It’s not easy to keep people on track at work. Even if people are doing the jobs they like, they won’t be the most productive if they don’t enjoy the company and culture you provide. That’s why only 36% of employees in the United States are engaged at work.
If you’re having issues managing employees, you’ll need to make a few changes to get the most from your team. Follow the five tips below to make employee management more effortless.
1. Don’t Micromanage
You hired your team because you believed they could handle the job. Despite that, some managers try to take too much control over everything and micromanage everything their employees do. However, doing this is a mistake.
If you want your team to be productive and easy to manage, give them space to do their jobs. You can still ask for updates and monitor progress. Just don’t smother people when they’re trying to work.
2. Create Productivity Metrics
It’s hard to improve employee management if you have no data to tell you what you’re doing. You only make best guesses when you roll out changes and don’t measure results. If you want to track your success, you need to develop productivity metrics.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are a great solution. Your KPIs are data points you expect your employees to meet. Work with your team to develop reasonable KPIs and hold people accountable for those goals.
3. Automate Tracking
Even if you don’t want to micromanage your team, you still need to know that people are on task and working during the day. The problem is that tracking everything manually takes too much time and energy. Luckily, there is software today that can help.
Whether you track individual employee hours or attendance, there’s software that automates the process. View your options to see how employee tracking software can help.
4. Centralize Project Management
Managing projects isn’t easy when you do things manually. You’ll end up in countless meetings and have long email threads that are hard to look through for information. It pays to have a central location to manage your projects.
There are countless project management solutions on the internet that can help. Sign up for a free trial to test your options and pick the software that fits your company’s workflow best.
5. Reward Hard Work
A salary may be a good starting point for keeping employees productive and doing great work. However, it can only get you so far. Sometimes adding an extra incentive can make the difference in optimizing employee hours.
You can offer rewards in the form of anything between cash bonuses and extra paid time off. If employees feel valued in your organization, they’ll be easier to manage and offer more value to your company.
Managing Employees Isn’t Easy
Knowing how to handle a job isn’t the same thing as managing people doing the same thing. It takes a particular skill to manage people, which means you have a lot to learn to become a great manager. Use the tips above when managing employees to have an easier time keeping happy employees.
If you’re interested in learning more tips that will help you maximize your business productivity, check out the blog for more posts.
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