, one of my techs had an onsite visit with a residential customer. During the visit, the customer asked if we could attempt data retrieval from an 10 year old desktop that they had retired 5 years ago and a netbook that their son dropped down a flight of stairs. Sure, we'd be glad to. He brings the hard drive from the desktop and the netbook back to the shop for analysis.

He didn't complete and have the customer sign our pick up/drop off form, which has our terms, including the "not responsible for data loss" stuff. Deviation from policy #1

Once back at the shop, he fails to label the hard drive and netbook with the customer name. Deviation from policy #2

He plugs the desktop hard drive into one of our bench machines and sees that he can browse the data, and that the smart values all look good. Normally at this point, we would run Fabs to get the data. This wasn't done. Deviation from policy #3

He removes the hard drive from the netbook, and once again fails to label the drive as belonging to that customer. Deviation from policy #4

He plugs the drive into one of our bench machines and it doesn't even spin up. He makes notes in the ticket of the status of the two drives and phones the customer. He explains the cost to retrieve the data from the working drive and the potential cost of sending the other drive out for recovery. The customer responds "Oh, never mind, then". So my tech says, anyway.

What happened after this point is not known. But suffice it to say that time passed.

This morning (almost 8 weeks after the initial conversation with the customer) I get an email from them saying they have thought about it and decided not to spend the money to send the netbook drive out for recovery, but would like the data from the desktop hard drive.

I printout this email and hand it to my tech, and go about my day. An hour later, he comes to me and says "I can't find the drive or the netbook". Awesome. We have bins for failed customer hard drives and we have a computer graveyard where computers sit until they get taken to the recycler.

Had policy been followed, the desktop hard drive should have been clearly labeled and sitting in one of the bins. The netbook should either be in the graveyard or already gone to the recyclers. We don't have a regular run, but when things start to stack up too much, we take everything. Probably about once per month. We definitely made a run at the end of August - I remember that.

Also had policy been followed, the actual data from the desktop hard drive would have been sitting on our NAS (dedicated for this purpose). We have a policy that we keep data for 30 days, but usually it ends up being longer than that because cleanup only happens when we need the space.

So....no signed form with the data clause, and no drive to get the data from. This is going to be an uncomfortable phone call that will probably get us fired.

Fate of the tech is TBD, but since he shares half of my chromosomes, my options are a bit limited. I'm hoping for at least a good learning experience.

So, how is your day going?

 

[Markverhyden]

Classic pitfall of working with family. They feel they do not have to cross all the t's and ' all the i's and j's. Failing one task is bad enough, but pretty much all of them is beyond horrible. Glad I'm not in your situation.

 

[Archon Prime]

FIRED.

 

[sapphirescales]

You need to have solid disciplinary policies in place for ALL your techs, whether they're family or not. You can't show favoritism. If you do, it will end badly. My policy is if you screw up and lose a client's data, you're gone. Even if the client doesn't care, the fact is your negligence caused data to be lost in MY shop. That is NOT acceptable. Now if you damage a computer and I have to fix it on my dime or even if I have to buy the client a new computer, that's a different matter. But data is NOT so easily replaceable.

Basically, if your negligence causes financial harm to the business, it comes out of YOUR pocket. But if you close a client's data, you're FIRED regardless of how important that data is to the client. My techs are EXTREMELY careful with client data because they're all aware of this policy. Now some things can't be helped. If a drive dies during recovery and you're doing things correctly, that's fine. Stuff happens. But not labeling a client's hard drive and losing it? TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

 

[inetuk]

My 2p worth

We are all human and we all make mistakes, policy and procedures are there for a reason for both client and customers.

I treat all incidents breaches on a personal level and I see what I can learn from the incident and look at the following:

1. How does this person normally perform?
- Normally follows policy

2. Was their workload high on the day in question?
- Not an excuse for not following policy, maybe assist with why policy was not followed.

3. How organised are they with their daily workload/routines?
- Help to see if there the chance of a repeat breach of policy.

4. Have they taking any responsibility for the breach of policy?
- This is important to see if you work with this person in the future.

5. How often do you visit policy with staff?
- New staff after their two week induction I will send a monthly summary to them of their performance including following procedures and
policy for the first six month. With other staff I email every 6 months and remind them of procedures and policy.

I look on any breach as a failure of our culture first and then look at how we can get the member of staff to work with our culture, sadly no everyone can.

In this occasion I would put the member of staff on probation for two weeks meaning all his work needs to be checked either with a peer or myself. When on site he must phone and confirm what he has done and he has followed procedures.

You ask why?
Well good technicians are hard to find and hold on to, also if you invest in someone you want the best for them and yourself. As I said it does not always work out.

Good luck with your dilemma.

 

[DataMedics]

First thing that ever happens here when a HDD shows up is that a scan of the top cover is made and saved in the customer's folder. Then a tracking number is applied to both sides of the drive so it's on the label and PCB. It's never even allowed in the work area until this is done. You can't mess around with people's data, it has a value that's beyond just hardware.

If I had an employee do that, he wouldn't last long here. And if he was family, he'd be fired already.

 

[Your PCMD]

 

[HCHTech]

Well, we've had a good end to this saga. Said employee & progeny came in on his day off today and went through every square inch of the workroom, computer graveyard, stock bins & etc., and found both hard drives and the laptop. Everything had been uncharacteristically placed in a box to keep it together (we have clear, labeled bins that are supposed to be used for this purpose) and the box got carried into the back room. Inside the box was an unsigned dropoff/pickup form and one of the drives was labeled. He recovered the data from the working drive and client will pickup everything on Monday, none-the-wiser of our behind-the-scenes drama on this.

I have no idea why he did what he did, but let's just say everyone has a new appreciation for why we have the policies we do. Close call for sure, I hope he takes this as the learning experience it is and appreciates how close he came to losing a customer's data by being sloppy with procedure. Now I think I'm going to go have a drink. ;-)

 

[Krynn72]

Good news for the customer I guess. Good news for you too if your progeny felt bad /scared enough to come in on a day off and put in the effort to find it. Means he didn't take his failure lightly. Unless you forced him to come...

 

[glennd]

Well, we've had a good end to this saga. Said employee & progeny came in on his day off today and went through every square inch of the workroom, computer graveyard, stock bins & etc., and found both hard drives and the laptop. Everything had been uncharacteristically placed in a box to keep it together (we have clear, labeled bins that are supposed to be used for this purpose) and the box got carried into the back room. Inside the box was an unsigned dropoff/pickup form and one of the drives was labeled. He recovered the data from the working drive and client will pickup everything on Monday, none-the-wiser of our behind-the-scenes drama on this.

I have no idea why he did what he did, but let's just say everyone has a new appreciation for why we have the policies we do. Close call for sure, I hope he takes this as the learning experience it is and appreciates how close he came to losing a customer's data by being sloppy with procedure. Now I think I'm going to go have a drink. ;-)

got away with that one!

A thought I have in the aftermath is to give the protagonist the task of thoroughly reviewing the said procedures to ensure that everything that went wrong with this job is covered in the procedures and to propose any changes or additions to the procedures to possibly streamline or otherwise improve them in a way that gets better buy-in from everyone. He should ask himself why procedure wasn't followed in this case and propose changes that would make it easier for him to follow procedures. In other words, give him ownership of the procedures so that he now has a stake in following them properly and keeping them relevant. If something doesn't work for some reason, for him or anyone else, it's his job to come up with a better approach.

This is kind of ISO-ish but it's all about keeping your documented procedures relevant and up to date with what actually happens and what should happen and also to ensure everyone is aware of said documented procedures and why it's vital they are followed correctly.

You can buy my book at Amazon for only $9.95......

 

[seedubya]

My 2p worth

That's a lot more than tuppence worth! Best piece of HR advice I've seen on these forums, ever.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

Had policy been followed, the desktop hard drive should have been clearly labeled and sitting in one of the bins. The netbook should either be in the graveyard or already gone to the recyclers. We don't have a regular run, but when things start to stack up too much, we take everything. Probably about once per month. We definitely made a run at the end of August - I remember that.

New policy, nothing goes on that recycling run that doesn't have a label

I know you found them but still =P

 

[HCHTech]

A thought I have in the aftermath is to give the protagonist the task of thoroughly reviewing the said procedures to ensure that everything that went wrong with this job is covered in the procedures and to propose any changes or additions to the procedures to possibly streamline or otherwise improve them in a way that gets better buy-in from everyone.

This is great advice. Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Seriously, this is really good advice. Thank you.

 

[DataMedics]

A thought I have in the aftermath is to give the protagonist the task of thoroughly reviewing the said procedures to ensure that everything that went wrong with this job is covered in the procedures and to propose any changes or additions to the procedures to possibly streamline or otherwise improve them in a way that gets better buy-in from everyone.

This is really great advice. We do a breakfast meeting about once every three months where we sit down and discuss our current processes, how we can speed anything up, avoid mistakes, cover our liabilities, update our forms, etc. You can get a lot more done and avoid a ton of headaches if you follow well-planned procedures.

Basically, we go over everything that's gone wrong in the last quarter, and figure out a way to adjust our system to prevent that happening again. So, for example

Problem: we have an issue where a customer lies and says they paid for their data recovery, when in fact they hadn't, basically trying to steal their recovered data from us.

Solution: Implement a color-coded bin system for finished cases. Green bin = already paid, blue bin = awaiting payment.

Problem hasn't happened since.

 

[HCHTech]

We do a breakfast meeting about once every three months where we sit down and discuss our current processes, how we can speed anything up, avoid mistakes, cover our liabilities, update our forms, etc.

I've been meaning to do this for a while. It is so easy to just get caught up in the work. This is a great idea. We usually have post-year-end meetings, but those are always taken over by profitability discussions. Also, that's not frequent enough for things like policy review. Thanks for suggesting this!

 

[HCHTech]

My 2p worth

We are all human and we all make mistakes, policy and procedures are there for a reason for both client and customers.

I treat all incidents breaches on a personal level and I see what I can learn from the incident........[snipped for brevity]

You are a good person, @inetuk . I hope I'm a good enough boss that this can be my first reaction. It's something to strive for. I can't like your post more than once, so here's a +1 for you.

 

[EpicRhox]

I have had a similar situations where I have someone helping out and they don't follow procedures and I have had to take the bullet for it. But I have also made mistakes in the past and own up to them to the customer. So I remind myself of that anytime I have to deal with a situation like this, everyone makes mistakes and if you are not going to take the time to teach them how to not make those mistakes again then who will?