It is hard to determine what is the best way to run your business. Do you give all of your employees the freedom to decide how they manage their workload or do you give them structured procedures to follow?
For certain roles there is legal compliance that must be followed to ensure that you are working safely and following the law and for other roles you don’t have those sorts of restrictions.
Trying to decide what is best for your business is the hardest part as it can either greatly improve or greatly damage your business. Both have their merits and also their own problems.
Employee Autonomy
With employee autonomy you will set the goals or targets that the employees need to be complete in a timescale given, EG: by the end of the day, week, month etc. Then you let the team work independently to make that happen. Some employees will really thrive and overachieve with this method; others will struggle as they prefer proper structure.
When it works it is great, but it does come with its own problems. Good customer service is ignored to get what the employee wants to complete their job, admin tasks are neglected and should you need to try and address the issues, you might have it thrown back at you that ’ you never told me I had to do this’. This leads to more procedures being put in place.
Structured Procedures
Having structured procedures can make it easier to monitor what is working and who is following them, but the biggest challenge is making them clear enough for your employees to understand and follow. The McDonalds food chain has always worked with well-structured and broken down procedures to help all employees to understand and follow and this makes them very efficient and profitable. But if what you do has too many variables, you need to rely on your team to make decisions and use their knowledge; this restricts them from thinking outside the box to achieve their goal.
Can you do both?
The short answer is no. This will make things even more confusing for everyone involved and ultimately will damage your business.
You can start with structured procedures with new or inexperienced employees and then move to a more fluid way of working once they have gained the knowledge and experience needed, but only once the time is right. You will be back to the start otherwise and your business will not run efficiently.
But how do I decide?
You can determine this on your own, but it is better to have support from someone who can help you to decide what would be the best choice and how to make that happen.
There is no right answer, but I can help you to determine how to achieve the best out of your business. Contact me to have a chat about your business needs.
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