Increasing Productivity

Human resource is the only resource which can improve productivity of the organsation.
which is so vital for survival in today’s highly competitive business environment. Human resource is more valuable asset than other assets like capital or equipments. If people working in organsation are not motivated, none of the initiatives taken by the company no matter how good they are will be successful. Motivation cannot be thrust upon people. It has to come from within . External motivation like fear factor, Incentives etc work only temporarily. They do not last long. Self motivation is the best motivation because it comes from within and lasts for ever. The person who is self motivated has a clear vision. He is focussed and channelises his energy to achieve goals which he has set for himself. People working in organization come from different cultural, social and educational background which determine the belief system and behaviour of the person. Organisation has it’s own culture which to some extent influence the behaviour of individual employees of the organisation. Organisation culture emanates from top and goes downwards. It is never the other way round. Culture mismatch happens if the organization culture does not fit employee’s own cultural background. HR managers while hiring employees should not only look at technical knowledge but also the cultural background which influence the behaviour and attitude of the person. A person with negative attitude will be critical He will find fault with everyone. He will blame the whole world for his problems. He lacks self esteem. He looks at opportunities as threats and creates hurdles in any change initiatives taken by the organisation for fear of losing control. Apart from motivation, there are other factors like Time management, Prioritisation, Delegation etc which can increase productivity. Most of employees spend 80% of their time doing things which contribute only 20% in achieving goals. That means either they are not clear as to what their KRA’s ( Key Result Areas) are or they don’t know how to prioritise activities if there are too many things to do. If KRA’s are not clear or not linked to company’s overall objective, increasing productivity will not give any benefit to the organization. KRA must be set keeping in mind company’s overall objective. Roles of individual employees should be defined keeping in mind KRA set. Job description of the roles must be spelt out clearly for new recruits so as to assess their capabilities visa vis the roles the job demands. This will eliminate competency mismatch at a later stage. What is important is how effectively the people in the company work rather than how hard they work. Time management helps in doing more in lesser time resulting in increase in productivity. This will eliminate idle time and inefficiencies.
If there is an awareness how critical the activity is from the point of view of achieving goals, activities which do not contribute much can be delegated to sub ordinates.