How to improve service efficiency. How to improve your work efficiency

Efficiency at work is of great importance. But many people do not take advantage of their limitless possibilities. Many people forget that every person has enormous potential. And you need to learn how to use it. And then your labor productivity will increase many times over, your work will become more efficient. The main thing is to follow a few simple recommendations. And your success is guaranteed.

How to increase labor efficiency

We wake up before eight in the morning.

When a person gets up early, he has a better chance of doing everything he has planned. And work productivity increases.

Let's do exercises.

This will charge you with a portion of energy and mobilize your internal resources. And it will help you wake up.

We set ourselves up in the morning for effective work.

Attitude is of great importance for effective work. Believe in your success and it will lead you to success. Tell yourself that everything will work out for me.

In the morning we take a contrast shower or douse ourselves with cold water.

This has a beneficial effect not only on your health and immunity, but also gives you vigor and good mood for the whole day.

We are planning.

Every day before you go to bed, make a plan for the next day. And act according to your goal setting. If you neglect this important activity, then a lot of time is spent thinking about what to do now. Without a plan, you lose the most precious thing you have - your time.

Set realistic goals.

If you set unrealistic goals for yourself, you will not be able to achieve them, and this will negatively affect your self-esteem.

Alternate your activities.

Swap activities that require attention and brain activity with those that involve physical activities.

Don't forget about the 5 joys.

Do something that makes you happy every day. This can be any little thing, for example, taking a walk in the fresh air after a working day or singing a song at karaoke. This is very important, as positive emotions increase your effectiveness at work.

We do the more difficult work first, and leave the easier work for the evening hours.

After five hours of work, your performance decreases, and you will no longer be able to cope with a difficult task one hundred percent.

The golden rule is that how a person starts his day, what he does in the first hours, is how he will be busy throughout the day.

If you start your day by browsing various forums on the Internet, you will continue to read them until the evening. There is no point in loading yourself with useless information early in the morning. Better get busy with important things. And don’t switch from one point of the plan to another until you finish what you started.

We alternate work and rest.

Rest on time. Give yourself ten-minute breaks every hour. If the situation allows, do relaxation or exercise.

We support ourselves with positive reinforcement.

To increase your work efficiency, you should reinforce yourself with rewards and praise.

Noise reduces productivity.

If noise irritates you, be it from your computer fan or conversations at work, put on headphones and listen to pleasant music.

Don't neglect sports.

Sports and active recreation relieves stress and improves cerebral blood supply. Also, playing sports increases the level of endorphins, energizes you with positivity and increases performance.

Eliminate things that distract you and waste your time.

During work, no games, asecs or forums. Also, do not waste your working time talking on the phone about personal issues.

Watch your posture - keep your back straight.

A straight back means good blood circulation. If it is very difficult to monitor your posture, use a posture corrector and do exercises to restore your spine.

Buy yourself a diary.

There is no point in overloading your brain with various little things. Write down your plans and impressions, telephone numbers and addresses, appointments and their dates. Take care of your head.

Set deadlines for work.

The deadline for completing the work must be clear and realistic. And don’t put off until later what you can do now.

Follow your daily routine.

The habit of working is developed over time. And a certain operating mode should be observed, since the human body adapts to it and during these hours brain activity increases.

Don't overexert yourself

Work no more than 12 hours a day. Sleep at least 8 hours a day. If your body is always tired, then there can be no talk of any effectiveness. Love yourself and your body. And be healthy and full of strength!

The percentage of “workaholics” among IT specialists is incredibly high: they can spend hours discussing the solution to a problem, sit at the computer for days, go without vacation for years, moving from project to project. However, for some reason this dedication may not in any way affect the efficiency of the IT department team.

Improving staff efficiency- a subject of concern for almost every IT service manager - both a small company and an industrial giant. The personnel motivation system is often built by trial and error, and the number of errors is quite large. How to optimize motivational models? How to make people want to work in this particular organization, to work to achieve business results?

In IT services, a situation often arises when people are well motivated to work on a project, understand the goals and objectives of the work, clearly see the horizons, are aware of their areas of responsibility and work with full dedication. In everyday work, the picture is often significantly different: people do not think about the ultimate goals of their work, and do not feel the incentive to do it as well as possible. It turns out that the team completes the sprint distances quickly and harmoniously, but the achievements at the stayer distances look much more modest. Since managers are often unable to change the situation, a search begins for external influences. Any explanation is used - from the general state of the Russian economy, which, like an ocean in a drop, is reflected in the organizational characteristics of individual companies, to the specifics of the Russian mentality, which, of course, sometimes allows you to “go fast”, but only due to the fact that in front of with this they “harness” for a long time and slowly. However, no matter how reassuring and reliable the explanation may seem, it does not solve the problem.

In order to understand the reason for this phenomenon, it is necessary to consider the real, and not the declared, organizational principles of the company in general and the IT department in particular.

Formula for success

People think about creating or improving a motivation system when there is a need to increase the efficiency of employees and to use labor resources more rationally. Managers often describe the problem something like this: “People work great, love their profession - to the point that they are ready to give the company their personal time, working overtime on their own initiative. They are good professionals. But in general, the IT service is not working as efficiently as it could be, time and labor resources are being used irrationally.” Often the feeling of ineffective use of labor resources arises on an intuitive level and is not supported by any indicators. Managers often see a way out of this situation by changing the system of personnel motivation, which, as a rule, means increasing salaries.

“Increasing the efficiency of a company or its division is not limited to the creation of motivational schemes. The effectiveness of people depends not only on motivation, so it is necessary to consider it in combination with other significant influencing factors. The approach to creating an effective personnel work system that we practice is quite often used in the West, but has not yet become widespread in Russia,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk, consultant in the “Personnel Performance Management” department of Ecopsy Consulting.

Within this approach, efficiency is considered as a derivative of three elements:

• Efficiency = competence / organizational barriers x motivation, where competence is professional knowledge and skills (and in the case of an employee in a leadership position, also managerial skills). Leadership qualities are an important component of the competence of IT service employees, since in a business environment, a significant part of which is organized on a project basis, most specialists from time to time take on a managerial position - project manager, head of the project office, etc.;
• motivation is a system of material and non-material incentives based on people’s values ​​and guidelines;
• organizational barriers are attitudes and features of the organizational structure that prevent people from working with full dedication for the benefit of the company. These may be inorganic work rules, standards that make it difficult for employees, gaps in the organizational structure, lack of regulations and procedures - for example, procedures for responding to problem situations, and so on.

Based on the formula, we can consider the activities of employees in three dimensions - professionalism, motivation and corporate environment. “In order to understand the degree of efficiency of a department, you need to look at what point in this three-dimensional coordinate system it is at: how great the competence and motivation are, and what the organizational barriers are. Only after this can we draw a conclusion about what steps need to be taken to increase efficiency,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk.

The level of professionalism of IT specialists can be measured using professional tests or based on the assessment of their immediate supervisor. The situation is more complicated with their managerial skills and competencies - often IT specialists do not undergo any training in management skills and implement their managerial functions based on their own ideas about them. Moreover, a common situation is when the best IT specialist becomes the head of the IT service, regardless of whether he has the inclinations and skills of a manager or not.

Organizational barriers vary from company to company. Endless mandatory memos that must be written for any reason, complicated approval procedures, outdated corporate standards and much more can hold back the development of the organization. “People find it difficult to look at their activities from the outside and take steps to optimize them - there are so many current operational priorities and absolutely no time for a critical look. As a result, the importance of organizational barriers is often underestimated. Meanwhile, experience shows that simple steps to improve business processes can free up 20–30% of employees’ useful time, says Dmitry Voloshchuk. “In addition, if a person is engaged in “monkey work,” this demotivates him.”

Theory and practice

Roman Zhuravlev: “The management practices of IT services in companies do not form any system.” Like any other process in the IT management system, personnel management must have clearly defined goals, clearly related to the goals of the IT department, agreed, in turn, with goals and priorities of the company. To achieve these goals, tasks, main activities, and procedures must be defined. Responsibility for the implementation of both individual procedures and the process as a whole must be distributed. The necessary resources must be allocated and the availability of the necessary competencies ensured. It is advisable to identify and learn to evaluate measurable indicators of the effectiveness of the personnel management process. It is important that human resource management activities include phases of planning, execution, evaluation and improvement.

“As a rule, the practices of managing IT services in companies do not form any system,” says Roman Zhuravlev, director of the IT training department at IT Expert. - Processes, even if identified, interact ineffectively. The goals of the IT function are not defined or are not related to the goals of the company.” The main activities in the field of personnel management are carried out, according to him, something like this:

• planning: quantitative - within the quota for staff expansion, usually annually. The quota calculation is not based on anything. In the field of training - within budgets - on the one hand, vague ideas about the prospects for infrastructure development - on the other.
• personnel selection: sources are not systematized. The activities of the relevant department at the company level do not produce results when it comes to IT service personnel. Professionally oriented selection is carried out haphazardly. Employees selected based on the expert assessment of IT department heads are sent “to personnel” for registration and formal checks.
• training: in full accordance with planning, that is, randomly. (A detailed calendar plan can not only be drawn up, but also observed. However, the question “Why are these particular people and these particular programs in it?” belongs to the category of rhetorical.)
• motivation: employees involved in projects are financially motivated to complete the project on time. Employees engaged in operational activities are motivated to retain them within the framework of a corporate-wide incentive program (salary, bonuses, social package). The IT manager gets involved in special cases, such as when a key employee tries to leave the company.

The described practices are not at all similar to the recommendations set out in modern IT management models, such as COBIT, MOF, which determine the need for effective personnel management, including planning, selection, training, development, motivation, rotation and dismissal. The reasons for this discrepancy, according to Roman Zhuravlev, are:

• low level of maturity of management processes in most Russian companies;
• uncertainty of the status and goals of the IT service in the company;
• insufficient training of IT service managers in the field of management;
• lack of adapted personnel management techniques that take into account the specifics of IT services.

“Under such conditions, in most cases there is no practical need to “optimize motivational models.” They will remain models,” notes Roman Zhuravlev.

“The most important thing is to integrate the motivation system for a specific person into the overall goal-setting system of the company (or division, if we are talking about an IT service), says Elena Sharova, deputy director of the corporate management systems department at IBS. - Each individual employee must understand his role in the overall “working mechanism” and see his contribution to achieving overall success. And the motivational scheme should be directly related to achieving the business goals of the department and the company as a whole.

In the process of setting the overall strategic goals of the company, they are decomposed to the level of individual performers. Each employee must, on the one hand, have a list of clear goals and objective criteria for achieving them, and on the other, see how his work contributes to overall success. All this creates the most important psychological effect - a feeling of involvement in a great cause. Without it, it is almost impossible to interest an employee.

It is very important that the rules of the game are initially set, not only from the point of view of motivation, but also the organization of work in general. It is necessary to clearly establish what the employees’ areas of responsibility are, how we work, how we communicate, how and who will control the work, how we will punish. Work rules (and motivation rules in particular) should not be a “black box” - they should be transparent and understandable. The less subjectivity, the better.”

sources of inspiration

Elena Sharova: “Each specific employee must understand his role in the overall “working mechanism.” “To build an effective management and motivation system for the IT service, Roman Zhuravlev emphasizes, it is important:

• clearly formulate the goals of the activity - the IT service as a whole, its individual divisions, and individual performers. Agree on high-level goals with company management and bring them to the attention of employees;
• make reinforcements dependent only on the overt results of IT activities. Rewards for other people's successes do not motivate people to do better. Bonuses and other incentives based on company performance may contribute to the loyalty of IT employees, but not to improving the quality of work;
• determine intermediate points of activity assessment - semantic or temporary. The year-end bonus encourages you to perform better in December. The results of interim assessments should be prompt and obvious. A bonus for good work in the first quarter, paid in September, is perceived as a late repaid debt;
• make the management and motivation system adequate to the complexity of the organization, ensuring simplicity, fairness and accuracy of assessments. Take into account the features of different methods of managing activities. Use data from automation systems for IT management activities (records of work performed, reports, protocols, etc.);
• Remember that IT employees are different. A user support operator, a programmer and a network engineer have different personality traits, prefer different objects of activity, organize their work differently... And an effective management and motivation system must take these differences into account;
• provide opportunities for professional growth. For IT specialists, it is usually a priority over the career one. The opportunity to learn ensures the relevance of the professional level, maintenance and improvement of qualifications;
• try to establish effective interaction with the HR department. Often he doesn't help the CIO because neither party understands what the overall challenges are, not because those challenges don't have solutions.

Bread, knowledge, soulful atmosphere!

“If you compare the entire motivation system with an iceberg, then salaries, bonuses and other material benefits are what lies on the surface, what is visible and relatively easy to compare,” says Nadezhda Shalashilina, HR director of the Lanit group of companies. “But non-material motivation is the underwater part of the iceberg, which is much larger and deeper, and you can’t immediately see it, although it makes up the majority of the block.”

However, for most people the main motivating factor is material motivation. But this factor, according to Elena Sharova, needs to be worked subtly and competently: “Financial compensation is not just buying a person’s qualifications, it should motivate him to achieve specific goals and stimulate him to grow. The frequently occurring “ritual” salary increase by a certain percentage each year does not in any way motivate people to achieve success. Employees perceive it as a fact and do not see the connection between the salary increase and the growth of their qualifications. And more capable employees are not motivated for rapid professional growth, because they do not see how their earnings depend on the quality of their work. Thus, an objective assessment (in monetary terms) of an employee’s abilities should be formed taking into account the employee’s contribution to achieving project goals (if we are talking about project management) and the opportunities for his professional growth.”

One of the effective mechanisms of material motivation is personnel certification. During the certification process, goals for the year related to professional and career growth are discussed with the employee. The certification form records not just his responsibilities, but a development plan - what new role he should try himself in, what skills and competencies should be developed in order to step to a new level. For work purposes, the foundation for the development of certain skills is laid for the year. An increase in qualifications, development of skills and competencies is followed by a change in compensation.

The second tool for building motivational schemes is motivation by goals. “Goals must be clear, and clear indicators for their achievement must be set so that there are no discrepancies,” emphasizes Elena Sharova. - The principle is that a better result guarantees a greater reward. There is always a bonus fund. We just need to give meaning to bonuses, which in different companies are traditionally issued annually, quarterly or monthly, we need to tie them to the achievement of specific goals. This mechanism should not be a “black box”, but should be understandable and objective.”

“Given the undeniable importance of the monetary factor, non-material motivation, in my opinion, is the most reliable way to retain highly qualified specialists, especially in conditions of personnel shortages and rapid salary growth,” says Nadezhda Shalashilina. “And all because it is non-material motivation that gives people common values ​​and goals, passion for their work, opportunities for development and self-realization, recognition and true pleasure from work.”

In the IT industry, it is generally agreed that the main factor of non-financial motivation is professional and career growth. Therefore, it is necessary to plan how the employee will grow both professionally and career-wise, over the next two to three years, says Elena Sharova. “This is where the credentialing tool comes in again,” she continues. - It is during certification (if the company has an existing and not a formal procedure) that the goals of the employee’s personal growth are developed and they are aligned with the general goals of the company.

To ensure consistency between the company's strategic goals and the goals of individual employees, IBS has adopted the principle of conducting certification “from top to bottom” - first management, and then down the job ladder. Thanks to this, general top-level goals are decomposed into specific goals for each employee. In accordance with work goals, the employee is given development goals - what needs to be learned, what to master. Moreover, in order to show the employee development opportunities, we always set somewhat more ambitious goals in the certification than required by qualifications. This stimulates and motivates him to develop, gives him confidence that he has many prospects and the opportunity to constantly learn new things.”

Among other important factors of non-material motivation, one can note the importance of the leader’s personality. “Obviously, the leader and the atmosphere he creates in the team mean a lot - the mission of the company is transmitted through the leader, he must ignite hearts. But still, the organizational structure, especially if we are talking about an industrial scale, should not rest on the personality of the leader, but, first of all, on some culture, regulations, rules of interaction and development plans,” says Elena Sharova.

According to a survey conducted by Ecopsy Consulting on the topic “What primarily keeps talented employees in a company?”, 44.78% of respondents answered that what keeps them going is a constant professional challenge, the opportunity to solve interesting problems, and in second place (17. 91%) turned out to be the identity of the immediate supervisor. The high level of income did not rise above the third step (16.42%). “People are people. The material component is important, but the conditions are more important - professional and personal. No one is ready to work with people they find unpleasant and to pour water from empty to empty,” sums up Dmitry Voloshchuk. - The topic of non-material motivation is still poorly developed by Russian companies, largely due to the fact that the potential of material motivation has not been used up. Competition for specialists is largely due to this resource. But since we are already in a situation where candidates form the market, and the demand for them is much higher than supply, the issue of non-material motivation will be acute in the coming years. When wages reach a ceiling, other resources will begin to be sought. And here the Russian market will follow the Western path: most likely, this will be motivation, which is costly for the company, but is given to employees in the form of intangible benefits: a social package, opportunities for free education and recreation, payment for a number of family needs - life insurance, payment for children’s education and etc. These practices are well developed in the West and will soon be actively implemented in Russian companies.”

How to make the secret obvious

The development of a motivation system for each company is individual; it depends on many internal and external factors. “When creating a motivation system, it is necessary, first of all, to find out the internal attitudes of people and how the employees’ own goals are related to the company’s goals,” emphasizes Dmitry Voloshchuk, consultant at Ecopsy Consulting. - At the moment when a motivation system for operational activities is being developed, it is very important to understand, on the one hand, what the company expects from employees and what it is ready to motivate them for, and on the other hand, what people expect from the company.

If the system motivates one thing, but people expect another from the company, then the motivation system will not work because it is not suitable for these specific people. And on the contrary, motivational schemes must be adequate to the company’s expectations from the staff. If a company expects teamwork from a department, but the motivation system is aimed at encouraging the manifestation of individual qualities, without taking into account how a person is involved in collective work and works for a common result, a cohesive team will not develop.”

People's internal attitudes are a difficult area to identify. They are made up of social, group and individual preferences, goals and traditions. But, despite all the diversity of internal motives, some characteristic features inherent in IT specialists can be identified.

Life from project to project

Nadezhda Shalashilina: “Intangible motivation is the underwater part of the iceberg.” When selecting employees, managers sympathize with like-minded people. As a result, over time, the team consists of people with the same way of thinking. Along with obvious advantages, this approach has some disadvantages.

Today, the heads of companies and their departments, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are people aimed at constant professional and career growth, and the IT sector, as already noted, is distinguished by the fact that professional growth has priority. Each successive step in professional growth, as a rule, is correlated with participation in a project. Accordingly, many IT specialists have developed design thinking. When they become managers, they select employees with similar business qualities. If the work of the IT department in such a situation is organized on a project basis, it will be very effective, especially in a dynamically developing company. But if the current operational activities of employees are not marked out by clear time periods and clearly described goals, people on this “plain” quickly begin to lose their zest for life and soon go in search of new Everests. “The daily activities of such employees can be organized in the form of mini-projects, with clear goals and a clear system for evaluating results,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk. “Motivation should be built in such a way that people see clear guidelines and realize what the achievement or failure to achieve their goals will mean for them.”

Design thinking poses another danger. People accustomed to project work consider it necessary to get involved in the implementation of as many projects as possible, regardless of the real possibility of completing them. They consider project abandonment to be the main indicator of professional failure. Therefore, the IT department can be involved in many simultaneously implemented internal projects aimed at automating various business processes or improving existing systems. At the same time, the total volume of work significantly exceeds the capabilities of available resources. Accordingly, dozens of projects may remain unfinished for years. “The significant difference between an internal IT department and an independent company implementing projects on the market is that the internal department does not evaluate its own profitability,” notes Dmitry Voloshchuk. - This is the situation in most IT services of large companies. Of course, the manager would have to filter proposals from internal customers based on the resources at his disposal. But, as a rule, he himself is characterized by project thinking, and he formed a team of like-minded people. The circle closes.

In such a situation, we propose to change the value orientation - the main thing becomes not the number of projects being implemented, but the number of successfully implemented projects. This automatically entails the creation of a filter of customer proposals - only those projects in which functional departments are really interested begin to be accepted. At the same time, obviously hopeless projects must be terminated so that resources are not wasted.”

Player coach syndrome

The problem of the “playing coach” is very typical for IT services. The IT service employees are wonderful professionals with a high level of knowledge and extensive experience. They have gone from beginner programmers and system administrators to high-level professionals, they thoroughly know the subject area and have a good understanding of what their subordinates at all levels do. However, their current work lies more in the field of management than in a specific subject area. The main function of these specialists is setting tasks and monitoring their implementation. But knowledge of the subject area and lack of managerial skills lead to the fact that they tend to analyze every problem that arises among employees too thoroughly or undertake to correct the shortcomings themselves. They react to any request for help or in the process of monitoring the execution of orders not as managers, but as engineers. “This is a very common problem in IT,” notes Dmitry Voloshchuk. - The department operates ineffectively because employees of higher official and qualification levels spend their time and energy on solving the problems of their subordinates. They love their work very much and are unable to refuse interesting problems in the subject area, because management tasks do not captivate them so much. In such a situation, it is very important to build a system of priorities in the motivational scheme. If employees are motivated by business results, they will solve the problem as a whole, without going into small details.”

Public is higher than personal

Dmitry Voloshchuk: “Motivation should be structured so that people see clear guidelines.” Another common mistake in creating a motivation system is when the system motivates people only for individual work and all indicators reflect the personal effectiveness of each employee. In such a situation, employees lack a sense of team, collective mutual assistance and support to work comfortably. In addition, in a team where everyone feels like a “star,” the team effect does not arise. Having messed things up, people unconsciously try to lobby for the priorities of their area, which slows down the common cause. There is a lack of synergistic effect from the team's work.

“It is necessary to create indicators of the collective work of the unit,” advises Dmitry Voloshchuk, “and reinforce the achievement of these indicators with a bonus system. In this case, the bonuses will be fragmented: part is issued on the basis of general indicators, and part - on the basis of individual ones. There is nothing revolutionary in this method of motivation - this is exactly how, for example, the bonus system was organized at industrial enterprises back in Soviet times. But it almost never occurs to IT service managers to apply this experience to the work of their subordinate department. Perhaps, at first glance, the idea of ​​comparing the work of a person producing material values ​​with the work of a person creating intellectual values ​​looks absurd. But if you take a closer look, you will find many similarities in the process of organizing their work and their goals. We just need to build a motivation system in strict accordance with the expectations of employees.”

CIO to note

Like any field of activity, the field of information technology goes through various stages of its life cycle. At first, creators come to a new area, but over time, technologies are developed and a wide layer of artisans emerges. A clear procedure appears, a set of algorithms and templates designed to solve problems. This is necessary and inevitable. Since the IT field is quite young, creativity in it has turned into a craft relatively recently. Therefore, a typical situation today is when an IT specialist, who has reached the highest professional level, loses interest in a subject area that no longer gives him the opportunity to solve problems of increasingly higher complexity. The sacramental question arises: what to do? “There are two options: either push professional priorities into the background and enjoy life, or look for new uses in professional activities,” says Dmitry Voloshchuk. - If the first option is unacceptable, then for the CIO the solution to the problem may be in changing the role, in entering managerial activities. Moreover, the IT environment is designed in such a way that a person can reach a very high career level while remaining an expert.

Today, companies have a serious need to increase the efficiency of IT services and increase their manageability. IT services have large budgets, great prospects, and great risks if they are poorly managed. The situation has reached a critical point when it is necessary to reach a qualitatively new level of IT service management. Companies have already begun to allow IT managers to participate in business management and strategic planning. Accordingly, not just specialists will be in demand, but specialists with the inclinations and knowledge of a manager. Those who know how to combine both of these roles – expert and manager – are already becoming competitive and interesting to the market.”

Elena Nekrasova

Accounting automation for any business