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To boost team performance, it is crucial to take individuality and company goals into account. This seems logical enough, but connecting the dots can prove more complex than it originally appears simply because different individualities are motivated in different ways.
The key lies in getting to know your team members’ aspirations and making sure to embrace differences through a creative reward approach.
The easiest way to do this is by establishing an anonymous feedback system and acting upon its insights. Anonymity ensures there will be no repercussions for negative feedback, and strategies aimed at improving employee satisfaction will let your team know that you want them to remain with your company long-term.
It is a well-known fact that investing in your workforce is more efficient and less costly than training new hires all over again, so get off on the right foot.
1. Start Off With a Conversation
To be able to ensure that all individuals in your team are aligned, you will need to have a uniform plan. Coordinating the efforts of large teams can be tricky, but practice does make perfect. For starters, it is necessary to ensure that all team members are participating actively in company efforts.
To be able to do that, they need to be informed about the goals, milestones and every step of the way you deem necessary. Coordinating their participation with company objectives should be your starting point.
A good performance improvement plan starts with communication. You should take your time picking the optimum online communication tools, and not only for meetings. The practice of wasting time on daily briefings has been largely abandoned for more efficient communication strategies.
It is certainly necessary for team members to keep communication alive to coordinate their efforts, but this can be achieved in more creative (and, indeed, more efficient) ways. E.g., instant messengers remain extremely popular for 1-1 communication, while task management tools like Asana and Trello have eliminated the need for daily briefings.
Layer the communication channels and ensure that employees can reach you when they need to check in or ask a question.
2. Supply the Right Tools
Next on, don’t forget about email. lt’s still widely used for company communication, albeit it can be rather distracting if overused.
Make sure to set communication standards to avoid disruptions by incoming emails.
Further out, choose proper email management tools to ensure seamless communication and top performance, without distractions.
It goes without saying that choosing the right apps and tools is crucial. Here are some must-have types of apps:
- Task-management tools (e.g., Asana and Trello)
- Communication tools (e.g., Zoom, Slack, Skype, Google Meet and MS Team)
- Document management tools (e.g., One Drive and Google Drive)
Others might come to mind, depending on the scope of your business. These are but guidelines.
3. Adhere to OKRs
Coordinating team efforts can be greatly simplified by adhering to the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) methodology. A simple explanation of the concept would be that the focus of the efforts should be on the objectives.
Key results serve to explain how to reach the goals. They should not be vague; rather, they have to be measurable, reasonably moderate in number and have set deadlines.
OKRs are, in other words, a result of decision-making rooted in strategic thinking supported by detailed and proven initiatives that can make changes happen fast.
Finally, for OKRs to be truly efficient, they need to be tracked in real-time and adjusted as needed. Needless to say, communication is the key factor here, as the manager needs to be available to help the team whenever needed.
4. Provide Training for New Employee Apps
On top of communication tools, other apps and tools may be needed. Choose wisely and train your employees to use them.
Human resource managers are nowadays faced with the seemingly impossible task of keeping track of all new apps and tools, and ensuring that the employees are well-versed in them. Fortunately, there’s more than one way to go about this issue, and online seminars and training sessions have proven to be a good solution.
Employee app rollout is all about good planning, as is the case with all aspects of stellar performance.
5. Offer Opportunities for Growth
Remember the anonymous feedback mentioned above?
It can be used in more ways than one. On top of helping you get to know your team members’ expectations, it can also be used to prompt for rewards.
A successful company always provided opportunities for its workforce and helps individuals reach their goals. In this way, your team will truly see every company’s success as their own achievement, which is really the only proper way to build a happy and successful workforce.
For starters, why not explore microlearning?
It can provide employees with just the type of professional satisfaction they are looking for, without being too demanding.
Measuring Performance Improvement
To be able to tell whether team performance is improving, you need to set a timeline. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, as different situations will call for different timeframes. E.g., if you’re measuring performance per project, set a timeline until it commences.
What should be measured?
In line with the OKRs mentioned above, you should pay attention to goals, actions and metrics.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are various factors to take into consideration when creating a performance improvement plan. Rather than relying on general guidelines, you should go with your own ideas, but no matter what you do, be sure to pay attention to feedback.
It is all too easy to overlook the individual in the sea of information nowadays, so don’t make that mistake. Provide timely training, prompt feedback, efficient communication tools, room for growth and a rewarding workspace. All of these factors combined will, in the long run, contribute to better performance and employee satisfaction and, in turn, customer satisfaction as well.
Remember that even if the digital era has introduced drastic changes to how businesses operate, people are still people, and communication is still the only way to ensure there are no misunderstandings.
