How To Make Your IT Department More Efficient
March 22, 2018
Be Authentic
It’s easy to spot when someone is not their authentic selves, and a lacking authenticity in the workplace will always be viewed with mistrust. The IT department requires a manager who is able to be themselves. This will mean you can be more relaxed around them, and more able to help them when they need you rather than concentrating on keeping a mask on at all times.
You don’t have to let your employees into every aspect of your life, but it can certainly help if you let them know a little about you. A manager who is an unknown to them will be unable to gain the trust and friendship of their team in a way that someone who is completely themselves can.
Give Feedback
Offering your employees feedback is a crucial way to ensure that the team becomes more efficient. If your workforce doesn’t know when they have done something wrong, then they will continue to repeat the same mistake. It’s essential that these errors are pointed out right at the start so that they never happen again. If you leave it too late, your team will form a bad opinion of you, wondering why you let them keep getting things wrong for so long.
It’s just as important to give positive feedback as negative though. Praising your employees when they do a good job will help to inspire them to continue in that frame of mind and the more you tell them how pleased you are with them, the more they will want to please you.
What you also need to do is be completely transparent with your team. You’re not infallible just because you’re an employee or manager – if you make a mistake you will need to own up to it, apologize, and move on. Just because you’re a leader that doesn’t mean you always have to be right, so by establishing a culture of learning as you go that includes you as well as the IT department and everyone else you will prove that you can lead well but that your ego doesn’t get in the way.
Know Your Team
It can sometimes be difficult to remember the little things that individual members of your team tell you, but if you possibly can then it will go a long way to fostering a sense of trust and loyalty, and that means that your employees will do their best for you. If someone mentions that they are excited about going somewhere or doing something over the weekend, try to follow up on Monday morning and ask them how it went, for example. Remember birthdays. Ask after family members and find out about hobbies. This shows that you genuinely care about your team and makes a big difference when it comes to productivity.
Understanding what motivates your team will also allow you to find out how to encourage them at work. When you know what their ultimate goals are it is much easier to help them get there.
Make The Office Space Comfortable
A comfortable office space is a more productive one, so take the time to look around and determine whether the rooms in which your employees work are comfortable or just functional. It is possible for them to be both.
A worker in an office needs access to natural light, for example, if they are going to be as productive as possible. It’s also important to allow fresh air into the office if you can, or if not then installing an air conditioning unit is a good idea. When it comes to desks, allow them to be personalized – the more at home an employee feels, the better they will work.
Ergonomics is definitely something that you need to consider in your office. This means buying office equipment such as chairs and desks that allow people to work in the safest, most comfortable way for them. Standing desks are particularly popular and really can do wonders for an employees productivity and efficiency. They are expensive, however, so a great alternative can be a standing desk converter which offers flexibility and comfort at a better price for your cash flow.
Give Them The Best
The IT department in your company is all about technology. It’s essential that you give the team the very best that your budget will allow for. Buying cheap may look good in your profit and loss sheets, but it won’t be good for your IT department’s productivity. Slow computers without the correct programs installed can make everything much less efficient.
In fact, throughout your entire company, there will be many tasks that take up a lot of time that can be automated. This includes calendar automation so that meetings don’t have to be scheduled manually, and contract management systems so that everyone has access to the same documents and can work on them together.
If you can automate the most time consuming and monotonous tasks, then you can save yourself money in the long term and boost the efficiency (and happiness levels) of your team.
Encourage Risk Taking
It’s important to give your employees the autonomy to take risks if they feel it is worth doing. These risks should always be calculated, of course, but if they can prove to you why they think their risk will pay off, then you should allow them to go ahead with it within reason.
If that employee fails, don’t be harsh on them. Make sure they, you, and the rest of the team learn from those failures. If you can encourage risk taking it will make your employees more independent and confident in their work.