Employee productivity is an assessment of the efficiency of an employee or group of employees to determine whether the individuals are performing up to their maximum capability. Employee productivity in an organization has three angles, the effective use of organizational time, attracting high-quality talent, and maximizing organizational energy. In the book Time, Talent, Energy, Michael Mankins, and Eric Garton provide solutions that business owners can use to maximize their businesses’ productive power by managing their scarce resources, overcome organizational drag, and gain an advantage over their competition.
In the first part of this blog, we saw the impact that managing time can do on an organization. Similarly, the other two aspects i.e. Talent and Energy have exponential contributions in differentiating between an average organization and a top-notch organization.
Talent
People are not your most important asset. The right people are.
—Jim Collins
Companies that now manage time will reduce organizational drag but they cannot reach their full potential without managing their Talent. The best companies get a 29% boost in productivity from their talent.
Find and Develop the “Difference Makers”
The A-Level talent employees execute work effectively than the average ones thereby saving time and resources. Talent alone makes a huge difference in any organization.
Leaders can support the effect of ability on workforce efficiency by:
- Determine where your difference makers can make the biggest difference: Leaders should place these difference-makers strategically in positions where they can have the greatest impact. Putting an A-level player in a role where a B- level player will do well is a poor use of an incredibly scarce resource.
- Using better ways to find difference-makers: Most companies rely on two measures, performance and potential to hire, place promotions and make decisions. But, there are other ways to make accurate assessments. A leadership development program using sqn’s methodology was discussed in the book. Step one is to translate your company’s strategy into a set of requirements, Step two is to launch a robust 360-degree feedback effort and the final step is to develop a coaching program to close the gaps.
- Making the difference makers more effective: After recruiting potential difference-makers into your company, the next task is to build processes that will accelerate their development. LinkedIn (a platform for personal and professional development) was evaluated to helping difference-makers become better.
Create and Deploy All-Star Teams
Any company that wants to stand out amidst competition must value and pay close attention to collaboration, teaming, and deployment of their Top players. Great teams act as a kind of force multiplier creating more noteworthy and higher-quality yield.
A team of top players is called All-star teams. All-star teams can reach their full potential when the following components are in place: Great leadership, proper leveraging of the extra milers, the right incentives—and no disincentives, Great support, big goals to neutralize big egos and avoid overshadowing.
Energy
The company is us. I mean myself and 100,000 other colleagues of mine. If we’re excited, Knowing what we want to do, aligned, inspired, moving forward, learning, attracting better people than we are, all the time, [then] the company is moving in that direction. It’s progressing. It’s growing.
—Carlos Brito, CEO, AB InBev
After time and talent, it’s energy. As it turns out, organizational energy is the single most powerful factor measured, raising the average company twenty- four (24) points on the productivity index. Engaged employees bring commitment and enthusiasm to their work and apply it to their jobs every day and Unengaged employees do quite the opposite. A survey indicated that inspired employees are 90 percent more productive than engaged employees, and more than twice as productive as employees who are merely satisfied.
Companies that inspire their employees start with a humane philosophy of the workplace, and they develop the ability to put that philosophy into practice through their operating model, talent systems, employee value proposition, and ways of working. In the book, employers are advised to build a company that inspires as many people as possible.
Let’s take a look at these three elements:
- Develop and implement a humane philosophy. The question “what type of environment will be suitable for work” must be answered. The employer’s mission and the employee’s mission must be connected with the company’s purpose of existence. A company’s culture and business practices should also be guided by principles, not by rules.
- Balance employee autonomy with organizational needs. Autonomy is a tool that can be used to create engagement or inspiration in any company. It should, therefore, be balanced with accountability, Innovations should be encouraged, and aligned with a degree of control.
- Develop leaders who deliver results and inspire. Performance and inspiration are directly related and can be properly driven by an inspirational leader. Someone that can communicate the vision of the company to the employees to deliver exceptional results.
Build a Winning Culture
How do we make all the prescriptions described in this book work? How do we make them have a positive effect on the company’s performance? How do we get our desired results?
The answer to these questions lies within a company’s culture. Basically having the right culture maximizes the energy of any organization.
A winning culture is at the heart of virtually every sustainably successful company. It is probably the single most enduring source of competitive advantage. The anatomy of a winning culture includes an Internal compass (nonnegotiables that guide behaviors and decisions), Desired behaviors, and an organizational environment. Strong company culture helps to retain the top players in the organization.
Winning cultures can be underestimated. How then can it be established in any organization? Keep reading to find out:
- Raise the strategic ambition and recenter the company’s purpose: A company must have a bold ambition and compelling vision which means defining the purpose, values, and behaviors that shape how people work, changing the way the company operates, and set a new culture for the company.
- Reawaken the ownership mindset: Once the purpose, values, and behaviors have been defined, employers must pick some important behavior changes and concentrate on embedding them in the company’s culture. An organization trying to change must address culture-strengthening and culture-weakening behaviors.
- Reset ways of working and talent plans: Organizations need to modify how they work to change their employees, they need to strengthen their culture-strengthening behaviors and eliminate culture-weakening attributes. Culture is the outcome of the cumulative behaviors of individuals which is greatly influenced by a company’s purpose, values, and behaviors.
The key to becoming a profitable and successful company is not getting more money so you can invest in more resources. In fact, financial capital is excess as argued by the authors. It is how best the organization can manage its scarce resources (time, talent, and energy) to reach a higher level of performance.
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