Get More Out of Your Employees
As managers we always want the best of our employees. You encounter various types of employees every day. Some are high flyers; they not only complete the tasks assigned to them but also proactively look for what could be done and contribute effectively to the success of a project.
Some may just carry out what they’re supposed to do, and some others could be lazy and not even fulfilling their part of the project. However, as a manager it is your responsibility to get the best out of all these types of employees and ensure the goal of the project is met.
How to Ensure A Smooth Workflow?
Any project has a workflow. Which means, a certain task comes after another task and the resultant tasks’ success depends on the success of the first one. Your goal as a manager would be to get your full team to work as one in order to achieve a smooth flow of all the tasks. This is not easy at all. One way to ensure this could be to adopt a reputed project management software where you, as a manager can see the status of every member of your project.
You will not only be able to view team members’ current status, but you can also see how they progress. As a team leader then you will have to make decisions such as whom to have collectively work together, whom to assign big tasks and so on. Assigning of tasks also will be made easier with project management software.
Influence Them to Share
From our time in school, we have an experience that some kids like to share and some others would not. But unlike in the school, it is a must to share the material as well as resulting products or ideas among each other in a project for it to be successful. As the manager or the team leader you can advise everyone to share; however, penalizing somebody for not doing so does not sound very manager-ly.
One of the methods to have everybody share stuff relevant – calendars, contacts, documents and other related material- is to use a project management tool where you will have a place to store everything and organize them so any member of the team can access it when it is needed. Tasks such as artwork approval process also can be done via a tool like this.
Encourage Them Via Honest Feedback
Feedback is important to any employee, boss or executive. Providing honest and constructive feedback is your responsibility as a manager. However, some employees don’t take kindly to hearing their shortcomings, especially from a manager who is working with them. This is one reason why some companies execute a peer review system so that a colleague of their own standing can give them feedback.
Obviously, a fellow worker might not see what needs to be seen and communicated to them. Employees must be made understood that feedback is given for their own betterment. If they don’t know what they are bad at, how can they be correcting that behaviour or learning a new skill to progress in their careers?
Getting the best out of the employees depends on what you do to pull them up. An encouraged and empowered employee will, in turn, be a productive one.