Driving Business Performance Whilst Working From Home
Introduction
The last couple of weeks have been a real challenge for us all, as many businesses have been settling in to working from home. However, for those businesses still operating, your attention will now be steering towards the future. The re-active tasks will be lowering and it is now time to focus on how you can build a future proof business.
Today’s blog aims to provide you with five different ways that you can drive and maintain organisational performance in a remote environment. I’ll aim to cover productivity, feedback, leadership, employee wellbeing and technology.
#1 Productivity
If you’ve not had a history of flexible or remote working then the last couple of weeks will have been tough. As much as you’d like to trust your team, if you don’t currently measure productivity then how do you know your team are working? More importantly, how do you know that their spending time in the right areas?
One of the biggest mistakes that I have seen businesses make when it comes to productivity is to measure inputs. For example, you may lead a sales team and have key performance indicators (KPI’s) relating to how many calls a team member makes per day. Which is fine, but is this really what productivity means?
The first step is to define and communicate what productivity means for you and your business. Once this is in place, you can then begin to look at what outputs you’d like to see. For example, rather than setting your team KPI’s focused on calls (inputs), you may set a KPI relating to total meetings booked (output). This will help you to achieve your goals much quicker and also give employees the autonomy to focus on what is important and they’ll probably start to innovate too!
#2 Feedback
As with any large change project, feedback is critical. Without feedback you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to leverage the great ideas that sit in your employees minds. How you capture this feedback is up to you. A survey is probably the quickest way to do this, but will likely require investment, either from a time or financial perspective. Our clients have also set up employee committees that look to capture the voice of employees, or you may just look to do this via 1-1’s.
Feedback will not only help you to improve your processes and culture but it will also show your team that you value their opinion, which naturally leads to higher engagement and productivity. Furthermore, it can save you a lot of time and money, as it makes sure that you’re focusing on what’s important.
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#3 Senior Leadership and Management
We’ve seen a positive spike in the relationship between managers and senior leaders over the last couple of months. This needs to be built on. Communicate regularly and provide updates on the business, strategy, goals and performance. Most importantly, support your managers.
Most of your managers will be the most competent and high performing individuals in your organisation, what many struggle with is managing people – most of us do! Provide them with support either internally or externally. Focus on delivering feedback, setting goals, communicating effectively and more!
Some of our clients have gone a step further and looked to learn more about how each manager and leader works best. Our tool, GC Index helps you to learn more about yourself and your team.
Click Here To Learn More About The GC Index & Get A FREE Report
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#4 Protect Wellbeing
There’s lot of content on LinkedIn alone relating to employee wellbeing and supporting your team whilst working from home. In the past you may have brushed this off and seen it as a nice to have. But if not managed correctly, you run the risk of productivity and performance issues.
We believe there’s three core pillars relating to engagement: psychological, physical and financial health. All three pillars can impact an individuals performance at work. Here’s some ideas:
- Share regular information and educate your team regarding nutrition and healthy eating
- Update your business on what interesting physical activities people have been getting up to whilst working from home
- Help your team to manage their finances more effectively.
Again, some of our clients have gone a step further. We have a partner that deliver physical health assessments – get in touch to learn more. We’re also running FREE financial wellbeing workshops via our partner Capstone.
Click Here To Learn More About Our FREE Wellbeing Workshops
#5 Embrace technology
As time passes most of us are embracing technology and the value that it brings. Having been forced into remote working, many of us have learnt that most meetings and projects do not always need to be delivered face to face. Here’s some of the platforms that we’ve found particularly useful:
- Slack – internal communication channel
- Microsoft teams – internal communication channel
- Zoom – video calls/meetings/project delivery
Conclusion
After the initial disruption and fear of remote working, some businesses are now reaping the benefits. Yes, it isn’t possible in every business but the principles remain the same – manage productivity, ask for feedback, support leaders and managers, protect your teams wellbeing and embrace technology.
We just hope that when we return to the new normal, businesses do not slip into old habits!
Matt Wilden
Founder & Managing Director
07711 066222
