What is your strategy for a speedy business recovery?
Based on the conversations I’m having with business leaders, strategy has become top of mind. Too be sure, we are faced with incredible hurdles, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, many leaders have taken drastic measures.
On May 8, 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported their findings from two monthly surveys: households (measuring labor force status, including unemployment) and establishment (measuring non-farm employment, including hours and earnings by industry). According to the report, unemployment increased to 14.7% in April, and temporary layoffs increased ten-fold to 18.1 million.
Conversely, some industries (including call centers and IT, warehousing and distribution centers, manufacturing and sales, healthcare and finance) are seeing a labor shortage, including management and specialty roles. Facing a serious shortage of employees, leaders struggle to recruit and retain qualified candidates.
Whether you’ve had to cut hours, furlough employees, or fill positions, a speedy business recovery requires the right strategy. Smart leaders focus on productivity. They engage their employees in the development and refinement of processes and systems to improve output.
Productivity is the Path to Business Recovery
I have noticed that we often use productivity and efficiency interchangeably. However, when it comes to business strategy there is a difference. Put simply, productivity is the quantity of work produced. Efficiency, on the other hand, refers to the resources used to produce that work.
Our recent generation of business leaders has focused on efficiency to reduce input and maintain output: doing the same with less. But a speedy business recovery requires doing more with the same: it requires a focus on productivity. This requires careful planning with input from employees, allocating resources appropriately, and measuring productivity and efficiency.
Productivity is measured by the change in output per labor hour over a defined period of time. In most businesses, it is directly tied to performance—at all levels within the organization. Improve performance, improve greater topline growth. What leaders do to improve performance affects productivity.
I’ll dive in to this in my next blog post. In the meantime, what do you think? What is your path to a speedy business recovery? I’d love to hear from you. I can be reached here, on LinkedIn, or give me a call: 561-582-6060.
