Owning or managing a business is a big responsibility. You need to ensure that you make best use of your resources. One of the main resources of any business is the people who work there. Making sure you take care of, and motivate, these people is essential if you want to improve productivity.
The purpose of this article is to take a look at three of the most effective ways for you to improve productivity. They involve making sure your workforce is well informed, respected and well trained.
Optimise Communication
You are never going to be truly successful in business if you do not communicate well. This is one of the best ways of making sure the people who work for you remain motivated. The more motivated they are, the more likely it is that their productivity levels will increase.
Without good communication, it's difficult for one part of the business to know what other parts are doing, and how they fit into the bigger picture. People also start to feel ignored and neglected if they are not informed about important factors concerning their work. We recently heard about a workforce that only found out the company they worked for had been bought out by listening to the TV news. Hardly the best way to motivate people.
If you want your communication to be effective you need to have a communications strategy and plan in place. You need to formalise your communication methods, which could include:
- Away days and conferences where you can hire keynote speakers to introduce your message.
- Regular newsletters.
- Email updates.
- Regular team meetings.
- One to one meetings between managers and staff members.
These are all valuable parts of a good communications plan.
Set Clear Goals and Recognise a Job Well Done
If people do not know what they are expected to achieve they are less likely to be motivated to work to improve productivity levels. It's definitely not motivational to expect people to work away with no clue as to whether they are doing well or not.
You need to make sure that clear goals are set. It's also important that when people achieve or surpass their goals this should be recognised. It's amazing how powerful a genuine well done and thank you can be.
Provide Relevant Coaching and Training
This is an aspect of improving productivity that it's easy to neglect. After all, providing training and coaching can be costly. The rewards can be impressive though. A well trained, aware and supported workforce is always going to be more productive than one which does not have these benefits.
It's a good idea to make sure that every individual has a personal development plan. They should have the opportunity to discuss this with their manager, and work out what training and development is beneficial for them. This could be something as simple as shadowing another section, or it could be something more substantial, such as attending college one day each week.
All three of these factors are important if you want to motivate the people who work for you, and improve productivity.
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