Production, productivity and Recognition

S.Ramesh, EDS, TPR

Requirements For Today’s Managers

In alignment (to be on the team)

Thinking out the box (be creative)

Empowering employees

Maintaining core competencies

Managing change

Requirements For Today’s Employees (1 of 2)

Flexibility - accept change readily

Clock speed - move faster, think faster

Accept ambiguity & uncertainty

Stay current - commit to life-long learning

Contribute - add more value than you take

Requirements For Today’s Employees (2 of 2)

Manage yourself - fixer not finger pointer

Don’t get a job, make a job

Job Design Techniques for Improving Productivity

Job simplification

Job rotation

Job enlargement

Job enrichment

Job sharing

Teams and Productivity

Content (goals and outcomes) and

process (how the team accomplishes

tasks) - productive teams pay attention to

both.

Cohesion - Team must be cohesive but

must not want agreement more than

accuracy (or quality of outcome).

Undercurrents in Team Dynamics (Continued)

Relationships between team members

•Effects on rank and positions

•Friendship and formality

•Openness

•Personality preferences

Employee Involvement

Employee involvement means allowing

employees to participate in work-related

decisions and improvement activities that

affect them.

This doesn’t mean anarchy, but it means

that management shares its responsibilities

in decision-making with employees.

What Are the Potential Benefits of Employee Involvement?

Benefits of Employee Involvement

Increases trust and commitment. Improves employee communications and

attitudes. Involved employees are more likely to

generate new ideas and achieve a higher quality of work life

Reduce the workload of managers

Levels of Employee Involvement

Information sharing

Dialogue Individual problem

solving Intra-group

problem solving

Inter-group problem solving

Focused problem solving

Limited self-direction

Total self-direction

Approaches to Involving Employees

Commitment from management Must be long-term, ongoing attempts Communications efforts

• feedback

• “bottom-up” communications

• employee surveys and suggestion systems

Training and education

Conclusions

Productivity improvement (PI) is critical to

every organization for survival

Every employee should have basic knowledge

and skills to contribute to PI

Organizations need to have clear PI strategies

Successful PI does not ensure long-term

profitability nor competitiveness