The business world, as you might know, is all geared towards increasing productivity & profitability. These two metrics, more than any other, are also used to gauge organizational performance in commercial settings. Shareholders use these criteria to determine if a particular industrial venture can meet their investing concerns, and market competitors take them as economic ‘pegs’ towards which they need to ultimately aspire to. End-of-year reports try to delineate how annual revenues (the prime figures that hint at the profit yields accrued) have been consolidated, and busy accountants labor strenuously to ensure that no mistakes have been made in their minute calculations.
A Short Note on My Personal Business Discoveries
There can be no doubt that all the issues highlighted above comprise some of the major existential themes pertaining to the world of commerce – and any businessman or woman worth his/her salt has to primarily keep constant track of them to be successful. And for the record, I compiled this brief assembly of common business concerns using my trusty Optimum Internet Speed (and hogging over a few online business forums for seeking some much-needed writing inspiration).
But in my 20 years of hardcore business experience (in working for existing corporations, and through establishing my own expanding retail venture), I have come to find that there a great deal of other factors that prove pivotal to the success of any production or service-oriented entity.
These ‘industry unspeakables’ – as I like to refer to them – are mostly associated with the often-abstract human experience of workers & their managers as they attempt to go about their daily work tasks.
I have learned that by taking care of such subjective and inter-personal worker indicators as employee satisfaction and resource appreciation/recognition, overall team productivity can be increased at the very least by a factor of 2.
I’ll detail a couple of these points, which are memorable to me on account of the more-than-satisfactory results that they have yielded in all my working concerns with other professionals, a bit more comprehensively below.
So if you’re interested in gleaning some fraction of the (dare I say) work-wisdom that I have attained over the course of my lengthy business career, I suggest that you take the time to read on below.
Most of these pointers can appear to be self-axiomatic.
But trust me when I tell you, they surprisingly prove to be anything but (when put into experiential practice).
Worker Appreciation/Recognition Can Count More than Salary Slips
This one, in addition to hitting quite close to home for me, also occupies the mindsets of many hardworking professionals that I have been privileged to have met during my career span.
Many companies make the far-reaching mistake of treating all their employees in the same way. And as any experienced manager or team organizer would relate, there are some workers who naturally (as per their innate nature) strive to work extra – and typically aim higher than the minimum work threshold assigned to them by their superiors.
These are the famously called eighty-percenters of working professionals that can be found discreetly in all team settings, and they normally constitute the ‘dream resource’ for every manager to work with.
Their impetus for working hard comes not from the remuneration packages offered to them by their companies (since all of their peers within the same sub-group, irrespective of their individual work performances, normally get the same deal), but from the level of appreciation and managerial recognition afforded to them vertically.
On the flip side, these types of workers (despite being the most high-functioning variety of resources that you can find) are notorious for switching their employment positions at the proverbial ‘drop of a hat’. This preponderance in their work portfolios again comes about from the underlying strain of employee-appreciation granted to them; or more precisely, the lack of it (in their perspective).
In my dealings with eighty-percenters, I have always tried to offer them literal bucket loads of verbal appreciation strategically (since too much of a good thing is bound to get to anyone’s head – good worker or not!), and have found them to respond in kind through their noticeably enhanced work performance at even some very modest salary packages.
The key here lies in the management possessing the discerning capability of judging each individual worker on his/her merit, and then attempting to craft custom workflow models in dealing with them effectively.
Justified Short-Term Compromises Lead to Long-Term Results
Before starting out formally in the business world, I took an advanced baccalaureate degree in Human Resource Management from a popular Ivy League institution. Theoretically-speaking, I had mistakenly thought (at that time) that I knew everything that was worth knowing about managing and hiring suitable employees for high-profile organizations. The first few months I spent working in the HR department of a major telecommunications MNC, however, got my feet back on the ground in no time.
In a nutshell, I learned the value of everyday hands-on learning, and the role that accumulated experience (in dealing with the day-to-day & trying concerns of the workplace) plays in making a thorough working professional.
When hiring new skilled workers for a specific organizational department, I discovered that flexible employees (even if they happened to be less professionally attributed/accomplished than their high-performing counterparts) panned out well in the long-term.
This is because they readily seem to admit their work-oriented shortcomings, and are willing to make timely retreats (compromises) that allow the eighty-percenters to fill in the working ‘gaps’ left by them in the workflow process. And in time, they silently take steps to improve – and prove their value to their organizations.
In a certain respect, these types of fluid workers can be likened to the proverbial ‘underdogs’ of the business world, and their combination with their naturally high-performing colleagues ensures that a responsive & productive organizational function is set up within every commercial operation.
One that lasts out longer, and brings in more dividends for the venture as a whole.
Using my optimum economy package of High-Speed Internet Service, I came across a number of personal accounts left by business leaders all over the Internet – a discovery that inspired me to pen my own