Access the essential membership for Modern Managers
Making the most out of the resources at your disposal is vital for any manager. This is especially true when it comes to the members of your team. Ensuring that employees are focused, challenged and engaged in work can benefit both the employee and the organization. Follow these top tips to help your team operate at maximum productivity.
Identify Individual Strengths
Every employee will have their own individual strengths. When assigning work, having a strong knowledge of your team’s individual abilities can help you match the tasks to the employee with the most suitable skill set. For instance, some team members may be excellent organizers, whereas others may be more creative. If you assign tasks which suit each employee’s individual abilities, this will help them to feel more confident and deliver strong results.
To help you gain a deeper insight into how your team operates, why not conduct a Belbin self-assessment exercise with your team. This will help you understand the contribution of each team member, as well as identify any role gaps, role duplication and potential sources of conflict within your team.
Assess Development Areas
Each employee will have areas in which they can further develop their skills. Although you will be responsible for creating relevant development opportunities, asking employees which areas they would like to work on can be beneficial too. Increasing their knowledge and skills can lead to a more productive team. If it becomes apparent that the team as a whole lack certain skills you may wish to look at putting a formal training plan in place to rectify this.
One way of assessing the development needs of your team is to conduct a learning needs analysis exercise. This will help you to determine whether there is a gap between the existing skills, knowledge and abilities of your team, and those that are needed for your team to operate at an appropriate level. If a gap is identified, you can then decide upon the most appropriate form of training and its delivery.
Utilize Groups
Although employees usually work as part of a team or a department, it can occasionally be beneficial to bring people together in smaller groups to work together. By working more closely with different colleagues, a new dynamic can be created which can lead to the sharing and development of ideas. This collaborative process can generate excellent performance.
Ask yourself if you regularly rely upon the same combinations of people to get the work done. If so, why not utilize the skills of your team in a different way by bringing together people who have not previously worked together on a new project?
Regularly Rotate Work
Too much routine, repetitive work can be bad for productivity. Teams can become jaded by undertaking the same tasks over a prolonged period of time. By regularly assigning new tasks to team members, you can help keep employees engaged. If an employee feels that they are being challenged, they are more likely to produce consistently better results as a consequence.
If your team has to deliver work which is of a repetitive nature, why not introduce a rota system, to ensure that the same people are not doing all of the routine work.
Collaborate With Other Departments
Within any organization, it is often easy to become immersed in the work of your own department or team. Developing relationships with other departments and teams can widen your focus and your employees’ understanding of the organization. Employees will see new methods of working and be able to pass on their own skills and ideas, thus benefiting the organization as a whole.
Talk to other managers in your department and further afield to identify potential opportunities for collaborative projects. You could also arrange for some of your team members to shadow other teams to improve their understanding of how they work and how they can best be supported.
Be Aware of Any Transferable Skills
There may be occasions when your team is required to take on work which falls out with their normal duties or responsibilities, for example having to deal with customer enquiries at a busy time of the year. In smaller teams or departments, absence or a colleague's departure can leave the team short of specific skills.
Spread the Load
It can be tempting for a leader or manager to take on much of the important work themselves, or to pass it on to one particular employee. However, by making sure that work has been allocated evenly, it can help ensure that the department is not overly-reliant on one or two individuals. This can also help give other employees a sense of investment and engagement in the work being done.
Review Individual Workloads
Every team or department has its busy periods. However, it is important to ensure that team members are not faced with an insurmountable number of tasks. Asking individual team members for progress reports helps you to know how busy they are. This is important when it comes to delegating new pieces of work.
