The new year is almost upon us and, in advance of the festive season, you will no doubt be actively planning the year ahead, with targets to meet and goals to achieve. In order for these plans to become a reality, it is important to consider how best to get the very most out of your staff.
Sometimes though, this can be much easier said than done. Every business owner knows that improving performance is key to overall growth, but you’ll need some solid strategies to make this happen.
In this article, brought to you by Fashion Rider and The Human Resource we look at three ways you can give a real boost to your team’s performance for the year ahead. Beavis Morgan is the preferred finance partner to Fashion Rider, the fashion industry’s premium membership site.
1 Provide challenges that are stretching but achievable
No one ever achieved great things by just coasting along without a challenge. Everyone working for you should be stretched, but there’s a fine balance to strike. Give them too much to handle, and people start making mistakes, become stressed and even burned out.
The start of the year is a good time to assess how well people did last year compared with what you needed them to do, and whether their objectives going forward are still really fit for purpose. And how much more they could do, with stretching but achievable challenges.
Make sure every individual is clear about what’s expected from them to help you meet those targets and smash those goals.
Your line managers will play a big part in making this a success. They’ll know their team members best, and so you need to make sure they’re capable of helping their people to set goals, and just as importantly, ensuring they believe that they can achieve those goals.
2 Outline the value of the work outside the context of the business
If you’ve done any reading or research into best practice when it comes to managing a team, then you’ll know that it makes sense to encourage everyone to realise how their work helps the business to grow and meet its objectives. In other words, your staff should understand how what they’re doing fits into the bigger picture.
You can take things a step further than this though. Are your people aware of ways their work makes a worthwhile contribution, profits and growth aside? Most businesses have some kind of social impact, and this can often be a great motivator for staff. Does your organisation make a positive contribution to the community? Are you changing the lives of your customers and clients?
3 Recognise achievements as part of day-to-day business
Most of us can take huge amounts of personal satisfaction away from simply knowing that we’ve done a good job. Often, this alone can encourage us to strive to be even better. But let’s be completely honest here. Most of us also enjoy being suitably rewarded for our efforts.
This isn’t necessarily about financial incentives, it’s about rewards that are proportionate to the achievement. It’s about applying the same principles across the board. It’s about considering your reward and recognition processes as a whole, rather than just worrying about budget restraints. And ultimately, it’s about getting to the stage where ‘the annual performance review’ isn’t a one-off activity, but part of an ongoing dialogue.
Team performance is important, and this is your chance to make sure that you’ve laid the right foundations for the year ahead. Are you ready, or are you lagging behind?
About Beavis Morgan
As specialist accounting, tax and business advisers to SMEs, we work with businesses to identify their unique requirements. We then design and implement a system that will provide all the information needed to run and grow a business, through real-time information on actual performance, within a cost effective and efficient framework.
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Contact Steve Govey or your usual Beavis Morgan Partner to find out more about how we can help you with your entrepreneurial ideas and your fashion or retail business.
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