Best employee management techniques
As a manager, keeping your people motivated and productive can be a hard task and the more employees you have the more difficult it becomes. Not everyone in your team will respond to your management style the same way, so trying to align what works for them and what works for you can be a bit of a challenge! However we have put together some top employee management techniques which will hopefully make the job a bit easier for you!
1. Get to know your employees
Great businesses need great staff behind them. While the day to day running of your organisation may not leave a lot of free time for bonding with your employees, you should definitely try and make the time to get to know them. Not only will this make them feel valued, and we know happy staff do a much better job, boosting their productivity and sales.
Getting to know your employees can and should start as early as the interview stage when you can push beyond the basic questions and get to know what makes motivates each person, what their goals are and what personal skills they have. You might be surprised to see what hidden talents they have that could be utilized in your team!
2. Take advantage of Employee Management Apps
These days there is an app for almost everything, and so you won’t be surprised to know that there are a range of apps that have been created specifically to help manage your employees. The best one we have found is whenIwork, a great little tool that could literally revolutionize your employee management. Not only can you organise your staff schedules quickly and effectively from your mobile device, but your employees can use the app to check their shifts and request changes from their own mobile device too. It works on Android as well as iOS platforms and there is even a free 30 day trial if you aren’t convinced.
3. Reward outstanding performance
Your employees work hard to fulfil their roles so showing appreciation is vital to keeping them happy and motivated. However sometimes your staff may go above and beyond and produce effort or results that are truly outstanding.
Before you start wincing at the prospect of an expensive addition to the budget, remember that there are plenty of ways you can show your appreciation and whilst a bonus in their pay packet would undoubtedly be well received, even small gestures can be just as important. If you are a smaller business then your employees will undoubtedly realise that financial constraints may be tight, but a bottle of their favourite wine, a gift voucher or even an extended lunch break are great ways to reward outstanding performance without breaking the bank.
4. Adopt an iPad based POS system
If your business hasn’t yet adopted an iPad POS system then now is the time to do it. A streamlined experience keeps your customers happy, and extensive tools such as inventory control, customisable reporting, simple employee management and more gives businesses improved control and capacity for growth.
A cost-effective solution that suits any retail business, why not check out Hike’s own POS system? An iPad, PC and Mac POS software with benefits including comprehensive inventory management, eCommerce, 24/7 support, customisable reporting, Hike offers everything you need to run and grow your business. Check out our free trial.
5. Streamline your employee evaluations
Regular employee evaluations are an important tool for ensuring performance and can also be used to tighten up your management as you determine their ability to meet their objectives and align these with motivational rewards. It will also help your staff to recognise that their hard work is being fairly evaluated.
The best way to streamline the evaluation process is to set out clear and transparent guidelines for it. How often are you going to do one? What are you going to look at? How long will your employees get to prepare? And most importantly, what criteria are you going to be measuring them against? As far as possible you need to ensure that each employee is treated exactly the same way.
When it comes to the criteria that they are to be evaluated against, you need to ensure that the same job roles are measures against the same criteria. This is where your POS can be worth its weight in gold as you can run reports by employee, helping you to gauge their overall performance related to other staff. It will also give you a baseline so that you can set reasonable expectations and goals.
So there you have it, 5 of the best employee management techniques to get your staff performing and maximising the potential of your business. What are you waiting for?