Today’s guest post is from Caroline Cayce. Thanks Caroline for your time and efforts. Practical ideas that we can readily use!
According to the American Society of Employees, the top ten concerns of employees are as follows:
• Recognition
• Autonomy
• Clear/fair policies and a system for airing grievances
• Fair/generous benefits
• Team cohesion
• Positive management – employee morale
• Manageable workload
• Job security
• Rate of pay/salary
• Promotion/evaluation
The success of small business resides a whole lot in the employee’s ability to perform their job and deliver excellent customer service. I would like to share a few management best practices from my experience in running a small business on how to address these concerns of your team members.
Make it a fun place. This will keep your employee’s attitudes positive and they’ll look forward to work. Incorporate a system in which the employees are a manifest part. Give them the ability to make autonomous decisions and input their ideas or suggestions. Employees that are involved in the business take pride in the operation and in their work.
Be flexible with each shift. If feasible, don’t have the entire staff come in to work from nine to five (or whatever your operating hours are). Offer employees alternative, including flexitime, split shifts, or even work-from-home arrangements. These options often end up saving you money!
According to a 2009 survey, 37 percent of our work time is spent dealing with “office politics” and “game” play. That’s not only a huge amount of time; it also affects our productivity and effectiveness in a negative way. To spare this for your team,
Set clear and concise expectations – autonomy and personal responsibility are highly valued among employees. These are natural task-completion and production motivators. They also establish a delineation between each job description and position.
Track efficiency via simple calculations: time-off, hours worked, sick time, personal time, sales average, management intervention, teamwork, et cetera. A simple table can display which employees are productive, take the least time off and require the least supervision. It also can provide a the basis for a sales “competition” among the employees.
Although organizing the various and numerous details of specific jobs through task setting and control are potent tools in promoting job performance improvement and efficiency, overuse results in micromanagement and is counterproductive. Tasking can be used to effectively reduce the most intricate and time consuming jobs into daily routines that are performed automatically.
Give quarterly evaluations to each employee. Track their performance and explain where they are exceeding and where improvement may be needed. In addition, allow each employee to evaluate your performance as a manager or owner. This can be done anonymously or by incorporating it into their quarterly evaluation.
Written by Caroline Cayce of Ratelines.com, a financial site created to help you find great CD rates.
Related posts:
- My guest post at “Happy Publishing”
- Project Management Software – A guest post from Jason Westland
- Are you a manager or damager? – Guest post by Sethuramalingam B
- Organizing to Lead – Guest post by David Kershaw
- Guest Post – Lisa Wright shares a word on morals
14:58, 16.03.2010
I thik, ‘Work-life balance’ is part of this. when employees are stressed more, the productivity gets reduced. getting a ‘work-life balance’ is also as important as getting the ‘work done’