You’ve hired some great staff to work in your business. They’ve settled in nicely, although you are wondering when your workload is going to decrease – in fact you feel like you are doing MORE work not less. What is going on?

Chances are, you are micromanaging your staff. Here are some typical scenarios:

1. You make assumptions about ability and skill level. It took you six months to get a handle on a particular skill, so you assume it will take someone else the same amount of time. Do not let pride get in the way of potential for improvement! You hired your staff for their skills, aptitude and experience. Let them use it.
2. You are not open to things being done differently. Your method has always served you well, so you expect your staff to perform a task in the same manner. Do not let fear of change get in the way of new and innovative ways to work!
3. You are uneasy about trusting your staff to work efficiently when they are unsupervised. How are you going to know they are doing the work they should? At some point you will need to take a ‘risk’ and let your staff stand on their own. They may make mistakes, but use those incidences as learning experiences. The vast majority of people respond well to trust and are likely to perform better when they are given responsibility.

In general, the more ‘hands off’ you can be, the better the result. This does not mean you leave a staff member to work with no boundaries or relevant, essential procedures. But allowing your staff to make a job their ‘own’ will result in an increased level of ‘ownership’ of their position and/or particular tasks, and increased loyalty to your business.

Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender

Knowing how to get the best performance from your employees can be difficult. The fact that you are running a business means that you have a fairly good dose of entrepreneurial spirit! So why not give your staff an opportunity to start thinking like entrepreneurs too in order to encourage growth?

One way to do this is to let them make decisions that have an impact on their work and then hold them accountable for the results. This might be small areas of authority to start with as you ‘test the waters’, but it begins to increase your employees’ commitment to your business and ultimately its success.

You can also assist your employees to set goals, but let them figure out how to achieve them. Not only does this give them some freedom and motivation, you may also find some surprising and unexpected ideas flowing from them.

Create a culture where employees are encouraged to experiment. Everything has the potential for improvement: the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is a poor mandate for your business. Ask employees to seek out changes that will have a positive impact on your business. In some instances, you might find that your current procedure or product or system is working in the best manner it can. But you will not know that until you consider and experiment with other options.

Always devote time for feedback from any of these changes in order to evaluate what went right or wrong. You (and your employees) can learn just as much from what worked as what did not work and strategies can be developed based on those lessons.

Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender