According to Portal G1 , employee idleness decreased in 2018, but still brings very worrying data. In July 2018, only in the industrial sector, companies only used 68% of their installed capacity. Idleness is one of the worst enemies of team management , which is why it is so important to find a balance between not overworking employees or being idle.
Employee idleness: concept and risks
According to the dictionary, idleness is the condition of inactivity , that is, it is when workers are left without work, not producing or contributing to the company in any way.
Idleness causes loss of money, after all, you are paying for a potential that is not being realized.
In addition, it can also demotivate employees and generate problems, such as: professional turnover, disunited and unstable staff, among many others.
You certainly don’t want this scenario in your company, right?
To help you get around your team’s idleness and increase the production and profit of your business, we have prepared not one or two, but nine tips to make a good team management and avoid the idleness of the collaborators.
Keep up and have a good reading!
9 tips to make a good team management and avoid employee idleness
1) Align communication
Lack of communication is an old enemy of team management.
This problem persists even with the advancement of technology and the possibility of using resources for members of the same team to communicate, regardless of the time or place they are.
This is a very worrying fact, as employee engagement depends on communication.
In addition, the misalignment of communication also generates disagreement about the work that needs to be done, and the employee ends up not being clear about priorities and deliverables that must be made.
To overcome this problem, it is always necessary to maintain an open conversation channel with everyone and adopt a single platform on which employees and managers will exchange information. So: be clear and do not fragment communication on several different channels !
2) Be an inspirational leader
Much of the causes of employee idleness can come from poor management.
This poor management results in the lack of a clear objective on the part of employees, who do not know exactly what to do and how to do it. So, in addition to following all the tips in this post, it is important that the example of an engaged and committed employee begins with you!
Be the kind of leader you would like to have. Inspire improvements, proactivity, and manage tasks intelligently. Create conditions for your employees to do a good job.
For this, we believe that a good leader should have three important characteristics: focus , planning and the ability to divide tasks coherently among the team.
3) Be clear about the company’s objectives
Do you know what your company’s vision is? Where does she want to be 5 years from now, for example?
All efforts of a company must be directed so that it reaches its vision, so it is essential to have knowledge of this concept (as well as the mission and values) to transmit to its employees.
Work without a clear vision of the future will hardly be understood as a relevant and important work for the organization, generating a collective feeling of disorientation.
4) Manage tasks
Managing tasks is very important to avoid idleness, and it is not just up to you: your collaborator also needs to be able to do it.
When receiving a list of weekly tasks, for example, he must organize them so that the primary tasks are performed first, so that they do not serve as an impediment to the accomplishment of others.
For example : the employee has a task to deliver a new solutions page on the company’s website. So he must first map these solutions and then develop the page, otherwise he will start, but at some point he will have to stop, as he simply did not perform the necessary tasks.
So when we talk about task management, there are three very important words:
- Delegate : assign a task to another person, in case another employee has more time or competence to do it.
- Prioritize : do the most important tasks first.
- Control : track performance and task deliveries.
5) Empower the team
Organizing training and qualification for your team can bring several benefits, and one of them is the reduction of idleness.
With training practices available, employees can use the time they have less work to study and improve their work. In this way, he will also further develop his decision-making capacity and will increasingly contribute to the organization.
6) Encourage proactivity
Proactivity is a virtue that is highly sought after by employees, and it could not be: a professional with proactivity is able to seek new tasks and activities if his time is idle.
Being proactive also helps to build a good organizational climate because a proactive employee can assist in the activities of other employees, proving capable of taking positions even before problems arise.
7) Hold meetings
Meetings are a necessary evil.
But don’t worry, we are not talking about long daily meetings.
Just a weekly meeting to align tasks, deliverables and goals is enough to help you implement many of the tips we mentioned above, such as: communication, clarity of objectives and task management.
This is also an important time to listen to your employees, understand how they feel about their work and record possible complaints.
