4 Steps to Boost Productivity & Employee Retention

How would you like to boost the productivity in your organization whilst addressing employee retention? How would that impact your bottom line & overall company culture?

Whilst reading a McKinsey Quarterly document recently, I decided to add some more practical thoughts to the four barriers workers face in their daily interactions.

Their analysis focuses specifically on Knowledge Workers, which make up more than 40% of the US work force. I was quite surprised to find that they didn't list as a key barrier "distraction", which is the #1 enemy of productivity in any workplace.

In addressing these 4 barriers, you will bring about greater alignment & cohesion amongst your employees, increasing retention & strengthening company culture.

Step 1; Physical and technical barriers

In addition to social media tools, company intranets, yammer, etc., create Communities of Practice made up of people who could benefit from one another's advice. Encourage your staff, and allocate time, to communicate their experiences and benefits gained through such practice communities. Encourage you team to have virtual & non-virtual lunch breaks with colleagues across disciplines with your organization by getting them outside of the comfort zones.

Bridge any physical distances through the usage of electronic tools with viedo-conferencing and occasional in-person meetings.

Step 2; Social or cultural barriers

Engagement is key to success, so start with your new hire orientation, and then rehire your existing employees all over again. Create a series of case studies by having your team share practical examples that shine on your company Values, Mission, Vision, and how your processes & norms contribute to their integrity. Encourage a culture of knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving, including these items within your periodic performance reviews and ensure team leaders clearly communicate what's expected, whilst setting an example. Foster & leverage communities of practice which will help your staff be more engaging.

Communicate & keep all of these successes highly visible! In addition to technology tools like an intranet, hang signs, post bulletin boards, white boards, flip charts, etc. Make it visual!

Step 3; Contextual barriers

Rotate employees across teams and or divisions so that they get a wider understanding for what's going on outside of their own silos, and a better comprehension as to what activities they can influence with this added clarity. Create company forums, online through your intranet, or off-line where your staff can share knowledge & experiences across disciplines. Encourage your team to have lunch with  a colleague from a new area of your organization on a bi-weekly basis & watch the contextual barriers come down like a house of bricks.

Step 4; The barrier of time

Perform an analysis of where people are spending their time. Ensure that job roles & responsibilities are updated, understood & appropriate for the results you expect from your staff (teams & individuals). Then quantify the gap between expected activity / results vs. actual activity / results. Take the respective learnings & transition them into new habits.

How are these barriers impacting your current environment? What steps can you take to start addressing them immediately? Remember, the longest journey starts with a first single step.

Guest Blog by JC Duarte; The Strategy Guy

How to get Work done at Work!

Have you ever tried to get meaningful work done but just couldn't seem to accomplish it during a normal workday? Why is it that you have to save really important work for "quite time"? The plane, train or automobile ride home / your next destination? Why do we reserve quite time after dinner when he kids are put to bed, or come into work early in the morning before the barrage of colleagues, phones, e-mails, meetings, etc.. (i.e. INTERRUPTIONS start)?

Jason Fried's insightful Ted Talk

Having started off last Friday listening to Jason Fried's insightful Ted Talk entitled Why work doesn't happen at work, I'd like to share with you some key tangible solutions that go a bit beyond Jason's simplified solutions of No Talk Thursday, Passive Communication & Canceling Meetings. These quick fix / band-aid solutions can actually be very damaging to your company when you never address the root cause of your problems.

Don't get me wrong, I respect Jason / his accomplishments. In fact, I've used & benefited greatly from some of his collaboration products, such as Basecamp. That said, I'm concerned at having often picked-up the pieces from over simplifying a deep rooted problem in today's professional environment. This is the kind of stuff that creates high employee / customer turn-over, not to mention, eventually drive a company out of business when not adequately addressed.

No talk Thursday

At the root of the issue is either (a) no effective plan / strategy in place for people to be able to link daily tasks to in order to progress toward a successful outcome; (b) there is a plan but it hasn't been effectively communicated / bought-into by the team, and therefore they don't understand which tasks will make them successful; (c) the work environment is indeed not conducive to performing effective work & therefore you have to understand the root causes of the interruptions in order to eliminate them, including the dismissal of employees who just don't have the skill, the will & the motivation to improve. This last bit could be as simple as disciplining the office socialite that wants to foster healthy interexchange between colleagues which needs to be reserved for "programed" breaks, lunch of out-of-office time.

The term "programmed breaks" now leaves it to the individual to decide if he/she is willing to interrupt productive work to go off and have a break which they hadn't planned. It also means blocking all of the pop-ups (e-mail, instant messaging, etc) that people typically have programmed on their computers. It could even be as wide-spread as educating people about noise levels from impromptu meetings in open spaces which distract others who are trying to concentrate. No talk Thursday will fix the latter, but it's neither effective nor scalable because most companies I've seen, the significant challenge has more to due with lacking effective plans, strategies, outcome focus and or buy-in.

The best tool that I've seen to effectively nail-down the root cause / impact of breaks / interruptions on productive work is the tools WorkMeter based on grass-roots empowerment principles.

Passive Communication

I've bought into the collaborative tools, as long as the strategy or plan their working towards has effectively been thought-out and individuals / teams have bought-into (Clarity, Unity & Agility) the tasks that are necessary to reach a predefined successful outcome. What I don't see as effective is the use of e-mail or instant messaging, especially in getting things done that are best served by two people actually having a face-to-face discussion. I would also promote the use of a tools such as Yammer in place of, or as a compliment to, the traditional bulletin boards. Lastly, when communication isn't handled properly, Jason's approach lulls your teams into passive thinking, which means that solutions to BIG problems will take much longer to resolve. You don't want passive, but rather active / pro-active & apply rhythmic processes.

Canceling Meetings

Yes, the majority of the meetings I've witnessed are ineffective and disrespectful of people's time, but again, simply canceling meetings won't address the root cause of the problem. If you have (a) an effective plan / strategy, (b) staff alignment & bought-into the necessary / appropriate processes & tasks, and (c) rhythmic processes, then you won't have a need for ineffective meetings.

Rather than canceling meetings, how about you educate people on the power of effective meetings? At minimum, an effective meeting has:

1. A predefined & stated purpose


2. A logical agenda & timeline that leads to...


3. Who, What, When & Where of SMARTER Decisions / Action Items


4. Preferably is organized so that relevant people come in & out of the meeting as needed


5. A conclusion, wrap-up (for buy-in) and next steps processes

 

I'm also a fan of auditing meeting outcomes. Randomly spot-check meetings to ensure they cover at least these "5 basics", and in addition, review the decisions / outcome (action items) and measure them as to how they relate to the stated & agreed company strategy. This will save you a lot of head-aches down the road, and give you much more than just "feel-good" meetings.

So what do you think? Anything here that you'd consider new & you could learn from? If so, please act on that thought and put it into action. Also, if you know anyone else that could benefit from this post, please be generous & pass it along! I'll guarantee you the recipient will be grateful!

Guest Blog by JC Duarte; The Strategy Guy