Nowadays, more business entities are putting pressure towards more productivity, employees doing complex tasks, better return on invested money. The effectiveness and personal growth of a manager is highly dependent on the success of achieving these objectives. In achieving these objectives, the manager has to establish unyielding and challenging, yet realistic work standards in the workplace. The work standard must be inclusive of all aspects involving performance and behavioral standards to be complied by the employees.
The following can help determine whether a manager knows what and how it takes to improve productivity in the workplace:
- Every subordinate must have thorough knowledge about their functions and responsibilities in order to perform effectively and efficiently.
- There should be an established system for verification and proper coordination to guarantee all works that will leave the department are complete and accurate.
- A regular schedule for maintenance of all office equipments in the department must be available to prevent backlogs in the expected output from the department.
- There is a close monitoring of subordinates attendance, absenteeism and tardiness are properly dealt with according to company policy.
- Be a good example to subordinates by showing a strong and positive attitude with regard to loyalty, excellence, and pride in the workplace.
- Encourage creativity in the workplace by helping the subordinates decide and solve their own work related problems.
- Training programs are regularly upgraded in order to improve technical skills of subordinates.
- Have an organized program and follow-up that ensures good housekeeping and safety in the workplace.
- Regularly monitor subordinates’ actual performance against standard. Make the subordinate aware as to what areas of performance needs improvement.
- Influence the subordinates in the workplace by observing and promoting excellent quality service to customers.
In every business entity, one of every supervisors’ task is to conduct performance evaluation of every subordinate within their jurisdiction. It is also the supervisor’s responsibility to call the attention of a subordinate with below par performance then correct and improve productivity.
Constructive criticism when applied effectively or skillfully can generate positive result. The following are some tips on how to criticize people skillfully that will motivate and improve performance.
- Always define the purpose of criticism before it is applied and be ready with all the facts before criticizing anyone.
- Remember to keep in mind that the purpose for criticism is to build, correct and develop but not to insult the subordinate.
- When criticizing, always give the other person the chance to express his opinions and thoughts.
- See to it that when criticizing the bases would be on high quality performance standard and yet sensible.
- Do not forget to get feedback from subordinates to make sure that criticism is properly understood.
- When a performance in unacceptable, determine if the problem was due to lack of training or experience.
- Make certain that for every instruction given to a subordinate, it is clear and properly understood.
- Make sure that the subordinate assigned to a particular job is qualified and adequately equip.
- Make sure that every subordinate have complete knowledge of their job functions and assignments.
- Show appreciation to subordinate for every outstanding performance, not just merely criticize below performer.
- Ensure that when criticizing, it will not undermine the self-confidence of the subordinate.
In any company, a productive executive is someone who has the ability to persuade or convince others to assist or cooperate. This ability is what is called POWER.
There are various ways to help an executive gain more power or influence other people in the workplace without creating any conflict with others.
Render special services. As an executive assign to a particular department, one should create results or provide favors to other departments that would be recognized and appreciated as a contribution to the organization. Over time, a great deal of respect and support will be gained when needed.
Emphasize visible projects. Get involved with new or particularly important company sponsored projects. Extra recognition will be gained for a job well done and eventually help in winning the cooperation of others later on.
Support the subordinates. To be able to gain respect, full assistance and accomplishment of goals, an executive must first help subordinates to achieve their goals. They will surely reciprocate to provide support during difficult situations.
Cooperate with fellow executives. Cooperation towards peers in more ways than one to accomplish their work will be a big factor to obtain their assistance when needed
Adhere to the common purpose. Many people spend time and money that bear little or no relevance to the organizations mission, vision and purpose. An executive needs to avoid this counter productivity and accumulate a solid track record of profit contribution or other meaningful accomplishments that translate into cooperation of others.
Power is an essential part of an executive’s ability in influencing other people in an organization.
To a certain extent, a number of sales people have the tendency to be complacent to their jobs brought about by varied reasons i.e. too long in the position, not promotable, absenteeism, tardiness, etc. Not all can be motivated despite the company’s effort through their superiors.
When this situation happens, as superiors, it is better to give-up on the individuals than to be blamed later on.
There are distinct types of salespeople who resist motivation and all are incurable:
- Those with limited field of interest. A salesperson may like meeting with customers, but usually reluctant to do daily, weekly field reports. No matter what effort impressed and required from this individual in order to increase productivity in the low-interest areas of the job will encounter difficulty.
- Low-performing individuals. These are people who do only the minimum amount of work necessary to keep their jobs signaling that they don’t care much about work. Most likely they have other plans or interest outside work and just put in their time and collect their paychecks. Don’t expect them to do any better.
- The inhibitors. These are the people with inhibited feelings and do not care about their work anymore. Psychology won’t work on them because no one can ever find the right button to press.
- Those that are on the firing line. If a highly unproductive salesperson fails to respond to warnings of termination, stop wasting time. It’s about time to look for a better replacement.
“One word is enough to a wise man.” This saying oftentimes is an expression commonly uttered by superiors to induce subordinates when they want certain tasks done at once. However there are superiors who could not initiate pressure even when they wanted things accomplished. At a certain circumstances however, it is advantageous to put pressure to employees. .
A study revealed that without the application of stress, people will not exert effort to reach their full potential. A superior should be able to do pre-evaluation using the available subordinate’s personal record to determine the psychological make-up of the person specially its tolerance level to stress when given certain tasks with deadlines. There is an optimal level of stress when properly applied to an individual that would result to favorable performance. The pressure can be put to use when the superior knows previously what kind of stress can yield productivity and which kind can be likewise damaging.
As an advice, superiors must not eliminate stress, but keep it only at a healthy and productive level. For most people, stresses such as accountability for quality of work and for some personal financial management have positive effect and they are not signs of weakness. Battling and overcoming them produces a feeling of pride, accomplishment and a positive experience.
A subordinate when receiving insufficient feedback from superiors, or being given inadequate information to complete a task would have a negative reaction on the pressure to accomplish the task. Using enough pressure to improve productivity is a matter of eliminating the negatives.
