What is key to this is you need to communicate your goals to the staff and get their buy in. And then outline each employee’s part in achieving that goal. Then monitor regularly with them how they are doing compared to those goals and regularly refine and remind them.
How do you do this?
- As a leader you start with the company’s goals: write down what you want to achieve and by when. Keep it realistic, and with associated dates. It might be “In 5 years’ time I want to have 5000 customers and make £1 million profit. Then I will sell the business and retire to the Bahamas”. Great, now you need to break that down into manageable chunks, e.g. in the first year I want to win my first 150 customers and break even. You can break it down further perhaps into achievements in each quarter of the year, e.g. fully working prototype by end of Q1, first production run before end of Q2, and first sales coming in by end of Q3.
- Then cascade these goals down for each department or group identifying what their part is in this process and by when their actions have to be achieved. Again put financial or time schedules on each piece of the jigsaw remembering that they have to work together i.e. production cannot produce a product that development hasn’t completed, and sales can’t sell it effectively at least until they can show something working to the customer.
- Then break it down further to the individual members of staff, and define their roles and what they need to achieve by when.
- The next step is to define what each person is accountable for (takes ultimate responsibility for) and what they are responsible for (what they actually need to do themselves).
- Lastly and most importantly set up a system where each member of staff throughout the company meets with their line manager regularly to check how they are getting on. If things go wrong (which they will) then find out the cause of the problem and get all relevant people together to find the best way forward.
You will find, over time, that your staff become more engaged and their productivity increases, just because they know exactly what is required of them and they are getting the attention they need and the opportunity to air their concerns.
If you need help with this process contact us on info@hrbuscons.co.uk and we will help you.