In business, setting goals and meeting targets are important indicators that your efforts as a whole are working, and that your commute to work every day is actually a worthwhile endeavour. Otherwise, what is the point? You probably already know this, it’s a good thing that our blog today is on a different, but not unrelated topic – performance management.
Simply put, you cannot achieve the company’s objectives without ensuring that the goals of individual staff members are met. However, setting goals for your staff and encouraging them to set their own goals is only half the battle, some people have the inherent ability to perform, while others may need a little bit of nurturing to reach their full potential.
Apart from providing supportive, cooperative leadership and hiring productive employees with the right attitude, there are ways that you can strategically manage your employees’ performance. You cannot create a high-performing work environment without:
Ensuring open and efficient communication
Communication in the workplace can be divided into two interdependent segments, firstly, being able to voice concerns. The sooner problems are addressed and put to rest, be it conflict or slow processes, the sooner work can get back on track. Secondly, we all require resources in order to do our jobs, often our functions form part of a bigger picture. Smooth communication and information sharing is an absolute must for productivity. If the wheels have fallen off somewhere for whatever reason it can result in a lot of wasted time.
Encouraging autonomy
Allowing your employees to govern themselves to a certain extent helps work move through the system faster and frees up your time for more important matters. Staff that are given more autonomy have greater job satisfaction and more confidence. Heightening performance is a delicate balance of quality and speed, meaning how fast can your company produce work that meets quality expectations. The most productivity occurs when employees can deliver the required quality of work, consistently and with the least oversight.
Holding individuals accountable
Now to some, giving employees a larger degree of autonomy might sound a bit scary – that is why it is also so important to hold staff accountable for their own actions. Taking ownership of their own work. Being able to practice independent thinking and decision making has a phenomenal impact on confidence and productivity. That being said, if there are any deviations in procedure and quality individuals should be able to justify their actions with thought processes and reasoning. If not, there should be consequences in place.
Encourage creativity and innovation towards improvement
Get your staff excited about exploring creative new ways of doing their work, bettering processes and bettering themselves, to increase efficiency and productivity. Honestly, if you’re looking to improve processes, two heads are better than one.
It is important to remember that not everyone is the same, nor will they perform the same, but as an employer, you can implement strategies that foster and continually optimise performance. Little efforts like recognising and rewarding good performance, offering enriching training opportunities and just general trust, instilling loyalty and respect. These are all characteristics of the most high-performing work environments.