Productivity - Getting more for less

In our second week of our top tips I am focussing on Productivity, how can you get more from your employees?

 

 

When dealing with performance issues in smaller businesses there are often ways these could have been avoided and so here is some food for thought.

1)     Ensure your Managers are adequately trained

 Many small to medium businesses want to promote from within, which is a great way of developing their workers. What can often happen is that your Managers actually have no experience of people management but have lots of experience of the job in hand.

Investing some time and money in training your Manager to manage effectively can save huge amounts of time and energy in avoiding staffing issues and helping to develop a focussed and motivated work place.

2)     Provide feedback on a regular basis

Taking some time out to review performance with your teams can both motivate by telling employees they are doing a great job or allow you to pick up issues which need improvement sooner rather than later, giving you and your employees an better chance of getting a positive outcome.

Try conducting monthly 121 meetings, even if this is just 15 minutes to discuss the previous month and set some targets or goals for the month to come.

3)     Provide support when needed

There are times for us all when life gets in the way of our jobs and the stress of trying to juggle home and work life become a strain. By providing some support and flexibility at real times of need will build goodwill and loyalty which are invaluable in your businesses time of need.

4)     Build a team

Most employees want to be part of a team, a collective rather than just an individual in an organisation no matter how large or small.

Share your business goals, vision and core values with your team so they want to live and breathe them just like you!

5)     Measure success

The only true way to improve productivity, provide rewards and recognition is to be able to measure results accurately.

Think about how you can put in measurements for success, whether this be productivity, quality or sales targets – giving a clear focus and measure will help your teams have clarity on what is expected.

More importantly – set realistic and achievable goals. Setting up your team to fail is only counter productive.

Watch out for more top tips next week on Health & Safety.