Eliminating Procrastination from Your Company

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyIf you have an employee that procrastinates, hopefully, you will have spotted the signs. They always have something else they must do first, or they will do what you are asking tomorrow. They may say they just do not have the time, or that they will do it in half an hours.

You want your employees to be as productive as possible, but there have always been procrastinators in most workforces. They can unsettle the other members of staff and generally make your workforce unhappy. If you have someone like this in your workplace, how can you deal with the problem to eliminate it?

Have A Chat With Them

The first thing to do is to try and find out why they are behaving this way. Have an informal but direct chat with them and ask the question. It could be that they have a personal problem, or that they do not know how to do what you are asking but are afraid to admit it. The answer could be any one of a hundred things, and most times it can be problems that are easily solved, especially if the issue is work-related.

How To Deal With A Procrastinator

Being forceful is often the wrong way to deal with this type of situation. Forcing the person to meet deadlines won’t work either, and usually, logic does not enter the equation.

It seems that it is much more effective if you use a bit of cunning with your employees. Chat to them about deadlines as though they do not matter too much, and get involved with the job they are doing. Your personal involvement can make a big difference, as generally. they are concerned about letting you down.

According to research, this is the best way to deal with procrastinators, as it becomes a habit for them and having their boss around much of the times breaks them out of their normal routine.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Productivity| Eliminating Procrastination from Your CompanyRemove Distractions

This should apply to all your employees, but even more so to those that procrastinate. If you have large windows overlooking a busy street, have blinds installed to block out the daily lives of those walking by. If you want to know how to block websites on a Mac – Setapp has the answer. This would stop them playing games or looking at social media on your systems, and should reduce the amount of time spent on these things during working hours.

Anything that distracts employees from their work should be removed, and then they will become more productive.

Hold Them Responsible

If you hold each person is held responsible for the job they should be doing, and a deadline is missed because one person procrastinates, the other staff members will not be too pleased and will try to make sure that it does not happen again. Sometimes, pressure from their workmates will do more good than anything a boss or manager can say.

If you have done everything you can to prevent the procrastinating and it carries on, there may come a time when you have to say enough is enough and in fairness to your other employees, replace that member of staff.

The Effective Guide to Leadership Development Programme

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeWhat is a Leadership Development Program?

Leadership development refers to specific programs utilized by organizations, in order to train or coach an employee(s) about effective leadership requirements. These programs focus on improving the skill-set and attitudes of the individual or group of individuals.

Why is leadership development important?

The productivity of a workforce is largely dependent on the capability of its leaders. The importance of leadership development programs are manifold and are crucial to the development of organizations. These include:

  • Effective leadership development program helps people to execute and identify improvement strategies which will increase the productivity of valued resources and organizational success.
  • The more a company focuses on internal leadership development, the easier it is to achieve specific organizational objectives and goals such as, strategy change, reorganization, and cultural transformations among others.
  • Leadership development has been shown to help people become more open to constructive feedback and develop self-awareness, clarify behavioural patterns that may hinder job effectiveness, and also identify strengths and personal development needs.
  • Through proper coaching, a leader’s ability to assimilate is heightened, and a high-potential leader is developed. Thus, creating a highly effective manager who will undoubtedly assure success in new assignments.
  • In the long-run, having leaders that can foster a positive culture will provide a big impact on the organization.

StrategyDriven Talent Management Articles |Leadership Development|The Effective Guide to Leadership Development ProgrammeTwo Approaches to Learning about Leadership Development

There are two major approaches to leadership development and training programs which are individual or Self-directed approach and collective or other-directed approach. It’s essential that you learn and understand the approaches you can implement in improving your leadership development.

Formal vs. Informal training

Formal approaches are well structured, organized, pre-planned and forward-looking in order to achieve a specific outcome. While informal approaches are the knowledge you gain while on the job, carrying out your various day-to-day activities, reading a book or having discussions with a friend or colleague.

Regardless of the approach, that is, informal or informal, it is vital to capture and recognize that learning is a continuous process. You can’t just read a book or two and claim to know all about effective leadership.

If you are to become a great leader, then you need to learn to learn, and continue on the pathways to leadership development. The tip for continuously learning is to develop the ability to reflect on your past experiences as well as the experiences of others.

Individual or Self-directed Vs. Collective or Other-directed training

Individual development has been the targeted approach for a while now. Just as the name implies, it focuses on the development of a particular person or individual, solely to identify the person’s weaknesses and strengths, and in turn, train and improve his/her ability and trait.

This can be achieved through strategies like attending different seminars or workshops, reading books or other educational resources, one-on-one coaching, and questionnaires, among others.

The advantage of this approach is vast. The most important being undivided attention on the individual which will boost or speed up the individual’s skill and trait. However, this approach can be difficult to implement, costly and also send mixed messages within an organization.

Collective or Other-directed approach

A more recent approach is the collective approach, which focuses on training a group of people rather than an individual. This approach is easier to implement and can also produce powerful results in terms of leadership succession.

However, due to a lack of focus on individual skill-set, people may end up learning skills that do not fit their personalities or personal values or end up developing skills they already have.

Guidance for constructing a leadership development Program

  • Communicate your vision by outlining the qualities and skills required to occupy specific leadership positions in your organizations.
  • Set SMART organizational goals
  • Implement realistic and achievable solutions

Focus on the outcomes by monitoring the performance of the leader at every step of the way, through a regular meeting.

Tips for personal leadership development

  1. Strategic thinking
    Have a broader business perspective. Learn to ‘think outside the box’ and see the big picture. Also learn to understand the ‘why’ and not just the ‘how’.
  2. Coaching
    Learn to direct and guide your team rather than always telling them what to do.
  3. Financial Shrewdness
    Fine-tune your financial literacy to better understand and interpret the company’s financial statements.
  4. Active Listening
    Tone up your ability to pay more attention and demonstrate that you value what other team members have to say.
  5. Industry, competitive and customer knowledge
    Understand what your customers need, have a vast knowledge of the industry you are in and know your competitors.
  6. Point balance
    Leaders need to know how to balance their strengths and use them when needed and to ‘put a leash’ on them when they are not appropriate. Strengths overused can easily turn into weaknesses.
  7. Time management
    Manage your time appropriately and learn to prioritize. Make a step-by-step plan for resolving tasks and avoid seemingly unproductive ventures and focus more on value added activities.
  8. Talent management
    Have a succession plan for your position, fill all positions with ‘A players’ and do not be afraid to let go of toxic employees. Refine your ability to hire, promote, delegate, assess and promote your staff.
  9. Leadership Presence and Effective Communication
    Learn the ability to ‘command attention’, communicate with people whose styles and perspectives may differ from your own and also respect their perspectives. Utilize available technology to improve internal communications and collaborate virtually.
  10. Integrity Building
    Inspire your employees to be people of unquestionable integrity when you stick to your values and core beliefs, do not make unreasonable demands of your team nor make false promises.
  11. Change Management
    Learn to summon others to change, instigate changes, be flexible to change, bring needed changes to light, drive company-wide inspiration and motivation to change, and also set the parameters for developing a culture of change within the organization.
  12. Develop an effective collaboration with employees.
  13. Conflict and confrontational management
  14. Cross functional knowledge and perspective including the ability to network across boundaries

A Happy Workforce is a Productive Workforce

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article |Workforce Productivity | A Happy Workforce is a Productive WorkforceThis is quite an obvious thing to say, but it’s surprising how easy it is to forget when your mind is on other aspects of running your business. The happiness of your employees should be one of your priorities because, without them, your business is likely to fail. When was the last time you asked them how happy they are?

Unfortunately, taking your employees happiness for granted is easy to do, but it’s not the most sensible course of action. If your team feel valued and are contributing to something great, they’re more likely to put the effort in.

If you find your staff members are less than happy, take note of the following tips to help you turn it around.

Praise Good Work

If one of your team does something good, make sure they receive praise. It’s human nature to enjoy receiving recognition for a job done well, and all it takes is a simple “thanks for your hard work.”

Reward Hard Work

This tip is going to take a little monetary investment, but your business will be amply rewarded. If there’s a member of your team who has been regularly going above and beyond what is required of them, then it deserves to be rewarded. You don’t have to break the bank to do so, but time off in lieu, a bottle of wine, treating the team to cakes on Monday or a Friday lunchtime meal out will make your team feel valued. If they feel their hard work is being valued, they’re more likely to want to repeat the effort.

Train Them In Sattelite Skills

Sattelite skills are skills that are part of your usual skills package but may not be practiced in the day-to-day. They are lateral capabilities that provide someone with the capacity to widen their professional abilities and help them work together with other professionals more readily. For instance, helping your programmers train in UX/UI development can help them more readily program with interfaces in mind. This can work up to the very top of a field, such as doctors, nurses and other medical or clinical professionals gaining experience in aesthetics training. This shows your willingness to invest in the career of your staff, while providing them a plethora of directions to improve in.

Show that You Care

When employees feel they are cared about, productivity increases. How do you show that you care about them? You need to ask how they are and ask how they feel about working for you. Take the time to find out more about them, whether it’s professionally or personally. You could consider introducing an employee survey platform to help gather the answers you need; you can visit Inpulse.com to find out more. Often, a simple “how are you” is enough to make an employee feel valued.

Take Time Out from the Daily Routine

It’s possible to make the workplace a happier one by planning fun things to do away from the office. Take your employees out for the day and have some fun. If your employees feel you’re doing something nice for them, they’re guaranteed to be happier.

Encourage Community Minded Attitudes

Build a sense of workplace community by encouraging people to greet each. Lead by example, and others are sure to follow. What’s more, make sure all company executives and managers do the same.

Foster Personal Career Goals

It might seem like something selfish you’re encouraging, but when each employee has their own personal career goals, it’s going to keep their minds focused. Rather than getting involved in or stressed about office politics and workplace stress, they’ll have something better to think about.

It’s possible to have a happy workplace as long as you take the time to make it so. If your employee survey highlights the fact that there are people in your organization who aren’t happy, try the tips above, and you’ll be making a difference.

Take A More Strategic Approach To Hiring

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I thought it would be interesting to explore the concept of “strategic” when it comes to hiring. Both in terms of positioning hiring within the context of the organisation and when undertaking hiring itself.

One of the challenges when hiring is to move it from a tactical activity, reluctantly undertaken when a vacancy arises, to a strategic activity that contributes to organisational excellence. Until hiring is firmly positioned as a key strategic activity, organisations will face problems such as weak talent pipeline, significant opportunity costs, higher hiring errors (it is worth taking the time to work out the cost of hiring errors), business stagnation and eroded organisational value. Additionally, ambitious business leaders will not invest sufficient time, early enough in their careers, to learning and honing their hiring skills. I have, over the years, worked with many great leaders (visionary, decisive, strategic, charismatic, brilliant) who simply cannot hire well. Yet, hiring the right or wrong people will have a huge impact on the organisation. Recruitment is both an art and a science and organisational leaders need to master both elements

In terms of hiring itself, I would suggest that you need to approach the activity strategically. Namely, to think longer term and put it in a broader context. This will enable you to build organisational capability and bench strength and develop the organisation for longer term growth. Thus, by taking a more strategic approach to recruitment you can recruit for the future at least as much as for the present. By this I mean that you can start to plan the skills and competencies you will need to be successful in the future. It also allows you to hire people today that you can develop into the roles you will need in the future which reduces the amount of ‘crisis’ hiring you need to do which is risky, expensive and can reduce motivation of more junior staff with high potential. I believe that a certain amount of external hiring (rather than all internal promotion) is healthy for an organisation but it needs to be intentional and not forced upon you due to the lack of well-developed internal staff.

Hiring needs to be part of an integrated talent management framework. This sounds complicated and clearly, for very large organisations, it can be, but even with much smaller organisations these elements should be in place: Planning the resources that you need, investing in resourcing (i.e. finding the talent), job design and organisation design (you may need to flex the organisation to allow people to grow and develop), management hiring and selection skills, staff engagement and retention, staff and management development. In my experience, large organisation can lose sight of the ‘why’ and become lost in the systems and infrastructure. They focus on developing complex processes but not deriving real value from them, or even worse, ignoring them when faced with decisions such as a senior promotion. And smaller organisations do not always think broadly enough and can make short term hiring decisions. In my experience, one of the main causes of slow growth in smaller organisations is that they do not hire early enough, or strategically enough.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Hiring Staff | Take A More Strategic Approach To HiringLisette Howlett is author of The Right Hire: Attract And Retain The Best People, a licensed Sandler Trainer located in London Central, and she has fifteen years of global change leadership and business development experience. Howlett is called upon by business owners of small and medium-sized companies for strategy and business development. Her experience includes financial services, technology, pharma/biotech, manufacturing, IT, media, recruitment and professional services.

For more information please visit this link.

Quality Quantified: Learning To Measure Your Employees

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StrategyDriven Talent Management Article | Employee Metrics | Quality Quantified: Learning To Measure Your EmployeesNo two people will perform in exactly the same way when it comes to the work which they do. Some will be able to work for days on end, getting average results while they throw themselves into their work. Others, though, will find it easy to get excellent results, but won’t have the stamina to work for more than a few hours. As an employer, it is extremely important that you are aware of these strengths and weaknesses if you want to be able to leverage them correctly. To help you out with this, this post will be exploring some of the best ways to measure your employees, assessing how well they are working for your business.

Peer-Reviews

While you will get a good insight into your business when you’re able to spend time with it, the people working for you will often have the best idea of how their team mates are getting on. When someone isn’t pulling their weight, for example, most offices will be well aware of it, and people won’t be very happy. Peer-reviews are a great way to overcome this. Once every six months or so, you should have your employees anonymously rate one another on different aspects of their work. In the end, you should be left with a range of interesting statistics.

Of course, when you’re relying on other people to give you information, you have to be wary of pettiness within your ranks. Some team members may simply dislike one another, resulting in negative feedback which doesn’t truly reflect their work. To overcome this, you should be looking for examples of bad feedback which seem to be unanimous, ensuring that you’re not going to pick on someone because other people have decided to be mean to them. This is only the start of your measuring, though.

Personal Development Plans

It can be very easy for people to slip into a pattern with their work when they aren’t pushed to do more with it. This leaves a lot of employees to let their skills become stagnant, and they will never be able to make their role more complicated. Personal development plans have been used by businesses for decades to track their employee’s performance throughout the year. Staying on top of something like this is absolutely crucial, and forgetting to give people their assessments will limit the success you are able to find from it.

This works by talking to your employee and outlining the areas in their work which need to be improved. You can agree on a target for them to reach, along with talking about the way that they will reach it. This works extremely well, as it gives your team the chance to understand how well they are doing, rather than simply working at a job which doesn’t give them any feedback. If you hold meetings with each team member every couple of months, you will quickly see their work start to get better, especially when your employees are young.

Customer Feedback

There are few people in the world who have an insight into your employee’s effectiveness than the customers they work with. Getting feedback from people like this isn’t always easy, but it will open the doors to some truly honest information, and this can be hard to get when you’re only working internally. You should only ever ask for feedback when a customer has had something done for them, like making a purchase or getting some product support, as this will ensure that they have their experience fresh on their mind.

Of course, though, you need to make this as easy as possible, or you could find yourself struggling to get people to fill in your forms. There are loads of companies out there with the tools to help you to collect feedback from your customers. By using a service like this, you will put your surveys into the hands of experienced professionals, ensuring that your customers always have the best experience. As time goes on, you will learn what you need to do to be able to handle jobs like this for yourself.

Digital Metrics

Nothing tells a better story about the success of your team than numbers. When people are working for you, it’s crucial that they have targets in place, and that you have a way to make sure that they are reaching their targets. In the case of a call center, each person on the phones will need to talk to a minimum amount of customers each day. Collecting this information is easy, and you can have your employees do it themselves by simply adding to a spreadsheet whenever they complete a piece of work.

Their Past Experience

When people are trying to get a job from you, they will always give you an idea of what they’ve done in the past. It’s fair to build your expectations for their work out of this, with those who have had very complicated jobs being able to overcome issues which other people won’t be able to face. It’s fair to judge people based on their past experiences, but you have to be careful not to take this too far. Employers will often make the mistake of pushing their best and brightest as hard as they can, leaving those who need motivation the most to struggle, and causing an imbalance of work in the office.

It can be hard to make sure that you’re getting what you pay for when you hire people. A lot of companies spend huge amounts of this area, giving each of their team members enough money to live on, while also paying for loads of other little features which come with them. As time goes on, this will get easier and easier, and you will get better at pushing people in the right direction. Of course, though, this work is very important, and this means that you will need to avoid letting it become too routine, as this will make it easy for employees to get around it.