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When it comes to creating a stress-free work culture, this HR expert says business leaders should focus on outcomes instead of output.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Wire, Shandel McAuliffe, the editor of HR Leader, said that in a changing work-culture landscape, leaders should rethink work processes by zeroing in on what matters: results.
Ms McAuliffe highlighted that while it’s important to manage activities and delegate tasks, the effort of a leader looking to create a healthy work environment should not end in making sure that to-do lists are ticked off.
“From a leadership perspective, if you give someone an outcome to achieve, you’re giving them responsibility for that. Quite often, people will step up into that. People love to be told, achieve this for us however you think, within obviously ethical boundaries, is the best way to do that,” she stated.
She underlined that the best way to inspire motivation — and consequently boost productivity — in the workplace is to connect employees with the greater impact their work has on the business.
“Most of the time, they don’t even bother telling them [the] outcome. If they’re task-focused, they tend to be like, you do this task list today. It’s not nearly as motivating for the person, because they don’t understand the business impact that it has,” the HR expert explained.
As the pandemic fast-tracked the viability and efficiency of hybrid and remote set-ups such as working from home, she added that it’s impractical to be over someone’s shoulder the whole time, ensuring that they are doing their task list.
“You have to give them an outcome or an output that they need to achieve and then ask them how that’s going,” she advised.
And while it feels like a hands-off approach can feel like a major dissent from the traditional office culture where managers can constantly catch up through face-to-face meetings and quick chats, Ms McAuliffe stated that businesses should leverage technology to avoid management blindspots.
“I think that [tech] is really important, because if you are worried about certain tasks being missed, using your tech and I’ll relate this back to the HR world to things like making sure lead balances are right, or people are paid the right way. You can just look it up in the system and make sure that’s done correctly,” she said.
She said that by using technology to automate repetitive, simple tasks, people could “do what they’re best at” — whether it’s sales, property management or buying property for a client.
“I just think that’s so much more motivating for people to work in that way than to be given a task list,” adding that this work system is “the way forward”.
“It’s stress-free. If we all want a stress-free environment, we have to leverage the technology and become outcome-focused. We are not going to get stress-free if we are task-focused and manually driven,” Ms McAuliffe concluded.
Listen to the full conversation with Ms McAuliffe here.
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