Maximising Your Staff’s Potential For Success

Your staff are the back-bone of your business. Happy, fulfilled people do good work, creating happy, fulfilled clients. Happy clients spread the word about your business and repeatedly purchase from you, increasing your potential for success. Of course, you can only do so much, and obviously can't be responsible for your employee's happiness all the time, but there are a number of areas within your control that can help to create the environment where staff can reach their full potential. 

Let's look at three factors within your control that can help to maximise your staff's potential - and in turn, help your business succeed: 

Recruitment

Getting the right people in the right places is number one. You need to be able to clearly articulate what each role entails, and then find people who can perform the tasks required, and also align with your organisational goals and culture. Not so easy sometimes!

Whatever you do, don't leave the applicant in the dark - as in this sketch! Very funny...

Lee Colan puts it simply - "Do it effectively now and reap the benefits of a high-performing team later. Do it fast and cheap now, and pay the price later of increased turnover, underperforming teams, a diluted culture and drain on managerial time."

In Top 10 Employee Selection Mistakes ... And Solutions he outlines 10 employee selection mistakes - and their remedies, such as no. 6 - Giving in to work and market pressures.

"The vast majority of managers hire too quickly and fire too slowly. In a tight labor market, it is not uncommon for a hiring manager to meet the candidate only once then make an offer. And when candidate supply is plentiful, managers tend to miss the opportunity to sift through lots of candidates to find the very best fit due to "lack of time". Interesting that these same managers can find the time to deal with performance issues resulting from poor selection."

"Solution: Use the 3 x 3 x 3 rule. 3 employee interviews, 3 candidates, 3 different times. You are thinking, "All that time for one hire?". You will spend much more time than that if you make the wrong hire."

Culture

Organisational culture is defined by Webster's (Online) Dictionary as "comprises the attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values of an organisation. Strong culture is said to exist where staff respond to stimulus because of their alignment to organisational values. Conversely, weak culture is where there is little alignment with organisational values and control must be exercised through extensive procedures and bureaucracy."

Clearly, our aim should be to create a strong culture, where "people do things because they believe it is the right thing to do" as opposed to trying to exert control through overbearing micro-managing.

One of the detriments to a strong culture is silo like behaviour, where internal rivalries and turf protection is the norm.

In Weeding Out The Turf Wars, Andrew O'Keeffe explains that "150 is the number of people we naturally associate with." This means that "we have a fundamental challenge when our organisation grows beyond that size." One of the ways that he suggests you can reduce silo-like behaviours is to build social collegiality amongst the top team

"To reduce silos, the CEO needs to build a team spirit where executives have a strong identity with the executive team. If the top leader does not build the emotional collegiality amongst the top team, then they drive the social belonging of the individuals to the level below them. Often, because the CEO has little need for collegiality, they unwittingly increase the likelihood of silo behaviour. Build the emotional connection amongst the top team instead."

So how can you build a strong culture in your organization? In Creating A Culture Of Serving Your Employees Bob Livingston purports that "If you put your employees first, your clients will feel as though they have been put first. That is the subtle translation of how great companies, who sincerely value their employees, become great partners to their clients and are the leaders in their field."

One fundamental way you can achieve this is to "empower your staff to interact with clients to solve problems and resolve conflict."

"Within logical parameters, service-centric companies empower their employees to make decisions in order to satisfy the needs of those they serve. Great companies publicly commend employees who proactively address problems, even though they may occasionally fail. Their message is, better to step-up and act in the best interests of the client than do nothing. Creativity in problem solving is encouraged, limiting the need to ask for permission within reasonable boundaries."

Motivation

Daniel Pink contends in the TED video, The Surprising Science of Motivation that "Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think." In it, he describes how ‘contingent' incentives are only really good for certain types of activities, and more creative ways to motivate are needed in today's business world. Some of these motivations include autonomy and purpose and in this video, he discusses autonomy in depth.

If more money isn't the answer, then what is? In Motivate Like A Master... Without Spending A Cent! James Adonis provides a number of ways to increase intrinsic motivation. "Intrinsic motivation comes from inside a person: it's the sense of achievement, responsibility, job satisfaction, purpose, involvement, empowerment, ownership - all the things that make an employee feel that what they're doing makes a big difference in their lives and in the organisation itself."

Karla Brandau writes in Getting More Discretionary Effort From Your Staff "Most leaders are surprised to learn that employees can be motivated by factors other than money."

One of the five management levers she suggest you apply to engage employees and earn more discretionary effort is social acceptance.

"This management lever involves team building - getting the employees to know one another on more than a superficial basis, and accepting employees "as is". "As is" means that everyone has a bump or a button somewhere. Helping employees feel accepted as they are, sets the environment for individual emotional growth."

"The more you GIVE the employee acceptance, the more the employees GIVE BACK stable work efforts."

In a world where there are any number of external factors that can affect your business success, focus on what you can control and create happy, productive and effective workplaces that will provide you with sustainable success now and into the future.

Have a fabulous week!

Kristine Szitovszky
CEO Online