Now that the often-sluggish month of January is behind us, it’s very much a case of knuckling down to address the business challenges we face in 2014. In this blog I want to address the human element of achieving success.

We all may confess to be addicted to technology in our lives. We can pay bills at 4am, stream music and films to devices all around the home. In short, our machines are vital to us. But let’s not forget who designs, communicates, operates and improves our tech-dominated office: human beings.

It’s easy to go through each working today without much face-to-face contact with colleagues. Of course, e-communication is ubiquitous, but I try to meet face-to-face with other human beings – where possible! Business technologies have made our lives easier. I’m not disputing that for a second. But we must not lose the ability to network, collaborate and communicate in person.

The human touch makes a huge difference in my opinion. Personally speaking, it’s people not just our software infrastructure that makes the difference. I like to think it’s the right people in the right place, at the right time. You need to make sure staff feel supported, challenged and motivated in the workplace. This can be achieved by setting clear goals, agreeing appraisal schemes and rewarding staff – a social night for example.

If you create a positive working environment, with everyone rowing in the same direction, tasks and targets will be easier to reach. It’s about getting everyone on board. One of the most common challenges linked to this is getting buy-in from employees.

Often, people are creatures of habit; especially if they’ve been in a company for many years and are reluctant to change. This type of employee will naturally feel threatened if there’s a cultural shift in an organisation. This type of change is common in today’s business climate as takeovers and mergers occur fairly frequently.

So if you find yourself heading up a change management programme, you must put staff feelings and feedback at the top of your list. Where possible, acknowledge their comments and reassure them you and the ‘suits’ are listening. Engage in employee forums and suggest representatives from each business team are involved to ensure all voices across the company are heard. Failure to do this will lead to gossip, mistruths and demotivated staff – something the best technology cannot solve when installed or rebooted.

A final point to consider is training. As discussed above, having a relevant appraisal system must be linked to training, if budgets allow this. I thoroughly recommend a training programme. If you’re on a tight budget, experienced staff can run internal mentoring and workshops. Seriously, order in pizza and you’ve got a captivated audience – even if initially it’s to determine who can eat the most pepperoni slice! But seriously, this type of workshop doesn’t take long to develop and helps nurture skills in both the ‘teachers’ and the ‘pupils’.

In the next blog I’ll address key business and technology challenges we will face in 2014 and how best to manage them. Key to this of course is our humans and human interactions! Don’t let the technology totally dominate the workplace!