Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your Office

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Productivity|Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your OfficeWhen you run a business, there’s a lot that you need to think about. You might start your day with a massive to-do list, that only seems to get longer as the day goes on and more problems are brought to your attention. Every time you cross one thing off the list, two more jobs might get added. You might have to spend time dealing with customers and suppliers, as well as keeping your team members happy and coming up with new ideas. Your days are busy, and it can feel as though there is no time to take anything else on.

On these occasions, finding ways to boost productivity might not seem like a priority. But it’s usually one of the very best things that you do. Believe it or not, increasing your own productivity, as well as the productivity of your team on the whole, using an online data room and other tools, can help you to deal with all of those other issues, and simplify your days. Let’s take a look at just some of the reasons why you should commit to boosting productivity.

To Get More Done in Less Time

Getting more done in less time is something that many of us dream about. It would both give us more free time, letting us take more time off to do the things that we love, and allow us to spend our time on more creative enterprises and finding ways to improve and grow our business. If you had to spend less time on menial tasks, you would be free to spend more time doing the things that you enjoy, or more creative pursuits that only you can do.

Being more productive is the answer. If your whole office were more productive, everyone would get more done, with less time wasted and spent unfocused. Everyone could work shorter days, take longer breaks and spend more time doing the things that push your business forward. Get more done in less time, and you’ll also have the chance to earn more money.

To Keep Your Staff Happy

Staff morale and productivity go hand in hand. If morale is low, and your staff are unhappy, they won’t be able to work productively. They’ll be unfocused, they’ll waste time and procrastinate, and their work will be poor. Each task will take longer than it should.

But, equally, a team that works productively will be happier. If they’ve got more time, and they feel as though they are working well, getting a lot done and making the most of their time, their mood will be improved. This can rub off on the rest of the team.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Productivity|Why You Need to Boost Productivity in Your OfficeTo Reduce Mistakes

Working more productively can also mean that fewer mistakes are made, which again, will increase productivity further as less time is spent redoing things and correcting errors.

A productive team that is happy, motivated and focused will make fewer mistakes. They won’t be flustered or confused. They’ll feel positive and confident. They won’t doubt themselves, and they’ll be happy to ask for help or guidance if they need it.

To Streamline Processes

These are another two that work hand in hand. If your office systems are streamlined and easy, your staff will be able to follow them easily, making fewer mistakes and working well. Thus, boosting productivity.

But, a productive office that makes fewer mistakes and is less flustered will be able to streamline their own work. They’ll be able to find better ways to do things, to cut unnecessary tasks and to find their own ways to work, which suit their style. Give your staff the freedom to work their way and productivity will be boosted.

To Improve Quality

A productive workforce that makes fewer mistakes and is confident in their own abilities will do quality work. The standard of work will improve, and your customers will be able to tell the difference.

So, we can see that boosting productivity is a must, but how are you going to do it? Well, a few techniques that you could try include letting your staff take regular breaks and allowing them to work more flexible hours. Keeping your workspace bright and open and operating an open door policy. Being an understanding boss, who your staff are happy to come to and confide in, will also be a big help. Other things that you could do include removing negativity from the office, increasing natural light, adding plants and other colors and simplifying systems, so that peoples jobs are as easy as possible. Really, you need to try things out, to see what productivity-boosting ideas work best for your company and your team.

How to hire the best talent

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Recruiting Talent|How to hire the best talentMost business leaders understand they need great people working for them to make their business a success. People are an organisations most valuable asset. Build a workplace where people are valued and you have a much greater chance of attracting talent.

In the current economic climate, if you want to hire the best talent you also have to understand these four things.

  • It’s an employees’ market
  • Salary isn’t the only thing employees care about
  • It’s hard to hire great people
  • The B word (Brexit)

So why do these things matter in the world of recruitment? Let’s take a closer look.

It’s an employees’ market

Unemployment is at an all-time low, which means today’s job market is tough …. for employers! Successful recruitment isn’t easy at the best of times, but with record levels of employment, the search for talent and retention are a huge challenge for businesses large and small.

So, what can businesses do to entice people who are already settled in another job? Well “If the mountain will not come to Muhammed, then Muhammad must go to the mountain”!

Businesses looking for talent can no longer rely on job boards to attract people (these forums only reach those actively seeking jobs). Businesses must understand they need to connect with passive job-seekers. Businesses need to begin by broadening their search. Using social media marketing and LinkedIn to publicise opportunities is a good place to start.

Ultimately, it’s about improving online branding to publicise the fact that you are a great employer (Glassdoor reviews matter). Old-school recruitment methods just don’t work in the current business climate.

It’s now critical that businesses adopt more modern recruitment strategies. Study your competitors so you can figure out what makes you different. You want to be able to tell prospective employees why they should work for you.

Salary isn’t everything

A report by The Psychology of Business on what people really want from their job says that culture is the new salary. While the report refers to American businesses, this shift in company culture appeal also applies to the UK. Business culture in the UK is an important currency for prospective recruits.

According to the Government’s business statistics there were 5.7 million SMEs in the UK in 2018, which accounted for over 99 per cent of all businesses. This is an important fact to consider when it comes to recruitment because most organisations competing for talent are small businesses that don’t have big budgets for large salaries. It’s where culture comes in.

For start-ups and small businesses, talent is an incredibly important asset. Culture is the answer as to how smaller businesses can compete for top talent. A report on workplace culture by LinkedIn says 71 per cent of individuals would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values align with their own. Professionals today just won’t work for leading companies if they have a bad workplace culture.

But what is a good culture? It certainly isn’t bean bags and bowls of fruit. Positive culture is all about giving employees a sense of purpose, providing opportunities for growth, supporting people but holding them accountable, offering flexibility, fostering trust, acknowledging achievements, showing appreciation and more. It takes effort and investment.

However, culture alone won’t cut it. People need to be able to live with financial security. Poor pay is a problem and a fair salary is still important. Small business expert Gene Marks reflects on why SMEs are struggling to find good people. The solution he says is simple – “we just aren’t paying enough.

“Some say that small businesses can’t afford to pay their employees more. I’m not so sure about that. I have clients that insist on paying low hourly wages to warehouse workers and below-market salaries to administrative and support professionals because that’s what they’ve been used to doing for the past decade. These clients are profitable and have the money to pay more. But they don’t.”
Salary isn’t everything, but it needs to be competitive and fair.

Talent scarcity

A recent survey by global business consultancy PwC, found that 72 per cent of CEOs are worried about the availability of key skills, stating that it’s not a lack of people that is the problem, but a lack of people with the RIGHT skills and abilities.

Millennials will soon make up over 50 per cent of the global workforce. They put training at the top of their list when starting a new job or evaluating an existing employer. SMEs have to acknowledge this fact. For the SME, training staff is critical. Millennials want to be in learning cultures. The SMEs grasping this fact will ultimately gain from growing their talent from within.

Brexit and recruitment

Brexit uncertainty has, according to James Stewart of KPMG, “been sapping business confidence for months, and now it is causing the jobs market to grind to a halt. With unclear trading conditions ahead, many companies have decided to hit the pause button on new hires.”

As a result, there has been a sharp increase in the use of temps and contract workers, with businesses choosing temporary recruitment solutions rather than taking on permanent employees until the Brexit dust has settled.

There is a fear amongst businesses around recruitment, particularly in sectors where there is a reliance on EU workers. When (if?) we eventually leave the EU, skill scarcity could potentially be exacerbated once free movement comes to an end.

So how can businesses mitigate against the effects of Brexit?

Aviation recruitment specialist, Ryan Abbott, advises on the UK skills shortage “In a globally connected world where students are bombarded with choices, we need to shout louder to reach potential talent who are unaware of what our industries can offer. Business leaders and recruiters can partner with colleges and schools to directly engage with students and show them the variety of successful careers open to them across UK industries.”

UK businesses need to widen their search and open their eyes to new ways of attracting talent into their organisations, as well as invest more in training from within.

Your Bad Leaders Are Driving Away Good Employees

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Retention | Management and LeadershipThese days, it’s hard to keep a good employee in your ranks. Messages across the web tell young workers that the only way to get ahead is to hop positions frequently, even as much as once per year. In the modern job market, frequent relocations seems to be how employees get the titles, responsibilities and perks they crave.

So, employees are already poised to leave — and they will flee your offices even faster if your leadership isn’t up to snuff. Here are a few ways bad leaders negatively impact your employee retention and what you can do to stop it.

Poor Communication

Good communication is the number-one requirement for a leader. After all, it’s impossible to lead if you don’t know how to use words to direct your workforce. Still, many poor communicators make it to leadership positions, and from there, they wreak all sorts of havoc. Poor communication can take many forms:

  • Over-inflated — using too much jargon, too many big words or overly convoluted sentence structure
  • Non-specific — failing to provide clear instructions or guidelines for a project or situation
  • Abrasive — communicating with aggressive language and/or with anger
  • Selfish — communicating only to seek personal benefits, ignoring others’ needs or desires
  • Wrong method — employing an inappropriate means of communication

Fortunately, communication is a skill like any other, which means it is possible to retrain these leaders to improve their performance. It might be wise to encourage leaders to develop their communication through advanced education, like an MBA program, or else through mentorship or coaching.

Criticism

There is a fine line between healthy feedback and destructive criticism — and many leaders stray to the wrong side too often. Leaders are meant to coach, helping employees improve their skills and thus develop their careers. Bad leaders will nit-pick, taking every chance to degrade employees and make them feel ineffective and worthless.

Many employees become so downtrodden by the constant criticism that they do not report the bad behavior to HR or higher bosses, which means it is often difficult to identify overly critical leaders. If you receive any reports of an unsympathetic, judgmental leader, you should take them seriously and take steps to effect change.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to retrain leaders who develop this habit. Often, it is a clear and simple sign that someone is poorly suited to leadership and should be removed to a different role. However, you might also need to undo the damage of these leaders by being overly appreciative of employee contributions, perhaps even handing out employee awards to raise general self-esteem.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Retention | Your Bad Leaders Are Driving Away Good Employees | Office Politics | Business PoliticsOffice Politics

Office politics is an unavoidable power and social networking system that develops in any organization, big or small. The manipulation of office politics by some employees is inevitable — but that doesn’t mean it’s okay for leaders to take advantage of the political atmosphere of an office. An overly political office often breeds fear amongst the workforce; fear causes employees to resent their employer, which drives up staff turnover.

Leaders might try to leverage office politics to encourage employees to work harder — but there is a delicate balance between positive and negative outcomes from political maneuvering. Plus, office politics always comes with ethical concerns, which certainly won’t boost your brand perception. It’s much safer to discourage leaders from inciting a political atmosphere in your workplace.

Dirty Laundry

Work only amounts to so much of a person’s life, and while it’s fine (even encouraged!) to share a bit of your home life with your coworkers, no one should be divulging unseemly personal drama in the workplace. Dirty laundry, much like office politics, breeds discomfort amongst your workforce; a proliferation of dirty laundry encourages people to spread rumors, with can reduce interpersonal trust and send employees looking for less threatening work.

Leaders need to find a balance between humanizing themselves with personal details and airing dirty laundry. Human resources can help train leaders who struggle to set boundaries. It’s also wise to build a workplace culture that allows for personal bonds between workers, so information about anyone’s personal life doesn’t seem quite so salacious.

Fear, discomfort, distrust — these are things that bad leaders can breed amongst your workforce, virtually guaranteeing that no good employee stays for longer than a few months. Your business can’t grow unless your workforce is stable and capable, which means you might need to take steps to change your leadership, stat.

The Qualities Of A Good Team

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Team Management|The Qualities Of A Good TeamAny business is going to be made up of teams, and the quality of those teams is going to determine to a large degree the success of the business. If you are hoping for the many myriad teams in your business to operate and function as you would hope them to, then there are many things you can focus on to be sure that they are as good as you would hope. One way to begin is to start thinking about what kinds of positive qualities you are likely to want or need in a good team. As long as you are aware of these, you can try to instill them a little more, and you should find that your teams are much more likely to do well and so improve your business performance in no time too. Let’s take a look.

Skilled Individuals

Any team is only as good as the people within it. That is a simple enough thing to realize, but it is something nonetheless which you are going to have to think about if you are to make sure that your teams are going to be as strong as you would hope. The matter of finding the best individuals you can for a team is complex and varied. First of all there is the initial recruitment process, whereby you need to make sure that you are filtering out those who are less than ideal for your team. Professional help from the likes of DSC Personnel could be the way to go here, as could having a clear image of what kind of individuals you are hoping to hire. Then it’s just a matter of ensuring that everyone is in the right team within the business, so that their skills are going to be put to the best possible use.

Shared Values

The more that these individuals have values in common, the easier they will find it to work towards a common goal. For that reason, you need to try and put people together who seem to want the same kind of result or output, as that is going to be a much more successful team on the whole. If you can encourage them to share their values and to discover their similarities here, you will find that it makes a huge difference to how well they work together, and the kind of results they produce as a team.

Delegation

Finally, any good team needs to know who is going to do what and why. As long as there is someone in charge who can divy out the tasks and delegate where necessary, you will find that the teams are going to work out much more successfully on the whole as a result of that. Delegation is an indication that the team is working well, and that everyone is in the right place, which is absolutely something you are going to want to aim towards if you want teams that work well.

How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?
 
Software developers have always been in high demand, but in 2019 the appetite for developers has just increased as new innovations and applications emerge. With this high demand comes a corresponding rise in salary expectations.

So how much can a software developer expect to make in 2019?

It’s not a simple answer. Not all software development jobs are alike; some are more specialized than others, which is reflected in their pay. But there are so many different types of software development specializations these days that it’s a challenge to keep track of them all and how much they pay.

That’s why we’ve put together a handy table below, with the most common types of software developer roles as of 2019 and what they earn.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | How Much do Software Developers Make in 2019?

*All figures based on Ziprecruiter estimates

Notice how in the above chart that the more specialized roles are able to receive a much higher average salary than the more general roles as they get more experience. The outlier seems to be blockchain developers, who receive disproportionately higher starting salaries due to both their rarity, the difficulty of the subject matter, and the current hype surrounding blockchain development.

AI and machine learning developers have similarly high salary prospects. The starting salaries mentioned in the chart are misleading. Actually, only a small percentage of jobs pay at this low range. Salary ranges begin to spike at $78,500 – $91,000 for AI developers (19% of jobs) and $70,500 – $100,499 for machine learning developers (17% of jobs).

The starting salary of cyber security engineers is also misleading. 30% of surveyed cyber security engineer jobs actually begin at the $83,000 to $108,499 range. This reflects cyber security’s vital role in an increasingly digital world, especially in large-scale enterprises with massive amounts of data.

Video game developer salaries in 2019 are also higher than in more general developer roles, however, there is a culture of overwork inherent in the industry which is a definite trade-off for anyone seeking a position in that field.

Note that engineering roles have slight but significant job differences from your standard developer: engineers don’t just code. Software engineers help develop processes and apply engineering principles to solve client needs, which means understanding the big picture and taking a strategic approach. It requires an additional skill set beyond mere programming and is reflected in the salary. The right software engineer will help ensure your development projects don’t fail, which attributes to their high demand and salary requirements.

So there you have it. We hope this chart will be helpful in either choosing a career in software development or switching to a different specialization in mid-career.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Shane ZilinskasShane Zilinskas is the Founder and CEO of Los Angeles software development agency ClearSummit, and the Co-Founder and CTO of TuneRegistry, a music rights SaaS platform. He also provides consulting services to startups and enterprise companies. Prior to working in the agency space, Shane built news media backends and part of the FAA’s air traffic control system. He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from UVA. He has a passion for efficiency and combining the best tech and design to solve complex problems.

Twitter: @clearsummitapps