What’s the best way to keep staff working at their best
What you need to know:
Not every performance problem is solved by a skills improvement and development intervention. I would advise a deeper review of your team members individually.
Every year, we have a skills development and improvement training at work. But after two or three months, the skills learnt are long forgotten and it’s back to sloppy work again. How else can I keep my team working at their best? More trainings? Rachel
Dear Rachel,
It’s commendable that your organisation has a skills and development training programme for the employees. This unfortunately is not a usual practice in many organisations due to resource constraints.
However, what you are describing is the classic frustration of a supervisor who has made a wrong diagnosis of the problem with the teams they lead when they fail to perform according to expectations.
Not every performance problem is solved by a skills improvement and development intervention. Having tried this intervention with the same results, it will not be advisable to apply the same intervention while expecting different results. It’s now time to go back to the drawing board.
I would advise a deeper review of your team members individually. Get to define each individual’s competence (the person’s demonstrated, task-specific and transferrable knowledge and skills on a given task). Competence is acquired over time.
Secondly, check out each individual’s Commitment. Commitment is a measure of an individual’s motivation and confidence in relation to a specific goal or task.
Commitment is attitudinal and must be checked out or confirmed with the individual.
Fortunately the tools you can deploy to understand each individual member’s competence and commitment are available. Consult your human resource department for assistance.
Moses Ssesanga
Head Human Resource
NMG - Uganda
[email protected]
