By Doug and Caroline Somers - Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Dedicated and productive employees are a reflection of the leadership, vision and organizational focus demonstrated by their superiors. This is no more evident than now, when the challenges of a recessionary economy demand that everyone provide their best effort and pull in the same direction to maintain the organization’s competitive edge.

Of course, basic human nature makes it impossible to create a workforce comprised solely of happy and loyal model employees. But there are clear strategies one can employ to bring out the best in the individual, to ensure accountability and a clear understanding of duties and responsibilities, and fit the right person to the right job.

These best practices can be broken down into three broad themes:

1) Establish clear goals and communicate them, not only to your team, but to yourself

What are the objectives your organization is trying to achieve? What does success look like? How do you define it? What will it take to get there? And most importantly, what role does each individual have to play in helping the organization achieve these objectives? Your staff need to both understand their roles and feel that what they do is a valued and necessary contribution.

Even as a sole proprietor, taking yourself through this process of objective self-examination is vital. Defining your vision and your objectives for other people you trust will clarify them in your own mind and keep you accountable to accomplish what you said you would. This audience can range from suppliers and clients, to peers in your professional network and those individuals whom you look to as mentors. Soliciting this outside input can keep you on track or put you back on track.

2) Be a sharp instrument, not a blunt one.

Few companies have ever failed for every trying to do too little. Don’t spread yourself too thin. If you focus your resources and the energies of your team on a few key goals, you are much more likely to achieve them. Having staff running in too many directions at once can create undue stress and anxiety that will erode productivity and morale.

A recession can offer the ideal opportunity to hone your business. It demands that you cut the fat and focus on what’s really important. In good times, it’s easy to let things slide and still get by –but recessions are less forgiving.

3) Decide how work is going to be delegated, measured.

Identify who will be responsible for specific aspects or tasks of a project. Provide a challenge you know is within the individual’s capabilities that will help them stretch and grow. Communicate to the individual that a task is being assigned to them because of the trust you have in them to deliver. The idea is to get them to commit and buy in to the process, take ownership and be accountable.

Consistent measurement

To ensure the project is on track, measure in progress by breaking the project down into milestone objectives. Engage in an active dialogue with regular meetings and other forms of communication in which your team is encouraged to share their thoughts, concerns and successes.

Measure the output once the project is complete. Did everyone hit target … or not? What lessons were learned that can be applied next time to achieve better results?

Evaluation and correction

Regardless of how diligently you apply these principles, staff will fail to fulfill their commitments. This may be a function of poor work ethic, but often it is an avoidable consequence of poor planning and communication at the outset. In other circumstances, a person may simply be the wrong fit for the job, but may bloom and excel in another position if given the opportunity.

No prescription needed

Often, managers start things off on the wrong foot when they assign work by prescribing what is to be done without taking the time to discuss with staff HOW it will be done. Again, it comes back to instilling the confidence and understanding that will lead staff to step up and take ownership. Let them volunteer ideas about how a project can be completed or an objective achieved. If you just hand work AND the process to do it to people, they can feel like drones and lose engagement. They must feel motivated by a Big Picture understanding of the positive contribution they are making to the organization as a whole, rather than by fear of being sacked if they fail to deliver.

Develop an action plan and have it centrally available to ensure everyone is on the same page and provide a benchmark against which progress can be measured. This can identify any problems early on that members of your team may very well work together to resolve themselves without involving senior management.

Make a clean break

On the other hand, we’ve often heard managers and executives say “The biggest mistake I made was not letting that person go sooner.”

Sometimes, organizations will take too long to let go of someone who is clearly a poor fit. The negative impact of a poor employee becomes that much more acute in tough times when the best is needed from everyone. But it is much better for the organization to cut the cord and fill the position with a stronger candidate sooner rather than later. It may also be better for the individual since it will free them to pursue an opportunity for which they are better suited.

A great reference for business owners and managers on the importance of building the right team and “getting the right people on the bus” is Good to Great by Jim Collins. Though Collins focuses on larger organizations, his core principles apply just as well to smaller enterprises.

Category: Expert Advice.
Industry: Retail, Services, Technology
Functional Area: Hr
Tags: employee engagement, employee retention, Good to Great, Human resources, Jim Collins, leadership, workforce management