productivity
Improving Productivity Starts With Improving Management
9:06 PMBusiness owners know that workers who aren’t using their time and
resources effectively are costing the company money. Declining
productivity means falling profits and sliding competitive position.
That makes the findings from this Productivity Report a
cause of concern to employers.
- Inadequate workforce supervision (31% of all wasted time)
- Poor management planning and control of work (30%)
- Poor communication (18%)
The remainder of wasted time recorded was the result of IT problems, low morale and a skills absence or mismatch.
When managers were asked to select from a range of
actions they considered could increase workplace productivity the top 2
they chose were investment in workforce skills and investment in
management skills. But this may be putting the cart before the horse.
The interesting thing is that all three major
contributors to time waste are directly referable to internal management
practices. Wasted time may be up, but as the report recognizes, the
root cause for that is inadequate management supervision, disjointed
planning of production processes and inadequate communication of the
information employees need to work at their most productive level.
Managers can’t dodge their share of responsibility
for the amount of time wasted each year by under-producing employees.
When it comes to improving productivity the first area to attend to
should be reforming poor management practices and getting managers up to
speed in some basic skills.
Workforce Supervision
How to supervise a group of people effectively is a
basic HR skill for anybody in a position of leadership or management.
Managers should have at least some training in critical HR areas such as
employment law, selecting people with the right workforce skills,
setting compensation packages, training and developing employees and
carrying out performance reviews. These HR skills underpin your ability
to get the best out of your employees and improve organizational
performance.
Management Planning
The ability to work to a business plan that sets out
the broad goals to be achieved in a given period of time, organize all
the inputs required to achieve the goals, coordinate the activities and
monitor progress towards them are all essential managerial skills
necessary to achieve business growth, yet the ability of many managers
in these areas is problematic.
Inefficient practices are rarely improved by simply
automating them. Introducing technology before optimizing the process it
is intended to improve merely results in automated inefficiency. But
how many managers take the time to analyze just how efficiently their
key processes, such as supply chain operations, are working? How many
take the effort to develop procedure manuals to ensure employees do
things in a consistent and approved manner?
Communication
Managers often have issues with formulating and
delivering clear verbal instruction. This can be addressed to a large
degree by having the right support resources in place: a clear
organisational structure; well defined job descriptions to avoid
confusion about responsibilities; policies and procedures manuals to
provide a definitive answer on the approved method of doing things; and
investing time in inducting and training new employees. Implementing
measures like these will reap huge long term productivity benefits.
Employees do usually try to achieve what they think
the job requires of them. To get them achieving the right things you
need to be very clear in the instruction you provide, whether that be at
the level of explaining how to perform a process or what goals the
business is trying to achieve and their role in contributing to their
attainment.
Poor productivity can be the result of just plain
time wasting by employees but more likely it’s the result of poor
planning, inefficient practices and an inability to clearly communicate
what needs doing. Whether through coaching, talking to a business
advisor or putting themselves through one of the many SME management
short courses on offer, a manager has a responsibility to make
themselves the best they can be before laying problems of poor
productivity at the feet of their employees.
At Business Blogs you can find
help to determine the skills training required by you or your managers.
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