Your technical team is the beating heart of your organisation. Without them, your company is compromised – which is why they need to feel loved and valued. If they believe that the work they do is taken for granted, you can expect to see productivity drop and staff turnover increase.
Health and safety officers, project managers, engineers and technicians all play vital roles in business operations. They hold positions of all job levels and are largely responsible for ensuring that operations are carried out efficiently and safely. When productivity drops, it affects the overall performance of the business and revenue. When this happens, it won’t be long until difficult questions have to be asked.
To avoid such awkward conversations from having to take place, improving and maintaining high levels of productivity is a must. Morale plays a huge role in productivity – as the saying goes, a happy worker is a productive worker.
Ownership
Allow members of the team to take ownership and responsibility. Workers tend not to react well to micromanagement as they don’t feel trusted by their superiors. Allowing workers to develop their own way of doing things and providing an environment where they feel comfortable to do things their way (within reason, of course), can contribute to high levels of efficiency.
When being micromanaged, workers will not have the confidence or autonomy to use their problem-solving skills and, instead, will constantly seek assistance. When given accountability, they become invested and, as such, begin to develop leadership skills. Without feeling as though management is breathing down the back of their neck, this provides the ideal environment for employees to grow.
Communication
Whatever department it may be, whether technical or otherwise, communication is a key factor for productivity. Each member of staff can be the very best in their field but, if they are unable to communicate, the team will fall flat on its face very quickly. For engineering teams, the responsibility largely falls to the project manager to set expectations for communication.
Without communication, the left-hand doesn’t know what the right is doing and, sooner or later, that will have dire consequences. Whether the effects are felt internally or, worst-case, impact a client or customer, this slows productivity and causes unnecessary and avoidable disruption.
Understanding Strengths and Weaknesses
Having a clear understanding of the skills present in the team and, crucially, any gap that exists is important for productivity, as well as forming the basis of a recruitment strategy. Productivity can also be low, because of a lack of skills present in the team. With skills missing, productivity will undoubtedly slow down through no fault of the team. It is then up to management to address the situation.
When a skills gap is identified in the team, the next step is to consider whether training or a new hire is the best course of action. The best hires are those that are hired based on their potential, rather than their experience, as they are afforded the opportunity to grow with the company. These tend to be the most loyal members of staff, therefore helping to reduce staff retention rates and allowing you to better plan for the future.
Fast Track Your Hiring Process
Should it be decided that hiring a new technician or engineer should be the next step, working with a recruitment agency such will help to fill the gap. You can fast track your recruitment process by removing your need for reviewing every CV that comes in and multi-stage interviews.
Contact BMS Performance for More Information
If you believe that hiring a new engineer will help to improve your business’ productivity levels, please get in contact with a member of our team. We will work with you to create a job specification, source candidates and review applicants – all leading to finding the very best fit for your team.
