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With the global economic and financial challenges, and the attendant toughening business environment in almost all jurisdictions around the world, organizations or teams must operate in the most effective and efficient ways in order to remain relevant, avoid business failure, and in fact have a good chance of gaining the competitive edge.
Great organizations are built by great people. Every organization recognizes this; hence, the popular saying that “our people are our greatest assets”. But whether these organizations match their words with actions leaves much to be desired.
Smart and forward-looking organizations all over the world pay close attention to ways they can improve the productivity and performance of their employees. When people are effective, well-motivated, and properly engaged, productivity improves, creativity and innovation flourish, and business objectives are better achieved.
Productivity may be defined as an economic measure of output per unit of input (Investopedia). And labour productivity (output per worker or per hour worked) is one of the simplest and most commonly used measures of productivity – especially in service firms. When human capital is considered, productivity is a function of a refreshed and energized brain, heart, and mind, among other factors.
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With my almost two decades of work experience in world-class organizations as well as my deep personal studies of both prosperous and not-so-prosperous organizations, I offer here a few quick suggestions on ways business or team leaders can improve the productivity of their people, and drive greater business success.
Share Your Vision: Well-articulated and shared visions provide great direction and inspiration for team members, and hence, drive improved productivity. To ensure that employees or team members are aligned with the purpose and direction of the organization, a clear understanding of the vision is very key. And vision statements need not be complicated. They must simply state where the organization or team desires to be in the medium to long term; or what they want to become.
It is important that employees share in or buy into the organization’s vision. This can be facilitated by involving them in the development of the vision, or in regular reminders and discussions about this vision in most interactions within the organization – team meetings, performance review sessions, project committees, etc.
The vision statement must not just be a fashionable stuff hung at important corners in the organization. It must be translated to a living document guiding organizational behaviour, attitudes, work processes, policies, structures, and even job descriptions. Timely reviews are also very important.
When employees do not share in a vision or simply do not align properly with the vision, success would be far-fetched.
Set Inspiring Goals: Goal-setting strongly supports and flows from well-articulated vision statements. Every employee must understand clearly what is expected of him or her everyday at work. Goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART), and must support the achievement of not just short-term business objectives but also the long-term vision.
Again, employees must be made to participate actively in the goal-setting process to ensure everyone takes ownership of his or her own goals, and understands the rewards that follow their achievements or otherwise. With clearly set and inspiring goals, no employee is in doubt what is expected of him.
Promote Sound Organizational Culture: Organizational culture captures the subtle, elusive, and largely unconscious forces that shape a workplace. An organization’s culture usually flows from its core values, belief systems, basic assumptions, and behavioural patterns which may or may not be written down. In fact, most organizations deviate from their desired standards of behaviour enshrined in their corporate philosophy, and end up creating an environment where staff are fearful, abused, and demotivated.
To be effective, organizations must regularly assess their pervasive culture and their impact on business results. Sound organizational culture must include the enthronement of merit, fairness, honesty, accountability, friendliness, and a host of other positive attributes that promote good team work, and the building of healthy relationships.
Develop Employee Capacity: Every organization seems to understand the need to train and equip employees with the right skills, knowledge and competence to execute their jobs effectively, but not every employer has the guts to make the right investments in this direction. Various research works have clearly proven that organizations which properly train and develop their employees achieve greater success – sustainable performance, operational leadership, improved results, and so on.
Yet, many CEOs or team leaders fail to make the right investments in employee development for various flimsy excuses. Budget cuts or cost-cutting measures usually start from the training budget, quite unfortunately.
Poorly trained employees lack the power to out-do competitors even in the face of economic uncertainties.
Developing employee capacity must involve a combination of various activities and practices, including: regular team or in-house training and reviews; external training interventions (local and international); sponsoring employees to attend seminars, conferences, workshops, and networking events; secondments to other companies; granting study or sabbatical leaves; encouraging professional certifications; and volunteering employees for training and education activities; among a host others.
When you fail to develop your employees, you have no moral obligation to demand the best from them.
Deploy Appropriately: There is nothing as unproductive as deploying employees to roles or functions where their major strengths cannot be utilized. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and most people perform better in roles where their strengths are most easily deployed to get things done.
For proper deployment of employees, business leaders must ensure adequate interactions with prospective and existing employees in order to better understand their core talents and competencies as well as their key development areas.
Orji Udemezue
Orji Udemezue is the CEO of Flame Academy & Consulting Limited.
