Introduction
Has staff performance in your business improved by 10% or more since the year 2000? If not, remember this. We’ve already started the twelfth year of the 21st Century: over 10% of the new century has already passed.
Ask Yourself …
- Have I stopped asking for written applications and resumes?
- What have I done to improve my face to face communication skills?
- Have I made employees responsible for measuring their own performance?
- Have I stopped regarding training as the most important thing I need to do to create competent employees?
- Do I now regard the team, not the individual, as the basic human unit in the workplace?
- Have I stopped trying to play psychologist as a tactic for improving staff performance?
- Have I reviewed all our performance systems and replaced those which were ineffective?
- Do I ensure that all staff know exactly what on job performance is expected of them and how it will be measured?
- Have I found ways to enable my staff to manage and run day to day business?
- Have I installed an effective rewards and incentives scheme?
Frankly, if you haven’t done most these things over the last 10 years, your business is probably going backwards … no matter what the “figures” say.
Technology And Staff Performance
I’m not suggesting that you’ll be overwhelmed by technology. If you haven’t changed that way you motivate staff, the technology has already passed you by. But that’s the great thing about today’s technology. It enables you to improve staff performance faster and more effectively than has ever been possible.
The problem is, we’re not using the tools we already have.
Some Examples
- You can use simple systems to enable staff to know exactly how well they’re meeting performance standards on a daily basis. They don’t need you to tell them.
- You can design and undertake training that’s guaranteed to improve on job performance and that doesn’t need a classroom or a senior employee to give it.
- You can establish performance goals and standards for employees without lengthy meetings and tiresome arguments about “who does what”.
- You can design systems to accomplish those goals and standards using staff experience and contribution.
- You can have far more time to “manage your business” and have staff control routine business.
In other words you can, as Ricardo Semler puts it, “concentrate on building an organization that accomplishes the most difficult of tasks: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning.”
The Semco Example
In November last year I wrote a post called Staff Performance: Break The Rules And Win Brazilian Style”. It described the extraordinary success of Semco, a Brazilian company. And it also included some information about the staff management and performance approach of the CEO, Ricardo Semler.
More Semler
That article contained a number of Semler quotes. Here are some more:
“Human nature demands recognition. Without it people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless and unproductive.”
“There is no way to treat employees as responsible and honest adults unless you let them know and influence what is going on around them.”
“A company that doesn’t share information when times are good, loses the right to request solidarity and concessions when they are not.”
“The common denominator anchors all of us to the company. It’s not a set of mission statements, credos or values that I have decreed from the mountaintop. It’s the philosophy that working together for years has left people with.”
Conclusion
I’ll leave the last words to Ricardo Semler himself. “Top down management, close and distrustful supervision and little room for creativity … the conflict between advanced technology and armchair mentality is a major reason why the modern workplace is characterized by dissatisfaction, frustration, inflexibility and stress.”
What To Do Now
Let me have your comments below. If you’re not familiar with Semler and Semco, check them out on Google. Re-read the November post I mentioned earlier.
