Let’s face it, the slogan “do more with less” isn’t going away anytime soon, and often that includes adding tasks to the already full plate of leaders.
There will certainly always be a need for optimization and process improvements, but it’s important we don’t lose sight of the impacts on our teams, and to us. Burn-out, stress, lack of home/work balance, productivity levels, and even the quality of work produced all have the possibility of affecting us.
Many leaders are experiencing that human resource functions are being shifted to them for action as their HR department is scaled back or even eliminated. These shifting tasks may include additional interviews for hiring, onboarding, increased administrative work for promotions, attendance/PTO tracking, and performance counselling.
New tasks may also include investigating and addressing legal and compliance challenges, along with creating consistent compensation guidelines, succession planning, organizational and individual development planning, and building a leadership pipeline for their company.
It’s a lot. Having said that, we can’t let “tasks” derail us from creating a positive work culture and the need to continually build and maintain relationships with our team members and others we interact with.
Our team members must know they are valued and appreciated, they need to know we truly care about them, we need to ensure they know our behaviors support the vision and goals despite these additional tasks, and we need to solicit their ideas for “doing more with less”.
To ensure success, we can’t let tasks take precedence over relationships, and we need to make “people” our priority!
Sincerely,
Mike and Jan
