In this two-part blog series, we spoke to University of Auckland Professor and Chair of Human Resource Management, Peter Boxall, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Dr Lixin Jiang, and Founder and Director of Advisory Boards New Zealand, Helen Down, to get their ideas and inspiration for SME owners and managers to boost productivity and keep their employees happy and engaged.
Part one focused on ways of getting your staff more engaged and the importance of showing your employees how their work contributes to the purpose of the business. In part two below, we look at how your team dynamics might be affecting staff productivity. We also discuss rewarding employees in the right way, and explore how development pathways can help engage and incentivise staff.
Playing the blame game can backfire
Tread carefully if you’re pinning all the responsibility for under-performing on your staff member before talking to them.
Dr Lixin Jiang, an organisational psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Auckland, says that an employer may think it’s the employee’s fault they’re not performing to the maximum, but this may not actually be the case as far as the employee is concerned.
“It’s entirely possible that the employee might attribute their underperformance to the employer or the workplace. They might explain: ‘I don’t know what performance is; I don’t know how well I’m doing; I don’t have adequate resources to perform; I don’t have complete control over my performance; I have undependable, unskilled teammates’.”
All of these issues will demotivate the employee to perform because their efforts can’t lead to a desirable performance, says Dr Jiang.
How is the team relationship affecting an individual’s productivity?
A staff member’s underperformance could be about relationships in the team and the way staff are rewarded. As the manager, do you want to reward team performance or do you want to improve individual performances, asks Dr Jiang.
If you’re rewarding individual performers, say a sales team member, and you’ve asked them to bring a new employee up to speed, then that employee might say, ‘I have no reason to help the new employee, they’ve taken my lunch away from me,’ she explains.
For a team to work, you need to reward the correct behaviour, says the psychology lecturer. If you, as the boss, distribute raises evenly to avoid conflict, then high-performing team members might feel unmotivated because their outstanding efforts could be offset by those who underperform.
If, on the other hand, you distribute raises solely based on individual sales or performance, then individual team members have no reason to collaborate, she explains.
“Managers have to be very clear about what they want from team members and set up rewards accordingly to encourage the expected behaviours of competition and/or collaboration,“ says the University of Auckland lecturer.
What are the actual rewards staff are getting?
The organisational psychologist also recommends business owners and managers taking a close look at the rewards staff are being offered. Are they actually motivated by them?
If they perform well, are they just going to be given more work, for instance, which may well be not what they want. They could perceive that as a punishment and feel demotivated to perform better, suggests Dr Jiang.
Alternatively, do they care about a 1% commission? It may be too little to motivate them. Bosses have to discover what employees really care about and this calls for a conversation to find out what they really want.
When the employee doesn’t see the benefits of their efforts financially, the only thing they can use is internal motivation, says Dr Jiang.
For example, how meaningful do they perceive their role? Do they have autonomy? Do they have control over a task from beginning to end and have a sense of achievement when they finish? The manager might be able to increase this internal motivation, she suggests.
Do you have development pathways for staff at your business?
If your employee is a good hard-working individual but perhaps not delivering as highly as you’d hoped, can you offer ways for them to grow; to take on newer, more challenging work that fits the growth of the business, asks Professor Peter Boxall, Chair of Human Resource Management at the University of Auckland.
Sometimes in small businesses, the ability to offer development into more complex work can be limited, he says.
“It’s why a lot of people leave. They get bored, they feel they’ve learned everything they’ve learned everything there is to learn and there are no obvious promotions,” he says.
This can often happen for a large section of the workforce in industries like retail, wholesale, and hospitality. If the staff member just isn’t contributing as much as you’d like, it’s time to have a conversation. A good question to start with can be: “Tell me how you feel about work,” suggests Professor Boxall.
“The conversation might involve an incentive. For example: ‘We’d like your productivity to be 20% better, and then we have a role with new responsibility and a higher rate of pay,’” he says.
These have to be real, rather than empty promises, stresses the HR chair. If you haven’t got other roles for them to develop into, you’ll have to live with having higher staff turnover, he adds.
The “sitting by Nelly” approach
Has the underperforming staff member been onboarded well, is another question to ask yourself. This can be done better in nearly all organisations, says the HR Professor.
“At times small businesses are frantic and the perfect conditions don’t always occur, but from the get-go, it’s about getting them alongside the best person who’s also a good coach,” he says.
If the job they’re in is a well-known process that others are doing, then the best coaching or help you can offer, is to put the marginal person alongside your best worker, he suggests.
The “sit by Nelly” approach is where this experienced staff member is doing the job best, so following what they do is great on-the-job training, advises the University of Auckland professor.
This high performing staff member, “Nelly”, also has to be a good coach, which isn’t necessarily a given.
“Helping develop these managers in these soft skills has been a huge issue for a long time," says Professor Boxall.
Employ people who are better than you
Helen Down, Founder and Director of Advisory Boards New Zealand, has set up two businesses herself and been on the advisory board of many SMEs, and she’s learned some staff management skills along the way.
In her experience, her most productive employees and teams have wanted ownership of their work. They were recruited with care and she had a lot of respect for them, checking in regularly to see if they needed any support but giving them plenty of scope to make the job their own.
“While I could have done some aspects of their jobs, I couldn’t have done them as well as they did them,” says Helen.
“It’s important to employ people who are better than you in their area of expertise."
The work and work culture has got to be enjoyable, otherwise the business goes nowhere, adds the experienced business adviser.
While productive staff are obviously important, other attributes are just as important, Helen believes – namely, honesty, people taking responsibility for their work, contributing to the team and understanding their role – these all contribute to the business’s success.
If you haven't read part one in this blog duo, you can read it here.
