Businesses are only as strong as the people they employ. To succeed, you must set up your employees to succeed. One compliments the other. In cultivating productive and effective employees, you might create the perfect situation for capitalizing on their accomplishments. You can use several techniques to improve their productivity and make them more effective. Doing so might increase efficiency and save you or your business money in the long run.
5 Ways to Make Employees More Effective
1. Provide In-Depth Training
2. Don’t Micromanage Them
3. Communicate
4. Celebrate Their Accomplishments
5. Establish a Strong Support Network
Provide In-Depth Training
The best way to overwhelm employees is to throw them into the line of duty without proper training. Although training initially requires time and money, and some businesses might not be in a position to waste either, taking the time to fully train and prepare your employees could increase their productivity, decrease their frustration levels, and build their confidence. Reduced stress and increased confidence is a powerful combination. It could inspire your employees to work harder, better engage with co-workers or customers, and go the extra mile in trying to close a sale or satisfy a customer or client.
Don’t Micromanage Them
Micromanaging employees is a great way to reduce their confidence and inhibit their potential. If you’re constantly hovering over them and trying to hold their hands throughout their daily activities, you’ll more likely succeed in preventing them from succeeding.
People want to feel in control, even if they know they’re in a subordinate position. Giving them leeway to perform their tasks, especially routine tasks, might not only increase their confidence but it could also improve their effectiveness and productivity. Micromanaging them could backfire by creating the impression that they’re incompetent. If you instill this thought in them, it could result in them second guessing everything they do. Such behavior could ultimately produce wasted time and squandered opportunities.
Communicate
An effective and efficient workforce starts and stops with communication. Organizations that don’t communicate their needs and expectations can succeed. However, you must consider communication in terms of efficiency. If you take too much of an employee’s time going back and forth between emails, or repeatedly sending them messages, you run the risk of significantly cutting into their worktime and slowing their progress. The key to communicating is to convey information concisely and unambiguously. Keeping this in mind could cut down the number of emails you send, allowing them to focus on the task at hand.
Celebrate Their Accomplishments
A happy workforce is a productive workforce. One way of keeping employees happy is to celebrate their accomplishments. Consider offering incentives or even awarding employee of the month certificates. Make it a point to congratulate them on their success. Single out the great employees by lavishing them with praise. This tactic could boost their morale, which might result in a more effective workforce.
The flipside to this tactic requires tact: if you have to censure or punish an employee, do it in private. The old adage, “praise publicly, criticize privately” rings true. Criticizing or punishing your employees in front of everyone is a sure way to destabilize your entire workforce. If everyone works to avoid a public scolding, they might do so with fear. This could result in decreased efficiency as they spend more time being careful and less time taking the kind of risks required by good employees.
Establish a Strong Support Network
One way to better manage your workforce is to establish a strong support network. Employees require many avenues for support. If they must constantly wrestle with a faulty fax machine, for example, replace it. If they need to leave early for family reasons or take a sick day, express empathy. Show them through your actions that you know them, understand them and their needs, and that you care for them. Employees who feel as if management is on their side might respond by supporting management. The best way for them to do so might be to focus their effort on excelling at their day-to-day tasks.
Credentials or experience aren’t always a surefire way of employing effective people. Sometimes it takes empathetic and supportive management to inspire people to do their best. Their efforts could reflect the way you behave toward your employees. Remember, these are human beings, capable of greatness. They’re also vulnerable. Bringing out their vulnerabilities is one way to render them helpless at work. Great employees require great management. If you offer bad or unsupportive management, then nothing will bring out the best in your employees.
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