Every great manager knows that their most valuable resources in their organisation are the employees, and they are what drives growth and profitability. They are your only competitive advantage and what makes or breaks you brand. Highly engaged and happy workers have a proven effect on productivity and profit.
Every senior executive’s objective is profitability and this depends heavily on the employee’s performance.
Creating an effective approach to managing your workforce requires the expertise and commitment and vision of a Human Resources leader and the wholehearted support of company executives. Without senior management “buy-in” and commitment from HR, your engagement strategy is destined to fail.
So, how can you bring out the best in your employees?
- Set appropriate and realistic goals
Setting goals is essential for employees in order to prioritise their activities. Setting realistic but challenging and interesting goals increases the motivation among employees and also improves group unity. The goals can be used to describe what the company plans to accomplish in terms of market share, growth and profitability. Moreover, it could be used for internal measurement like boosting employee morale and engagement.
- Give employees their space to innovate and share their own creations.
Organisations that promote and encourage innovative environments see value through increased employee motivation and creativity. Innovative employees increase productivity across the organisation by developing and executing new processes or reducing costs which in turn is likely to increase competitive advantage. As a business leader, it is necessary to embrace and incorporate new ideas and plans in the company which will support the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. Don’t tell your staff how to do their job. Give them the opportunity do the task the way they think best, in order to shine and be creative, and monitor the effectiveness and give realistic feedback.
- Assess employee performance
Assessing employee performance at least quarterly is necessary. It helps to maintain increased employee efficiency, allows managers to identify strong and weak links, and helps to determine appropriate compensation. This also improves the workplace productivity. If the manager does not know how well or poorly the employees are performing, it is difficult to reward the employees who are excelling and this in turn can affect the motivation of the employees. Employee engagement platforms can play a key role here, as real time information is available to managers to assess productivity and motivation.
- Trust your employees
As managers, you should be able to pass responsibilities out among your subordinates. Distributing duties and having different people to take ownership of the task makes employees feel that they are important and trusted. Trust can be a significant element, which involves an ongoing process of relationship building, communication and action. It can also be a choice where you decide whether you want to extend the trust. Most importantly, trusting employees encourages employees with passion to work and excel. Moreover, it also brings out their personalities into the projects even when their style is completely different from yours. Trust is more about connecting rather than regulating.
- Encourage peer recognition
Everyone appreciates being valued, trusted and respected for their contribution to the cause, and feedback from peers is very powerful. Peers see their colleagues doing things that management often don’t, so encourage your staff to recognise their fellow team mates. Recognising colleagues for living Corporate Values, helping the team to meet a deadline or coming up with new ideas for example, is a great place to start.
Brownie Points is now seen as a leading contributor to employee engagement with its real time cloud based employee recognition platform, and is delivering significant results in a growing number of leading national and international organisations.
For a no obligation discussion on how Brownie Points could improve engagement in your business, call the team today on 03 9909 7411 or email us at info@browniepoints.com.au
