Monitoring the workforce at your MRF can help you identify and fix potential problems before they happen. In a sense, it’s like building a preventative maintenance program for performance.
This performance monitoring and tracking is a hallmark of what Leadpoint’s onsite managers provide at the MRFs where we’re embedded. For those sites, and the ones that operate without our high-performance work teams, we asked a group of our tenured onsite managers for their input on the performance monitoring tools they use, the pros and cons of each, and the effectiveness of each to keep MRFs operating smoothly.
Here’s a summary of what these experts had to say.
Question: How do I let my crew know what is expected of them and how they are doing?
- I like to post hand speeds and quality on a bulletin board in the break room. It’s something everyone can use to understand expectations and to check their performance against a goal.
- We make job expectations a topic of our daily meeting at least once a week. I think it’s important to keep job performance top-of-mind. You can’t cover it once and move on; it’s something to come back to again and again.
- One site is experimenting with a once a month Performance Meeting, extending the lunch break by 15 minutes. Of course, the customer must agree to this first. There is an upside to Leadpoint, the customer and the employees.
- It sounds corny, but communication is key. Always. I once heard that the best way to communicate is “seven times, seven ways,” meaning that you should think of seven different ways to communicate each message and not expect it to really take hold until it’s been delivered seven times. For example, you could communicate performance expectations in a daily meeting, on a whiteboard, a handwritten note on the pay envelope, by text, one-on-one coaching, make a poster, during the job interview, in an email. OK, I guess that’s eight ways!
Question: What are some ways to improve morale and motivate employees to perform better?
- I think it takes continuous coaching throughout the day, every day.
- Praise publicly when an employee is doing something correctly, and coach publicly when they need help. Other employees are listening and may need help as well but are afraid to say anything.
- Never yell at someone or belittle them for asking for help…or no one will.
- Always coach on negative performance privately.
- I make it a practice to interact with employees and give them praise and support when they are doing something right, not just when they make a mistake.
What do you think? Add to the conversation with your comments and experiences. We will update this post with your input and together, we can build a library of tools to monitor, track and motivate performance at your MRF.
Or contact your Leadpoint onsite rep for a one-to-one conversation about performance monitoring at your location. We’re here to help!