This world
is fast. Knowledge, technological advances and
information grow to exponential rates, and to catch up with them is a challenge
on its own. The dilemma for organizations is critical but what’s the
solution? Fully renovated staff every single year that can
bring new insight into the company? That’s an approach: expensive,
unsustainable for the long term, and questionable from an CSR –Corporate Social Responsibility- perspective. Here I suggest some practical changes in the way we perceive productivity management inside the organization.
Limitations
of formal approaches
Some
companies made the choice to encourage employees to study further: MBAs,
Masters, and technical courses that can increase their skills and knowledge and
keep them updated. But what if catching up is understood as a daily task? In
this world, fast as I said above, new knowledge and information emerge on daily
basis. If companies base all their efforts on formal training (MBAs, Masters,
etc) the day will come when employees won’t be even finishing their MBA when
they’ll have to start the next one. In my opinion, even though a necessary
formal approach, companies must think about more sustainable and efficient
alternatives.
Learning is
routine
In practice,
I suggest to change some fixed patterns of work inside office. For example,
Google changes the way office design was understood and implemented a
revolutionary one. Fifty years ago a ping pong package at office wouldn’t be
taken seriously. Ten years ago it’d been said that wasn’t the core business so
the ping pong set should be outsourced.
However, today
there’s space for new improvements. Have you ever wonder why jobs are so
routinely scheduled that learning time is almost nonexistent? For instance, let’s
see a real case. Police officers must train their physical condition, shooting
precision, and action tactics, among others. They must train several
capabilities to perform well in their daily job, right? So, why don’t companies
provide training time into the formal working hours to increase people’s
capabilities to perform well in what's the company core stuff? Is it just perceived as a waste of time and money?
We should
think twice the way we understand working schedules in the world of today: if
productivity, innovation, and change are key words for reaching
competitiveness, so then companies should be shedding us light about how to
actually perform high on all those “key factors”. It’s after all a matter of
self-survival: don’t you agree?
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