The UK’s productivity is closely followed and commented on but what is the key to this increase and how can organisations ensure they maintain this heightened productivity?
Beatrice Bartlay, entrepreneur, author and business & life performance coach says that it’s all down to ensuring you have the gold winning team. Bartley, who has helped hundreds of customers to build their production and management teams says: “People are the key to a successful business and having the right team in place can immediately increase company productivity and in-turn, sales. It’s therefore crucial that senior management do everything they can to build a great team and keep them motivated. This is no mean feat and even sourcing the right people is a huge challenge for businesses.”
Bartlay’s top tips for building the gold winning team are:
Ensure you hire the right candidate in the first instance
This may sound obvious, but there are a number of factors that need to work together in order to find the best staff in the first place. It’s important to make sure that the job description is advertised correctly and is representative of the position offered. This will help to ensure that you only hire candidates that have the correct skills for the company. Similarly, it’s just as important that the candidate is a cultural fit too, and that their personality suits the company persona.
Improve team communication
It doesn’t matter how strong your team members are – if they are unable to communicate well amongst themselves, they will not be successful. It’s crucial that your team understand the importance of communication and that as a company you are facilitating this through team days, building exercises and processes.
Become a team of experts
No-one should ever stop learning. It’s important that as an employer, you understand this, enabling your team to become experts in their field and constantly take time to absorb new ways of doing things and keep abreast of industry developments. This can be achieved a number of ways – through booking external trainers or simply by allocating personal development time. By supporting a culture of personal development, you not only ensure your team are experts, but you also keep your staff more engaged.
Create clear rules and team values
You should have a set of rules and values that apply to everyone in the business, regardless of their position or what department they work in. Everyone should fit into these values and if they don’t, they won’t be right for you.
Everyone must understand sales
For every business, sales equals income so it’s essential that everyone is trained on this and understands the importance of sales. Each person in the team should be delivering income for the business through the work they do.
Inspire your team
You can do everything by the book to ensure a strong team, but if you aren’t setting an example through the work you do, you won’t achieve success. A good team needs a strong leader, with clear direction and one who inspires them to strive to be better and achieve results.
Understand what motivates your team
It’s well documented that a happier and more engaged workforce is a more productive one, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to offer quirky perks. What’s essential is that you take the time to understand what motivates each individual and set them goals which work towards whatever it is that motivates them.
