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11. Resolve Conflicts Promptly: Conflicts are common with every human system. Due to the divergent interests, goals, and demands by different teams, people and groups in an organization, conflicts are bound to occur. Differences in values, beliefs, and culture; work intensity; scarcity of resources; high-stress levels; uncertainties; inconsistent leadership; and poor communication are among a few other factors that escalate conflicts in organizations.
While conflicts may have some positive effects, in an organization’s work dynamics, improperly resolved conflicts can result in reduced productivity, among other negative effects. It is therefore important for team conflicts (Intra and inter) are resolved promptly and properly in order to eliminate the negative effects on productivity.
Whether corporate leaders choose to resolve a conflict by competing, collaboration, compromising, avoiding or accommodating, it is important to separate people from the problems, and also to focus on interests, and not on positions. Promptness in resolving conflicts helps improve their positive effects in building organizational capabilities.
READ ALSO: Nigeria’s Labour productivity up 7.54% in Q3, 2018
12. Make Meetings Effective: One of the key challenges faced by many organizations in managing their time and improving effectiveness is in the management of meetings – especially team and company-wide internal meetings. Many organizations spend a lot in organizing meetings – travel costs, travel time, meeting hours, entertainment cost, etc. And while some of these meetings may be necessary for driving performance, many times, people who are not necessary for meetings are invited. Not to talk about the unnecessarily long hours spent in internal “rantings”. Many companies spend time “engaging” themselves instead of the customers and yet expect to build customer intimacy and improved business outcome.
Smart companies and leaders must ensure meetings are necessary, and that only important personnel are invited to relevant meetings. Prepare and circulate an agenda for meetings, and stick to these agenda. Encourage active participation of all invitees, and close meetings timely to enable employees to get on the real job of serving customers and getting things done.
Where necessary, adopt virtual meetings through tele/video-conferencing or via other technology-enabled meeting platforms.
13. Encourage New Ideas: Many organizations spend a lot of money in acquiring key talents but unfortunately these talents are not encouraged to bring up new ideas. When employees are not allowed to share their ideas freely – perhaps, due to fear of being victimized or rejected – innovation and creativity take the back seat while mediocrity and backwardness prevail. Without the injection of fresh ideas and solutions in an organization, productivity suffers.
Business leaders must foster an environment where employees are encouraged to speak up at meetings or strategy sessions – especially on issues that affect the work they do.
READ ALSO: Nigeria must focus on jobs, wealth creation through revival of industrial bases -experts
14. Enable Technology: In today’s business environment, technology has continued to be a major driver of productivity and process improvements in organizations. From information systems, data mining and analytics, big data, automation/robotics, simulations, systems networking, digital platforms, and a host of others, smart companies or organizations are deploying technology in assisting their employees to achieve much more with fewer efforts.
15. Provide Great Leadership: Everything rises and falls on leadership (John Maxwell). Many organizations fail due to ineffective management of people and resources occasioned by bad leadership. Leadership challenges include: developing a vision; motivating others; setting agendas and timetables; securing resources, and the need to follow-through; etc
Leadership development and the institution of management best practices are critical to enabling employees to perform better and become more productive in their work. Great leadership inspires people to do more, achieve more and become more.
Overall, no organization can be at its best without improving employee productivity. While productivity improvement depends on several intrinsic and extrinsic factors, I strongly believe that the ideas shared in this article, when properly applied in any organization, would surely lead to improved productivity, and the achievement of the firms’ overall business objectives.
Orji Udemezue
