Why develop your employees from the bottom?

Dear Readers,

Again, I bring a theme to this blog by recent experience,

I find myself taking up a project team and decide to hire local employees to continue execution. When I were checking the information in the map and contrasted with the reality I found a lot of gaps, I asked the reason for this loss of information and the employees answered: "They just told us what we going  to do, they never mentioned why"

Is not the first time I saw something similar, and I assume also to many of you; who exercise a supervisory or management role. Moreover, the question I hear is: Which one is the rewards if we waste time explaining the target of the work, if they will not understand (using, work, research, etc.)? - What a great disappointment to hear those words, in that way I hope this post could answer that WHY.

First, the benefits of communicate:

The short time we have, is a short time to work. But, we don’t explain to the team, how relevant are the roles, and the relations with the final product. If you are the person who have the communication with the staff, you must to explain the benefits of the labor, and how that will work until you finish.

When working in installation or construction, I easy for the staff drill, trench or build; but they do not know in what they are working. I bring you some reasons to communicate:

• Integrate and motivate the team, take the time to explain to the people what we are doing allows them to feel part of the project and become involved with having a final product. In this point is important to communicate the time, goals and customer requirements. For example, in e-commerce the companies have a department that handled pricing, this department as its name suggests is responsible for giving an estimated customers of the products published price. However it was not until they explained the importance of they work with the final purchase that the team start to have the results expected.
• Advertise of the work of the company, If the staff know the work that is being done, That will be a benefit for both the company and the employee. The popular voice is powerful and we cannot forget that employees could communicate what the company does.
• Get new ideas, when required finding a solution to a particular problem and must be decided in the right moment,talk with staff and find alternatives to them it can become much more beneficial than some believe. Sometimes these people are very experienced in the field, and already had a similar problem before, so listen to new ideas can clarify biased minds. "Field decisions should be taken in the field. Not behind a desk"
• Preventing risks and damage to the project, having acknowledge about the project and the specifications of the materials the staff will be more carefully with the use. For example in the drop of cables, you must be alert to don’t bend it.
• The image of the company, a company is judge based on the quality and acknowledge of their staff, not just the professional staff also by the executor.

For example, Company A and B are in the same market, A reporter select one of the regular employees of the company A and asked which one is his position and he does? - The answer - I am part of the assembly staff, we take care practiced mind to fortify the pipes that connect the exhaust of the engine room and capacitors. After that, the reporter ask the same question to the company B, and the answer were: I am assembler, and here joined the pipes from here to the end of the hall.

The question is: what company provides a better image through their employees?

Second, the benefits of develop:

When looking on the bright side of providing an improved knowledge of individuals rescued a post that LinkedIn saw a few months ago, saying:

The CFO ask to CEO: - What if we invest in the development of our staff and they go out?
The CEO answered: What if we do not do it and they stay?

Develop a person does not always mean a big investment, or requires to send them to courses outside the company. Otherwise, you can encourage them to employees and supervisors transmit knowledge. The great concern of many is: "I will teach my future replacement." To do this requires:

1. Explain that it will not be a replacement, and this training will allow the company to increase the workload.
2. Facilitate teaching concepts and models, so they can be offer in the organization.
3. Start from senior positions and work down. Persuade by example.
4. Ask upgrade scenarios in which you should prepare a list of information to be filled. I recommend the following publication detailing steps to this transition: Happy Ending

    My father taught me: "It is not always promote a good technical to supervisor; you can lose a great technical and earn a bad supervisor"

True, but perhaps since they are technicians, the bosses could transmit the necessary knowledge to take this step, if they are invited to meetings as a listener, or are taken in consideration to know their views and indirectly those undergoing the evaluation. Those are also alternatives.

Many companies offer bonuses to reward an employee to train other and having each promotion within the company, another option is to include this element in the staff evaluations,

Among the benefits we are:

• Increased workload; you can have more experienced field supervisors.
• Improve work performance; if you have a motivated staff always work better.
• Reduce the indispensability of a person; you could considerate a plan B with some employees.
• Exalt the reputation of the company; a satisfied employee with the knowledge acquired in his previous job will speak better.

In addition, never forget that work teams are comparable with the wolves; they seek the survival of the herd before they own survive,

I hope these benefits could be interesting and considered for implementation,

Regards,

JSalvadorB

How to take a role in project management?

The first thing I want to write is about that change from an operation role to one management position, no matter how big is the jump, always new challenges require learning and I see it as follows:

The project will be a target, a product or a goal .But the elements I just mentioned only become the center of a whole environment. This is when we begin to have a vision 360 degrees and start thinking: Who would affect my decisions? How much will cost? How long will it take to see results? In addition, most importantly, have I the resources?

I'll explain a little of each of these questions, and how you can try to explain:

1. The affected, right now we have a word that many will sound very familiar "stakeholders" and are defined as groups involved and directly or indirectly with the company and its activities.

Those affected with the decisions tend to think that just going to be the owners of the companies they work or as many customer. However, it goes further, because as mentioned above are groups directly involved: shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, etc. (I hope the readers stop using the word of workers and migrate to employees or collaborators) and indirectly involved and here are the media, communities where the projects are carried out, competitors and others.

Now, you will say, how this may affect the development of a project? Only with the community disagrees with the work to be executed, it may be sufficient stop the job. So, if is in your hands the project possibility, you need to stop thinking only in the target.

If you want to know more of the stakeholders I invite you to read this paper from Nuclear energy agency: here.

2. The cost

This point it should be mixed with the following points (3 and 4). Because, money, time and resources are always linked. We tend to think that “more people, faster” in most cases is it, but also remember that the greater number of hands require greater supervision. Furthermore, this will increase the cost, which is not always best for the company, and will surely show that is a problem of money management.

I remember once, I was working in some designs and those activities were transformed into sequences, these made it difficult to work in various sectors because not everyone was a specialist, and not everyone working at same rate. The results of this were, that people had spent days waiting for his predecessor finish before starting work again.

My recommendation at this point with respect to the excess staff to perform tasks more quickly is not rushing, divide the project into processes and examines whether these can be generated in parallel or in series. Moreover, given the time each of them is very useful to use Microsoft Project to represent graphically.

Count how many people you would require for each activity and as you might divide the work so you do not disturb one another. For example, in roads it is the best example that I can emphasize the division of labor, because if you have a large project, you can open multiple teams in different locations that could go from end to end.

Another thing to consider is resources, not everything is personal but there are also equipment. If the machineries of the company are rented, sometimes is better add more staff and you could have a possibility of a discount. In addition, it could reduce the execution time and that will be good for customer relations.

Likewise, I'll be posting later How to monitor costs? That would be beneficial when you take control of the project from the tender.

3. Time, you will need to take in consideration three axes:

·        Company time

·        Costumer time

·        Real time

There is where the relationship with the customer and therefore could carry out the project.

Meet the job before discussing this point with the customer.

In my experience, the best dead line for the costumer is for yesterday.

At this point, I will focus on real time, but that will be for another post when we talk about time management.

4. Resources, in this globalized world we must thank the technology at least two things: first, we have the opportunity to have more and better equipment (No matter what business you are) and secondly, connectivity.

My recommendation about the equipment is:  you must consider every plug you are going to need, think from macro to micro.

I remember one time we were working with a compressor and a blower machine (equipment used to drop fiber optic) and found that everything was arranged to begin to work. When we went to connect the machines, the connections were different. We were forced to buy one four times more expensive to ensure the delivery time to the customer.

I hope these recommendations were useful, and subscribe to read more post like this,

Greetings,

JSalvadorb