The Best Practices Of Improving Staff Productivity

Thursday 24 September, 2009

by Jim Sirbasku

Who survives a treacherous economy? Many of the world's most productive companies not only live through turmoil but also thrive in spite of it. This article discusses particular attributes necessary to be productive.

The best practices offer ideas for any organisation seeking to improve productivity at ever-higher levels. As usual, the best practices involve workers, and how those workers are selected, trained and treated both in the short term and in the long run.
The people attributes that improve productivity of these best practice companies include the following.

Productivity best practice

1. Strive for a performance-driven culture
   
   What does that mean, exactly? If you are the CEO of your organisation, form a picture in your mind of what the culture looks like within your walls. Do you see workers handling customers with energy and a smile? Do you see clean and orderly offices and employees who are actually engaging with each other and with their work? Are phones answered on the first or second ring? Are people still at work after 5:00? How could you change that to improve productivity?
   
   The office culture of the top leader in your organisation will be the same for the rest of the organisation as well. Therefore, the leaders are initially responsible for improving productivity. Conjure up in your mind, or on paper, what you want to see. Tell your managers what it looks like. Walk the walk. The attitudes, beliefs and values of an organization define its culture, and the head of the "beast" will drive the whole body.
   
2. Train and promote effective managers
   
   This statement assumes that you selected the right people for your organisation in the first place. Then you trained them to do the job you hired them for, with the understanding that their training would be ongoing to continually improve productivity.
   
   The most productive companies constantly develop effective managers who continually improve productivity. They watch for excellent communication skills, strong leadership, creative thinking, team play, efficient work habits, achievement, development of others, and self-development. They give their managers the information and resources they need to understand and develop their own teams. They encourage coaching and the success of subordinates.
   
3. Use employees in the best ways possible
   
   In the "old days", idle employees might have run personal errands for the boss. In today's high-performance landscape, there are no idle employees. If you see them in your organisation, you are not working for a most productive company, and should consider how to improve productivity.
   
   Effective employee utilisation begins at the top, with an eye to design a company where every job is dedicated to executing strategy in the most efficient way possible to improve productivity. No matter what a worker's job is, he is guided by a job description and knows what he is expected to achieve. Productive companies complete projects quickly because they are lean. They rely on contract workers or temporary employees to help them over seasonal or temporary, non-recurring bumps in production. They increase their number of full-time, permanent employees only if there is a proven need for it. They improve productivity in any way possible.
   
4. Encourage high employee effectiveness
   
   The only way to do this is to know everything possible about your employees - know them better than they know themselves. Understand what they do well and what they do best. Know their interests so you know where they will be most effective.
   
   How do you gain this knowledge? Through assessments, surveys, postings of internal openings, nudging when necessary, and managerial development. Don't forget that managers sometimes hold their people back. Find out who does this and why, and find a way to stop it to improve productivity.
   
5. Recognise and reward innovation
   
   Chances are that the CEO is very good at this and that the managers need to improve. CEOs are often most familiar with the fact that small innovations are priceless in the effort to improve productivity. Did someone figure out a way to make a stubborn piece of machinery work better? Who cured the delay problems in the shipping department by making a simple change to the order form?
   
   Some organisations listen too hard for the cheer when they issue a press release about a life-changing new product or service. Cheers are nice, but they are rare. Top leaders have control over their own cheering sections, and they use that control liberally when an employee doing his job well, figures out a way to improve something. Encourage the exchange of ideas and an open dialogue. Urge people to take calculated risks by not punishing them if the results are less than you, or they, wanted. Always focus on action instead of control to further improve productivity.
   

Do you see your organisation as you read this? If your answer is an honest yes, then you are already a best practice company. If your answer is a maybe or a no, what are you going to do about it?


Source:ceoonline.com