Mike Clark's Business Bites: Feeling a sense of achievement is a basic human need

You need both cranes and buckets in the workplace - each team member doing their role to the best of their ability. Photo / Freepix

OPINION:

In the current tight labour market, business owners and managers need to ensure they are maximising the skills and abilities of their people. Sadly, this does not always happen.

A great analogy that encapsulates this is "using a crane to lift buckets". If you have ever struggled with delegation and "just done it yourself" because it was "quicker and easier", you have fallen foul of the situation this analogy describes.

This lovely, simple picture describes the misuse of resources in a business. Whenever a highly skilled (and typically more expensive) team member is required to do a basic task because you "just need it done and trust them to do it", you are likely wasting company time and money and, arguably more egregiously, undervaluing and frustrating your best employees. If you don't trust the people you have employed to do the job they are meant to do, be careful not to make your champion employees pay the price for your lack of management skills and inability to train.

Are you using your team and their skill sets in the most effective way to heighten job enjoyment and give the best return on invested skills? Are your roles clearly defined and do you have an updated and clearly visible skills matrix to show who can do what? Are your team engaged and feeling suitably challenged and appreciated in their roles?

People need to feel challenged at work. It is a basic human need to feel a sense of achievement and contribution. When we give the right tasks to the right people we have people executing skills that match their experience and you avoid expending extra resources - like using cranes to pick up buckets! You need both cranes and buckets - each team member doing their role to the best of their ability.

There are many reasons why companies use resources that appear to be overcompensating and throwing "weight" behind tasks. In some situations, there is a need for speed to gain a tactical advantage or meet a tight deadline. Outside of these exceptions, it is important to discern and ensure this is not happening in your teams. Often lack of skills in delegation and management lie behind managers asking (and relying) on higher-skilled team members to do tasks below their abilities. Not making time to train people and/or not training properly can create a culture where time pressures push the skilled team members to do the work.

All of these questions require "heavy lifting" - that is where your abilities and the "crane" in your team should be focused!

• Mike Clark is director and lead trainer and facilitator at Think Right business training company.