Tuesday July 26, 2022

Given what we know about how teams work and what tools are now made available to us, managing employees has never been easier. Still, a lot of businesses struggle when it comes to managing their employees. 

Currently, only 20% of the global workforce feel engaged at work. If you want to see your organization grow, engagement should be a priority. Effective management is key to make that happen.

Effective employee management helps foster employee engagement, which leads to more productivity and results. So the question now is how do we effectively manage our employees? Here are seven of the best tools and practices in order to do that.

1. Improve team communications

All teams have a certain level of communication among their team members, but the question is how well do they communicate to each other. Improving team communication may mean setting up certain rules of engagements or guidelines in how to relate with each other. You can use employee communication tools to help you improve your team’s communication lines.

A useful guideline is determining which channel to use in order to send a certain message. This is where using an employee management system would be most helpful. An example would be not using email if you are expecting an urgent reply from your teammate or not calling your teammate through his or her personal number when you have a concern about work.

For teams who want to improve their communication, check out this list of best communication software today and compare options. This list of communication tools is a good start to improve team interactivity and engagement.

2. Plan employee engagement activities

Employee engagement activities help get people excited and interactive at work. Doing non-work activities can help the well-being of employees because it allows them to relate with their teammates and talk about non-work related topics. It has also been found that doing employee engagement activities is very helpful for the longevity of the employees. 

These activities can include volunteering for a charity, doing a team building activity, running team icebreakers, and so on. Try mixing it up often and running programs as often as you can. A good rule of thumb would be to start with one employee engagement activity per quarter.

3. Discover your team’s strengths

Every team has their unique strengths that are very useful in creating synergy within the team. Discovering the strengths of your team is the first step in developing your team’s potential in becoming a high performance team. Studies show that employees who use their strengths are also six times more engaged at work. 

After discovering your team’s strengths, put it for the rest of the team to see. Some employee management system features can help you list down your team’s strengths so that it could help you how to relate with your teammates. You can discover your team’s strengths by using personality tests like Strengthsfinder, Myers-Briggs and so on. 

4. Use work schedule management software

Not all employees have a high level of organizational skills when they enter the company. In fact, some or even most of them learned it while being an employee of the company. This is the reason why using a schedule management system would be very helpful in managing your employees.

You do not need to figure out where or how to start because the software was already programmed for you. Using a schedule management system also spares your staff from micromanaging because studies show that employees tend to engage less when they are being micromanaged.

5. Set clear goals and build incentives

Goal setting is not just for annual or mid year planning, it is also helpful in encouraging weekly and monthly progress because your employees know what target to hit and how their small wins contribute to the major wins of the company. When there are clear goals, there are clear wins and with every win, there should be an incentive to celebrate the win.

Employees love to win and they want to savour the moment, build on their positive experience by incentivizing their small but significant successes.

6. Build a clear project management system

Project management is the process of overseeing the development of projects through the application of various professional skills like planning, execution and evaluation. A clear project management system not only increases the team’s productivity but also its synergy because the system allows them to track their progress in accomplishing various projects. 

7. Get feedback through team evaluations

Aside from using employee management systems to manage teams effectively, the act of giving feedback is one of the most underrated processes that is very helpful in growing and managing teams. Using employee communication tools can help you gather relevant feedback that can be useful in evaluating your teams.

Feedback is one of the most valuable resources a team could have without spending a single penny.  You can use form and pulse survey tools to get regular feedback from your teams. 

Growing the Company by Growing Employees

At the core of employee management is developing employees to become more efficient. That involves helping them learn and develop as professionals. When we do that, it’s not just employees that benefit.

The company will benefit too because the productivity will trickle down into operations, leading to better bottom lines for the business eventually. When our employees grow through management and engagement, so will the company. So it makes sense for you to start investing into team engagement and management today.