Lidia Staron, ContentMarketing Executive atopencashadvance.comOpens a new window ,says,The little things are what account for the biggest results. This is the concept behind the Pareto Principle – the law of the vital few – which states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Initially, this concept was used only to refer to the distribution of wealth among people. But experts suggest that this can be applied to many other things, including organizations.
How does the same principle apply to your workplace and how do you use it to boost the growth of your organization?
Identifying Productive & Mediocre Performance
A big factor that affects the success of any business is its employees. How devoted, skilled, and knowledgeable they are commensurate to how fast a company achieves its goals and see results. In the workplace, the Pareto principleOpens a new window means that 80% of the responsibility and work are shouldered by only 20% of your employees.
Meaning, most of the work and effort are from the minority of your staff. They are the floor leaders, managers and other key thinkers in your organization. But sometimes, it’s difficult to identify who these 20% of the hardworking staff really are. For instance, it could be that in one department, the head is not functioning properly, leaving all the decision-making and other responsibilities to his or her secretary. It happens, in many situations.
Another way to interpret the 80/20 ruleOpens a new window when it comes to employee management is this: most of the problems in your organization are caused by a small number of employees. They simply don’t work, work poorly, and commit many mistakes, leading to wasted time, energy and resources.
Ways to Apply 80/20 Rule to Your Employees
**Encouraging growth, involvement, and engagement is one of the major benefits of applying the 80/20 rule.** Below are the different ways in which the Pareto rule can be used to drive performance and results from your team.
80% of decisions should come from your employees.
The best thing about the 80/20 rule is that it forces leaders and managers to guide, coach and empower their team members. Many managers commit the mistake of being overly directive. Big tech companies such as Google and Intel, use OKRs (Objectives and Key ResultsOpens a new window ) as a way to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among their employees. Each person creates their own set of goals and identifies the key steps needed to achieve those. This gives the employee an opportunity to share ideas, think deeper, and participate in many company initiatives. As the leader or manager, you should shoulder not more than 20% of the decision-making.
Spend 80% of the time listening to them.
The primary role of a leader or manager is to guide his staff, not to take on their work. Thus, 80% of the time should be spent on listening to them and guide them, not just tell them what to do. Ideally, after expectations have been set and the employees have received the right amount of coaching and feedback, it’s time for the lead to listen about the path taken by the employee and their progress.
Rethink the performance management process.
One of the biggest trends in human resource management is rethinking the performance management process. It is important to deal with hyper performers differently. Otherwise, it would make them feel undervalued. For example, if you recognize and reward your top performers in the same way you do with your average performers, they will leave, and your average workers will stay. Nor should you focus too much on your low-performers. Spending so much time strengthening the weakest link lead to the same result. On the other hand, providing greater rewards and benefits to top-performers, in different forms, such as improved healthcare and wellness programs, low-interest cash advance online loansOpens a new window , retirement plans, and more, are likely to strengthen your top performers (extra perks and privileges to the best employees make more sense) and motivate average employees to do better.
Let employees focus on the 20% most important tasks.
In any company, daily operations are bombarded with so many little, less significant tasks, such as answering phone calls, making reports, reading memos, etc. However, spending most of their efforts in the most important tasks can help employees accomplish more. It is important for managers to give feedback early and pivot early to ensure that their staff are on track with their weekly or quarterly goals. Thus, instead of completing just the requirements of a project, employees can focus on doing it in the best way it can be.
**The 80/20 rule is one of the proven people management concepts that seem even more relevant these days.** You might probably be practicing it already in your team, but you’re unaware of it until now. There are many different ways in which you can apply this rule in managing your employees and getting stuff done quicker and better
