Improving organisational performance

EVERY leader or manager’s dream is to have a great business performance. When there is low business performance, the leader has to employ other tools and strategies to get back into business. Low performance brings stress and low profits. Let’s explore organisational performance.

Talent management and improvement

The best resource that every company has is its workers or human resources. For every machine, system to work, people are needed.

With effective people, we have an effective business.

First, business performance must have talented, skilled and effective people. A personal development expert Myles Munroe once said: “Greatness is in everybody. A good supervisor brings out the greatness in each employee. Leadership is creating an environment that allows people to manifest their gifts for the corporate good. That is good business, and that is great leadership.”

There are many ways of developing people. This is through coaching, mentoring and modelling.

The book The Complete Handbook for Coaching says coaching is “a human development process that involves structured, focuses interaction and use of appropriate strategies, tools, and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the coachee and potentially for other stakeholders.” (Cox, E. et al, 2010).

People development should be central for every company. People must be trained and empowered.

The book Understanding Business under IBDL by Dias and Shah (2011: 118) states that: “Training and development include all attempts to improve productivity by increasing an employee’s ability to perform.

“Training focuses on short term skills, whereas developments include long-term abilities.

Training and development include three steps:

● assessing the needs of the organisation and the skills of the employees:

● designing training activities to meet the identified needs; and

● evaluating the effectiveness of the training”.

Training includes seminars, workshops, job shadowing, on and off-jobs training, vestibule training and internship.

Tailor-made training programmes should be created by the organisation.

These improve team dynamics, boardroom dynamics, personal effectiveness, human relations, emotional intelligence, and problem solving. So, empowerment has its advantages.

Becker et al (1994) say with employee empowerment, there is less need for supervisors, thereby reducing costs.

So, as soon as an organisation realises that there is low performance, it must improve, re-tool and empower its workforce.

Recognition and rewarding

Human beings have that intrinsic need to feel recognised and rewarded.

Employees put more effort if they know that they are recognised and appreciated.

People stay where they are appreciated. Recognition includes awards and incentives.

According to the Gallup: “Workplace recognition motivates, provides a sense of accomplishment and makes employees feel valued for their work.

“Recognition not only boosts individual employee engagement, but it also has been found to increase productivity and loyalty to the company, leading to higher retention.” (Mann and Dvorak, 2016).

Leadership and management matrix

Leaders are supposed to create a culture of quality in an organisation to improve performance.

Maxwell (1998) rightly pointed out, “everything rises and falls on leadership”.

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