You are a manager and love your job. You still believe in the company wholeheartedly, but your employees are quite unhappy. They’ve told you so via a third-party survey. What are you to do to improve the productivity of your team? How can you boost morale? What changes do you need to make to increase employee engagement? Keep reading to find out the three issues to tackle head
Welcome to new and returning readers to the Branding24Seven community! This blog is the brainchild of JMStrategy LLC (JMS), a boutique consulting firm that works with you to tighten team cohesion, maximize productivity, expand output…. In short, to strengthen your brand. Today, this blog is prescribing what to do when the morale and productivity of your team take a nosedive.
So, what is the real problem here, Dear Manager?
After all, your direct reports have a job with benefits! So…. Why are they not more engaged and productive? When working with executive teams (in the context of data-driven powwows), the JMS team sees the toll that chronic employee turnover takes on the leadership: utter powerlessness. That’s because executive teams resent the fact that managers often do not grasp the consequences of mismanaging resources and straying away from forecasted budgets. This fiscal indiscipline is at the heart of many contentious debates as they bring about the inevitable renegotiations that always push actual budgets so far away from the forecasted ones!
Thus, the real problem lies in the fact that the mismanagement of resources puts tremendous pressure on the income statement which is likely to be the preferred tool of your executive team, Dear Manager, to monitor the company’s revenues and expenses during a particular period. The income statement is the lifeblood of any company as it informs vital management decisions such as an expansion through merger or acquisition, the introduction to a new product line, the increase in production capacity, the sale of assets, a department shut down… To name a few.
Thus, when you, Dear Manager, come to ask for added resources to train new hires to replace the ones trained less than two years ago, you are essentially forcing the executive team to recalibrate companywide targets. As a result, if you are lucky enough to get what you requested, don’t be surprised to receive a healthy dose of unrealistic expectations. Does this sound familiar?
Now, what are you going to do, Dear Manager?
You must figure out a way to translate the work of your direct reports into a quantifiable number. The truth of the matter is that executive teams often lack the insight to recognize the workload of any team at the ground level. What looks like a miserly line item on the forecasted budget encompasses a series of actions that make up a determined space on the timesheet of one or several employees. Therefore, Dear Manager, you must get the executive team to grasp accurately the allotted time for the completion of each weekly sequence of tedious tasks that forecasted budgets neatly reveal as line items.
After all, unrealistic expectations are often the result of lofty ambitions left intact neatly written on the agenda of very senior members or worst hidden from direct reports. Left unchecked, they will lead to more frustration for you, Dear Manager, and more friction between teammates that you will be forced to manage through the time consuming yet always unpleasant grievance procedures. As a result of said expectations, you will have stress up the wazoo, may inadvertently take it on your direct reports, and could be left with an even higher rate of employee turnover.
Your best bet, Dear Manager, is to find an effective way to break down company targets into smaller weekly team goals and daily team tasks that you would share with direct reports as often as possible. This blog understands that multifaceted projects require extensive tracking. For that reason, Dear Manager, you must consider incorporating a project management tool such as monday.com. Indeed, its views feature will not only force you to schedule out the various phases of your large project but also let the executive team follow the progress at every stage in real-time.
Such a bird’s eye view helps everyone to know where the team stands. The JMS team has heard directly from clients that teammates prefer to see deadlines (both hard and soft ones) in the Calendar View to see how they stack up against short term milestones while executive teams appreciate the Timeline View to ascertain whether the pace of work is acceptable in the medium run within the context of yearly targets. If you are struggling with the implementation of effective HR process design or mapping and the enhancement of onboarding practices, feel free to email us at jms@branding24seven.com.
The next issue to tackle, Dear Manager, is this nebulous concept of motivation.
This blog is not alluding to individual motivation. Sadly, there is nothing that you can do to affect the personal level of motivation of your direct reports because they are all juggling so many different priorities outside of work! Consequently, Dear Manager, the JMS team invites you to focus on what you can change: team dynamics.
Honestly, the sentiment of team demotivation is extremely difficult to neutralize because it spreads like wildfire. And no timeline or calendar view is likely to turn the tide unless you, Dear Manager, decide to engage personally with each team member. Yes, this is tedious and time-consuming. But, if you are consistently checking in with your direct reports, you will be able to turn things around and bring in a renewed sense of inspiration.
Thus, beyond communicating better and often (as discussed in this post), the goal is to discuss performance and eventually reward based on successful task completion. In essence, Dear Manager, rather than waiting for the yearly review to determine who is getting a promotion, consider integrating mini performance reviews along the way that follow the timeline of your project.
And never forget that employees who feel supported and encouraged will work five times harder and truly become productive powerhouses. You do not need to hold hands and sing Kumbaya…. Just a five-minute check-in at the beginning of each new week will do the trick!
Transparency is king!
The final issue is to take a very straightforward no-nonsense approach to the ever-changing demands of the scope of your work, Dear Manager: please consider to be as transparent as possible. Nothing will kill productively more quickly than what the JMS team calls moving targets which are none other than pipeline announcements made known to employees extremely last minute.
The JMS team gets it; you, Dear Manager, are overworked and completely exhausted. But, part of your work ought to include remaining open with direct reports so that no surprises put a damper on the team motivation you’ve worked so hard to cultivate! So, as soon as you hear from the executive team that the project is taking a new direction, that revisions must be applied immediately (code for everyone must plan to stay late every day for the next two weeks without overtime compensation), you must share it with direct reports. This way, you can field their questions and even ask for their feedback that you will incorporate as you move forward. If you earnestly show direct reports that you include them in the implementation of the day-to-day operations, you will win big Dear Manager!
Indeed, you will have achieved the coveted bliss point of a highly effective team: 1) make direct reports feel invested in the direction that the company takes; 2) sustain team motivation over the long run; 3) elevate company pride and loyalty to new heights…. This is how you successfully transform disgruntled employees into productive powerhouses!
Thank you for stopping by the blog today and taking the time to read this post. The JMS team hopes that you found it useful. Please share it with anyone else who is fighting to improve team productivity.
Come back for more actionable tips because this blog is here for you to engage in scintillating discussions about anything and everything that has to do with making your brand as robust and dynamic as possible. We’d love to hear from you in the comment section below, by email jms@branding24seven.com or by mail:
JMStrategy LLC
21 S. 11thStreet, 2ndFloor, Philadelphia, PA 19107
Leave a Reply