Employee Management

This is the effort made to help employees do their best work each day in order to achieve the larger goals of the organization. It involves keeping track of employees’ achievements and progress, fostering healthy professional relationships and giving employees the tools, they need to succeed. These are part of various human resources management strategies to ensure optimum employee engagement. There are some questions that come to mind when considering employee management practices. They are:

• Do companies want a functional workplace?
• Is your management willing to employ best practices to ensure that employees are better managed?

Human Capital Management should be central to any employer. There are key best practices that can be employed to ensure employees are excellently managed and a healthy enjoyable workplace is achieved. The details may vary from industry to industry, but we believe these practices highlighted in our article will sure set you on the right path of employee management.

The seven (7) best practices includes:

1. Understand your company processes and employee roles

In order to manage a team, you must understand each member’s roles and responsibilities. Determine project activities and assigned employees to understand tasks and adjust plans if needed.

2. Employee Recruitment: Hire the right employees.

Be patient and ensure you hire the right employee(s) with the right mix of qualification, personality, job skills. Employees are the engine of the organization. You need to pay attention and be selective during recruitment. Other than professional qualifications, you must consider the ideal characteristics of your team. Decide what you want for your company. Do you want them to be team players? Do you want problem-solvers and people willing to learn? Once you are decided, find those with this mix of skills.

Assess your recruitment process and identify key characteristics for hiring employees who align with company culture.

3. Acknowledge your organization’s top performers!

Top performers are often hard and smart workers. They love to work independently and hardly require micromanagement. They could most times feel unappreciated if zero appreciation or general appreciation is given. The way to go would be to not only appreciate their effort privately but give feedback and acknowledgment that they’re continuing to perform at a high level.

Create benefits for top performance such as a career advancement plan for those top performers who would like to move up the ladder.

4. Identify opportunities for development and progression.

Don’t limit the career progression plan for only top performers. Create these plans for every department. Always provide advice about what must be done to advance in each department. Also provide the right skills development analysis and plans for your team in each development and communicate these to your team. Communicate the current and future skills the business requires for each position in each department in the organization.

You could also opt to provide cross-training opportunities. Sometimes this can include formal education or training outside the business.

5. Employ regular communication and feedback

When you have open communication lines, it creates an atmosphere where the employees are well informed. Managers should get to know their team members and must be approachable. This helps employees overcome communication gaps, it fosters a sense of unity and collaboration among team members. It boosts their mood and morale.

Generally, employees require business information for informed decision-making; managers must provide clear feedback, both positive and negative, to ensure employees understand their responsibilities.

6. Invest in Employee management tools – HRIS

Performance management tools are a good investment for any employer to evaluate employee performance. It will help communicate employee productivity, time spent on tasks, missed deadlines etc can be monitored from the HR Software. For micro businesses and start ups you can employ the services of HR providers or consultants to walk you through the performance management processes.

7. Conduct Employee wellness programs.

While Employee wellbeing is not a ‘nice to have” in the company, it sure does improve workplace wellness and builds a culture of health in your organization which inturn promotes a positive behavioral change in your employees as well as improve employee health and happiness. Here are some employee wellness programs that works! (Read next article (every Tuesday) for more details on this).

• Require work-life balance from your employees.
• Flexible working hours
• Financial education
• Celebrate employee successes.
• Accommodate onsite fitness activities (if you can)
• Add a collaborative workplace. For small companies a small roundtable/separate table for team meetings. Call it brain storming corner, zone, or any fun name!
• Activate destressing activities.
• Support community involvement
• Support employee autonomy

Employing these strategies will surely revive your workplace functionality and improve employee engagement and management.