Staff Management: Put Systems in Place to Measure Productivity
A key point of employee goal-setting is to help your staffers become more productive. That’s why you don’t want to confuse activity with progress. Put systems in place for measuring productivity throughout your catalog company. Then live by those productivity measurements.
Remember this mantra: What gets measured gets done. Create policies ensuring that the “urgent” doesn’t take precedence over the “important.” And do everything you can to eliminate redundancies and busywork.
Once you’ve set the measurements, give feedback, both formal and in real time. Establish ongoing evaluative processes so that employees receive managerial feedback on how well they’re meeting their goals. But don’t limit feedback to formal evaluations. Give it on the spot. Tell people in real time what they’re doing incorrectly, so they can fix it.
But it’s even more important to tell them what they’re doing right or well. That’s spontaneous coaching, and it’s one of the most critical elements of an entrepreneurial culture. In fact, it’s the pathway to productivity. That kind of feedback refines the processes by which employees meet their goals today, and it paves the way for them to meet more ambitious goals in the future.
Joanne C. Sujansky, Ph.D., is a business consultant, speaker and founder of KEYGroup. Contact her via her Web site at http://www.joannesujansky.com or via the company Web site at http://www.keygroupconsulting.com.
