When the main part of your job description includes managing people you can expect challenges to come and go in varying degrees.
With the advent of remote work in a post-pandemic world productivity is something that every manager knows needs to be heavily prioritized.
Even in environments where your team does not work remotely it still falls on your shoulders to motive them to stay on task. But how do you do that?
One of the more important things to realize is that everyone you are going to be managing is going to be unique in what does and does not work for them in terms of improving job performance and have productive days.
While this might seem like bad news, it is quite the opposite. Since you need to be prepared to work with all different types of direct reports, that means that arming yourself with a variety of productivity hacks in advance of needing to use them is your best bet.
Monitor Your Fleet
When a business has an element of operations that requires a fleet it can be easy to assign a daily schedule and route to your drivers and just leave them to it.
While this is great for managers to be able to attend to other tasks and certainly allows for a great deal of autonomy for your road team, it is not doing you any favors in terms of productivity.
Modern dispatch solutions can bridge the gap between driver productivity and customer satisfaction.
Fleet managers rely on this software to optimize driver routes for the highest efficiency.
At the end of the day, your reputation is going to be built on the satisfaction of your customers and poor fleet management can cripple that quickly.
As you learn about your options, there are things to think about. Although productivity is the top goal, you also need to be inquisitive about how dispatching software can increase safety measures and affect cash flow.
Schedule Your Check-Ins
Nothing can sideline a person’s day more than an unexpected meeting with their manger.
While there are always going to be times where this is unavoidable, if you company structure is one that includes regular check-ins with your team, get them on the books in a manner that is respectful of everyone’s time.
You will quickly learn that when your direct reports have a meeting with you on the books it encourages them to be productive before and after so that they can meet the expectations of the day, while still taking out time for your one on one.
In a roundabout way you are encouraging them to develop scheduling habits for themselves and you, as their manager, will be able to gauge if they are working or not based on task completion rates.
Be As Transparent As Possible
If there is something in the pipeline that one of your employees is going to have to be a part of, let them in on it as soon as possible.
In previous generations of business discretion was valued over transparency but things have completely shifted, and we are now in a place where nobody likes to have information withheld and then subsequently dumped on them.
When there is a looming project or issue that requires the attention from your team being transparent allows them to look at all their responsibilities as a whole and find time to dedicate to this new project.
When you as a manager are transparent it builds trust within the team and reinforces to everyone that you do not value yourself above them.
Additionally, you have the added potential benefit of getting employees excited about what’s to come.
If this is a challenge that your team can look forward to then they are going to be more apt to stay on task to consistently have room for this new undertaking.
Offer Support
There are simply too many productivity solutions available on the market for you, as a manger, to not embrace them and offer them as support for your team.
If you have someone who you notice struggles to self-motivate and their productivity is suffering as a result, instead of picking up the slack, or even terminating them for underperformance, offer some support as a first resort. There are several different ways to go about this.
You can offer support in the form of more monitoring and help on a task-to-task basis. Or you can suggest things like productivity apps or scheduling software that they might take advantage of so that they themselves don’t have to carry the mental load of putting together an efficient to-do list each day.
It boils down to playing to an employee’s strengths in order to correct their weaknesses. Rather than focusing on their shortcomings and throwing your hands up in the air about it.