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teambuilding 29


Engaging with and empowering the people in your business


Baker Tilly’s recent Outlook 2014 SME survey has shown that many small and medium-size enterprises are cautiously optimistic about growth prospects, and this optimism is supported by improving UK growth forecasts, writes Michael Blain, managing partner for Baker Tilly’s Basingstoke office


This improved confidence in business and the economy is being echoed in business trading generally, and in particular, the service and construction sectors. These areas are specifically showing strong growth in activity and turnover.


We are entering a new phase of the economic cycle. In recent years, businesses have been running very lean, focusing on efficiency and maintaining margin. Growth brings the new challenge of increasing production – often in the light of a reticence to commit to investment – the main constraint to growth is people and skills linked to recruiting and retaining them.


Success in business will be largely dependent on having enough people with the right skills and having a happy and engaged workforce. There are four key steps that help businesses achieve this:


1 Do you share the business strategy and direction?


The ability to share your business strategic direction simply and concisely is vital. Put simply, can the long-term goals of the business be explained clearly and in a way that reflects the business commercial game plan? Essentially this is giving clarity on business goals and the commercial steps it is taking to achieve them. This seems obvious, but many businesses can’t and this lack of focus impacts on profitability and value.


2 Do you know how engaged your staff are?


Nobody will be surprised to learn that a happy and engaged workforce reduces staff turnover and improves effectiveness. Understanding your workers is key to this, and this can be achieved in a number of ways. Staff surveys are a good way to gain a snapshot of views about the business as a place to work, and can also provide an interesting insight into the effectiveness of management.


3 Does the team understand their role in achieving the business goals?


A fundamental of team dynamics is ensuring everyone is pointing in the same direction and, perhaps more importantly, people are clear on what they should focus on. Quite simply, it’s


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – APRIL 2014


important to focus on those things that have the greatest impact.


4 Do you have the right team?


Achieving business growth will be dependent on having people with the skills needed to achieve the business strategy and plan. Investing in the right people, recruiting to fill skills gaps as well as developing the skills of the existing workforce is crucial. Employees also need clarity on roles and responsibilities, and feel empowered within the business to work towards the enterprises commercial goals.


Developing engaged and effective teams hinges on the four steps above, but is driven by the leadership of the business owner or directors’ ability to communicate the business strategy. This will be linked to actively involving the team in developing and running the business.


Baker Tilly helps put this into practice with entrepreneurs through a facilitated process to help develop a clear strategy and action plan for their business by review of their long-term goals and ambitions. The review takes into account the risk appetite of the entrepreneur, the market the business operates in, as well as its people and infrastructure and how this is linked to the performance dynamics of the business. The review helps develop a clear business strategy,


focusing on its commercial projects, and developing a timeline and prioritisation process to action these.


Baker Tilly’s facilitated process for team development is broken down into several key steps:


• Communicating the business objectives to the team, as well as clear objectives and targets and how these link to the business strategy.


• Separate facilitated meeting with the team in order to share the strategy and team objectives, and obtaining feedback and ideas and collective views on team morale and culture. Feedback from the team will be used to modify and amend the plan.


• Review of responsibilities and roles through a ’bottom up – top down’ communication process.


• Agreement of actions and priorities with a time line for reporting, linked to on-going review of progress and review and update of priorities.


The benefit of structured team development is that it allows for the sharing of the entrepreneurs plans and aspirations in a way that allows the team to understand long-term goals. Employees will, in turn, have the ability to share their views in a constructive manner through a facilitator leading to a more engaged team and the active sharing of knowledge both ways.


A good example of this in practice was an entrepreneur of a highly successful business who was becoming increasingly frustrated with his senior management team not communicating their actions. As a result, all decisions went through him, and the result was a significant restriction on the business progress. Through a facilitated teams session it became clear the senior team were frustrated at the lack of responsibility, and the resolution was a simple but effective one – the decision process was clarified, and the senior team were given greater authority in return for a clearly defined reporting structure. As a result, the senior team stepped up, and in the following two years the business doubled in size and profitability, and the entrepreneur’s role move from operational to strategic.


Owning and running a business is both rewarding and all consuming. For many entrepreneurs, standing back from the day to day and taking a strategic perspective, sharing that with the team is not a natural discipline. However, the rewards produced by team building can result in both a happy and engaged workforce, and improved profitability and performance.


Details: Michael Blain 01256-486800 mike.blain@bakertilly.co.uk www.bakertilly.co.uk


www.businessmag.co.uk


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