I am the GM of a small company. We build a niche product that is growing quickly, and we handle all aspects of the business. We manufacture the product, market, sell, and service.
The question is, how do I increase productivity on the manufacturing side? I have always worked in manufacturing. In each case, I worked hard on the manufacturing line, was noticed for my work ethic, and quickly got moved into an office position with higher pay. If I topped out in the office and wanted more, I left the company. I prefer and like the physical work, but am never satisfied if there's room to move up. As the GM, pay is dependent on the company making more money, so I need to pay attention to everything. In other companies I've always seen a divide between the "office employees" and the "warehouse employees". Although I've worked hard to prevent that here, I see it happening. The physical laborers think those is the offices have cushy jobs with higher pay, they get the AC in summer, heat in the winter, (insert complainy-pants comments here), etc. I generally open the gate each morning, and I'm always the last to leave. I've got a high stress job and if it doesn't get done - they don't have a job at all. I don't have time to watch the employees all day and make sure they're working. As a small company, we're in the tight position that we can't hire (and don't need to) more employees at this point in time. It's also expensive to train new employees since it's specialty work, so firing and hiring new people is difficult.
So how do I make sure they're on task, not taking super long breaks, etc? Since I don't mind the physical labor, my current thought is that the "boss" (me) needs to go work on the manufacturing floor and lead by example. I'll use another office employee to answer my phone, etc. They can take messages and come talk to me about items they don't know how to handle. It would be good for them to get the experience and grow a bit too.
If I do this, our response time for sales will suffer somewhat. I could slightly shorten our office hours or days (from the customer's perspective). This would give me uninterrupted time manufacturing, along with set hours when I'm available in the office. That's not really what I'd like to do though, because I think it gives our company the appearance that we're slow in sales, etc. I'm still brainstorming on the best way to handle this.
An excuse I heard today about the work not being hard in the office is pushing me to make a change, but I need it to be positive. I don't want employees to fear me, I want them to respect me.