With agencies trying to keep up with renewals, remarketing everything, and just plain keeping business on the books, it's no wonder that employees are overwhelmed, overworked, and morale is down. In this document, Grace Bauer shows you how to create work groups in your agency to increase efficiency — and boost morale.
If you get employees working together, explain the benefits, find a challenge, and delegate a work group, you'll go a long way toward increasing efficiency in your agency. You'll watch morale go up — and your agency will benefit from increased efficiency.
Now before we even think about a challenge, let's think about what the employees might think. “Oh, no — another thing for me to do!” Make sure to explain the benefits of starting a work group and getting employees to work together. Use this approach: “Let's find some extra time in our day. Let's see if we can eliminate some processes so that we can get more done. Let's make our jobs smoother. Let's not feel so stressed out.” Without a doubt, all of these areas are of great concern to employees. They're just too overwhelmed and need ways to increase efficiency and, in turn, improve morale.
FIND A CHALLENGE
You won't have a problem finding a challenge in your agency. There are way too many already: Let's see. How can we work our renewals quicker? How can we speed up the marketing process? What can we do to ease the workload? How can we prevent overtime? The list goes on and on and on. Start meeting these challenges today and get employees to work for you. Discuss what serious challenges your agency faces, starting with the most critical. It's easy to do, and the agency will be off to a great start.
DEVELOP A WORK GROUP
Include everyone. No matter what the challenge, don't leave anyone out. It doesn't matter if only one individual is having difficulty with a procedure or if you hesitate to include a new employee due to inexperience. Make sure to include every single person. Have employees work together toward a common goal.
When working with agencies on procedures, it's best to include everyone. Employees feel more important and gain a sense of camaraderie. They're more willing to help if agency principals are coming to employees to solve problems. After all, employees are the experts. They're the ones working on accounts all day long. Employees know what will work and what won't. And, even if a decision is made that might not work, you can always change it, and test the waters on another solution. Employees will come through for you if you let them.
GET MANAGEMENT INVOLVED
Always get management involved in the process. Make sure to get the opinions of agency principals in problem areas. Some agency principals have definite opinions on problems — and you don't want a work group to get far into solving a problem only to learn that management might be strictly against the idea. Work with management to get them involved. Delegate a team leader to run ideas by management and always have alternative plans. Remember, your goal is to increase efficiency and improve morale.
IMPROVE MORALE
What a surprise! It's been four weeks now and employees are working together. They're talking to each other, problems are being solved, and morale is up. It's like magic. Sometimes I can't believe it myself. When working with agencies on procedures, I might start out with a group of 10 people not talking, very pessimistic, highly opinionated, and unwilling to work together. Before I know it, they're actually talking to one another, solving their own problems — and morale goes up like magic. It really does.
About 50% of the agencies I work with have the same problem. They're overworked and overwhelmed with remarketing accounts and keeping up with renewals. So, find an avenue for employees to work together and get them to increase morale in the agency. At the same time, watch your agency's efficiency grow.
CONCLUSION
You can begin to turn things around today. Get employees working together. Explain the benefits. Find a challenge. Delegate a work group. Get management involved to make sure that the work group is going in the right direction. Always come up with alternate solutions. Start improving morale today.
It works. Try it. Don't be afraid to delegate responsibilities to your staff. The agency will recognize a big difference. After all, happy employees are efficient employees. We want our employees to be happy all the time . Increase morale and increase efficiency now .