How can you improve workforce performance in a distributed organization?

Set goals and KPIs that you monitor and keep visible to employees so that the employees play an active role in achieving those goals. The KPIs will drive the end performance of the goal. For example, safety should be a KPI if a goal is a safer organization. An organization can not say safety is a goal, but the KPIs focus only on efficiency or sales. KPIs need to be tailored to the goals. When all teams and employees know the goals and KPIs, it creates a more cohesive workforce, and people understand what they are striving for and how performance is measured. There will be very little participation if a workforce is unaware of a goal or how to get there, and performance will suffer.

First and foremost things to define clear goal and that should align with work your employees do. It should not be dictated by some buzzwords and jargons. Goal is a way to communicate company's expecation and measure employee's performance against it, not to confuse and pressurise them to do completely unrelated work.

Companies should foster an environment of collaboration and open communication. When employees and departments are encouraged to collaborate with others rather than operating as separate entities, creativity in reaching goals and troubleshooting issues naturally follows, and both are important in boosting performance and making employees feel that they are playing an active and vital role in the organization.

When working with remote teams it's really important to take time out to contract on how you will work together. Topics for this session would include: - Meetings virtual versus in-person - purpose, frequency, standing agenda items. I always include a "check in" during weekly meetings just to share how the week is going and a welding score out of 5. - Technology - emails/ teams/texts/ calls/miro/sharepoint what will you use for what purpose - Connection/ wellbeing/ fun how will you connect for fun and how you protect this time when you get busy. - Preferred working style e.g.send me text vs, please call me vs. I like emails and I'll read them between 4-5 each day. Once you've done and documented this, it's good to keep coming back to it.

Communication, colloaboration and coordination are three important pillars for any team across the companies. Proper tools and channels should be available for employees to connect and engage with other colleagues securly and smoothly. We need to foster organic connects between teams thru' transperent and inter connected work culture rather forcing some 'designed' team building/off site programs. Also, secure and accessible knowledge repository of past works and best practicies will help for better knowldge transition and learning.

Just pure training and development is now a traditional way to nurture a team for company's requirement. It should be replaced with internship approach, specially for fresheres. So, they will start with basic jobs and gradually grow knowledge for their work by hands on and real life experiences. For experienced employees rather than giving them some training, we should give them opportunity to learn and grow on their own by multiple channles, by not limiting it to some instructor led training or online courses. In current scenario, if experienced persons want to learn something new, they can learn, provide they have all means and required resource. Learning milestone can be also part of goal, so it can align with employee's performance.

When an organization notices a decrease in individual or overall workforce performance, it must manage with agile and proactive initiatives. Hopefully, data has been collected throughout the journey, and this info can then be leveraged in a pivot to mitigate decreased performance. If data has not been compiled with an ongoing effort to improve consistently, that is likely part of the problem. Too often, programs are developed and then left as is.