Employee Engagement to Drive Efficiencies

Rosanna Papier, Vice President, Finance, Wakefield & Associates

Quiet quitting, talks of recession, increasing interest rates, and layoffs have consumed business headlines recently. Many businesses are struggling to find ways to cut costs and improve efficiencies to remain profitable. Unfortunately, the initial thought is usually to cut labor costs. The staff that remain will struggle with employee morale, which may further reduce productivity and profits. While automation and outsourcing certainly have their place in improving the bottom line, companies may be missing out on an opportunity to maximize efficiencies by utilizing an untapped resource- employee buy-in. Often, the reason companies are finding themselves in an unprofitable situation to begin with is due to the lack of employee engagement, and its natural byproduct: inefficiencies. Whatever gains initially made by pushing down so-called “cost-saving” measures may be quickly lost via lower productivity as a result of employees becoming disengaged.

So, how do we actually improve efficiencies while engaging employees?

Accomplishing this begins with asking the right questions of the right people. 

Some of the best ideas for company growth and improvement come from the lower ranks. Upper management might be surprised to learn how much their employees on the ground floor know about the operations process, where the bottlenecks are, and the many insightful thoughts waiting to be heard which may lead to cost savings and improving efficiencies. Why don’t employees simply bring forward their ideas? It can be very intimidating to share those ideas with upper management. Likewise, it may be awkward or just intuitively seem foolish for upper management to ask the lower ranks for their ideas on how to best run a company. But nothing is farther from the truth. Setting ego and awkwardness aside, if you are courageous enough to venture into such daring waters, you may find the flow of ideas quite enlightening and rewarding for all parties involved.

Some considerations-

1. Everyone loves to be heard and give their opinion- If you sincerely ask your employees for their honest opinion about the work they do and their ideas to make it better, they just might open up with a never-ending flow of ideas. You may have to push and be patient to get them to open up. Not all problems are easily solved and not all ideas are going to be feasible or practical.  But it’s worth the process to both hear your employees and glean some insight to the temperature of the team and where any problems & potential solutions lie. At the end of the conversation, your employee will feel that they were heard, and they may even have the reward of seeing their creative ideas come to fruition. Whether or not the discussion has any traction, simply say, “I really appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts with me. Keep them coming.” 

“Some of the best ideas for company growth and improvement come from the lower ranks.”

TIP- Encourage your team to present a proposed solution for every problem/ complaint to keep the focus positive.

2. There are certain ideas that can only come from the operations personnel doing the day-to-day work- They are in the deep in the weeds of business processes every single day and have greater visibility to operational inefficiencies- the copier is always getting jammed when you print more than 100 pages. It takes 3 hours every week to manually input checks into the accounting system, productivity is being lost due to bandwidth issues. When you start hearing about the pain points, you are really hearing opportunities for brainstorming, teamwork, collaboration, and potential efficiencies. If solutions are implemented in a collaborative well-thought-out manner, you will engage your team and increase job satisfaction all while saving costs and alleviating frustration. Even when implementing a new process initiated from upper management, take the time to communicate the change to your team- Explain the benefits of the new program being implemented, provide training and ask for feedback. How could implementation have gone better? What do you like about the change? What do you dislike?  Are we able to make tweaks to make it better?

Have individual meetings with your team on a regular basis and ask them things like, “Is there a task you do regularly that is tedious in which you often think ‘there’s got to be a better/faster way to do this’? Let’s talk about the process.” There may be a custom IT report that could be created to save hours of time. Or perhaps getting some additional Excel training can save time manipulating data in the spreadsheets by learning some of the advanced features like Pivot tables and VLOOKUPs which make analysis of huge data sets a breeze.

TIP- If you are going to solicit input from your employees, follow through.  I once worked at a company that had a suggestion box stuffed with suggestions that had sat there unread for over a year!

3. You have an opportunity to be a servant-leader to your team by addressing pain-points and getting employees to participate in the solution- Lead in demonstrating passion about excellence and making a positive difference. People who feel inspired, appreciated, and valued for their ideas will typically put more care and effort into their work. Ask questions that encourage employees to be part of the solution.

4. Look at your vendor relationships- Companies often pay unnecessarily high rates for products or services because they have contracts that automatically renew, and no one is maintaining or tracking a lease schedule showing the lease end date. This is a great project you may be able to delegate to your team, involving them in finding cost savings—to research/obtain competitive vendor bids and compile the data for decision making.

In summary, kicking off an initiative to drive efficiencies with high employee engagement takes a commitment of time and communication. In real estate, the rule is “location, location, location”. For long-term gains in efficiency and employee engagement, “communicate, communicate, communicate”.  Time invested in communicating, educating, growing, and empowering your team will reap huge rewards beyond measurable dollars and cents.

Employee Engagement