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Keeping People in Line From the Beginning

When you think about keeping people in line, the natural human tendency is to think about what would happen when a crisis happens. When such a terrible situation unfolds, you tend to find that people are very hard to keep motivated and to keep working constructively when they tend to either slack off or panic.

This kind of problem is a lot easier to solve before it ever happens in the first place. When you think about a problem, you have to see about stopping it from ever happening, and this process begins when you first hire someone. The hiring process itself is all about weeding out the people who are the most likely people to cause a problem to start with. When you’re first interviewing people, your technique is going to need an element of figuring out who may cause a morale or other problem down the line and who probably won’t do such a thing.

When you see the trouble makers to be in the interview, you have to decide if their competence will ultimately compensate your company for their rebellious tendencies. If they do, you can always take them on as freelancers or in a more limited capacity instead of hiring them on as full-time salaried employees. This may sound a bit strange, but there are plentiful advantages to this strategy. You won’t have to pay them benefits or guarantee them a certain amount of pay, but you will be able to get the benefits of their work if you keep them in line from the start.

Filed Under: Business, Management Tagged With: , ,

Effective Office Training Guide

MANCHESTER, CT- MAY 6: Rick Squire (C), 42, o... 

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

When you own your own business training employees should be a major priority. Having a staff that is up to date on the latest agenda makes for an optimal business structure and something that customers will appreciate. Here are a few tips on how to run an effective business training meeting.

  • First and foremost you should be organized. If you are training a bunch of people it will be easier to keep their attention if you know what is going on, and have everything lined up correctly.
  • Be interesting. People won’t pay attention to something they find dull. Having something funny to say or a conservative mode of training can keep people involved rather than just in attendance.
  • Participation from employees is advised. Having people participate as “helpers” or in competition can catch their interest and provide you with some interesting results.
  • Slideshow anyone? Having something for people to look at and focus on is important. It is much easier for employees a.k.a. students to pay attention when they are actually looking at something preferably that catches their interest.
  • Lunch Break! Not to many people do not like being in one place for very long. Having short breaks for food or other activities can help your employees stay focused on you for the time you are training.
  • Games at Work! Having something that people can interact with is a great way for them to stay involved. Games can be both productive and counterproductive. Make sure that the games are appropriate and that your students will leave with the lesson not just the winner.
Filed Under: Business, Training Tagged With: , ,

Effectively reviewing employee performance

Employees are the machinery that keeps a business running smoothly and profitably. You need to constantly maintain the machinery with regular checks if you don’t want your business faltering. This example effectively describes the employee performance review process. Employees look forward to their yearly performance appraisal as not only does it decide how much of a pay hike they are going to get but it also lets them know how they are seen by the management and what their place in the organization is. It is vital that employee performance is reviewed tactfully. Here are some tips on how performance appraisal can be made more effective:

1. You should keep in mind that performance reviews are not about telling employees all the things they messed up during the year. Make it a point their achievements get highlighted too and they receive sufficient praise for it.

2. Negative comments don’t always have to sound bad. Phrase your comments in a manner that you bring out how an employee can learn from their errors and use them to develop their skills.

3. Your company should genuinely be concerned about the growth and development of employees as your organization will grow along with them. Make sure your employees are aware of this attitude, it can be highly motivating.

4. Create processes that eliminate any instances of bias or prejudice as they defeat the very purpose of a review. The performance appraisal should be fair and based entirely on facts and not opinions.

5. Ensure your HR department has one to one conversations with the employees. Discuss their own goals and find out how they expect to grow in the organizations and how they believe they can contribute more. This will be your indicator on which employees are serious about success.

Filed Under: Hiring, Management Tagged With: , ,

What employees expect from a leader

Good leaders have the ability to steer an organization towards success. They are catalysts of an environment of growth and productivity, inspiring dedication towards excellence among subordinates as well as colleagues. However, a lot of people who think they are great leaders are terribly wrong in their analysis. They are guided in this notion by what they believe are they qualities of a good leader and they belief that they have all these traits. However, the greatness of a leader is dictated by how his or her subordinates perceive them. You may think that you have amazing leadership skills but it would mean nothing if the person working for you doesn’t agree! Here are some of the traits that employees expect to see in their leaders:

1. Trust is the building block of most relationships in life, including that of boss and employee. An employee won’t follow you if he or she doesn’t trust you. Try your best to gain your employees’ trust and begin doing so by trusting them!

2. Good leaders not only need to be good orators but also good listeners. Employees may not find constant monologues motivating. Try having conversations instead and encourage employees to share their views without fearing any repercussions.

3. Everyone loves winning challenges and the sense of accomplishment it brings. Clearly communicate your objective and goals to your employees and then give them the leverage to use their own creativity to achieve these goals.

4. Employees love it when their work is recognized and appreciated. Make it a point to personally and publically applaud an employees achievement, no matter how small. If you can back it up with a reward, even better!

5. Make them feel a part of your team and share in their achievements and disappointments.

Filed Under: Business, Hiring Tagged With: , ,

Effective Training Sessions

In most businesses throughout the country, at the time new employees are hired, they are required to undergo some sort of training.  Cashiers in grocery stores need to be trained.  Not every cash register is the same.  Even computer whizzes and experts need to be trained in the way a new company does things.  No two businesses are run exactly the same way.  The more thorough your training is, and the more employees participate, the better trained they will be, and obviously the more productive they will be.

The structuring of your training sessions is very important.  The way the training sessions is run, the ability to keep the employees interested in learning is essential to a positive training session.  First and foremost, make sure whomever you choose to do the training knows exactly what you want the employees to learn.  Make sure that the trainers know exactly how your business is run, and they are more than capable of showing new hires what needs to be done.  Training sessions should be interesting.  Throwing in some fun facts about the company or some tricks to getting jobs done more efficiently will keep the interest of the newly hired employees.

Make sure the people you are training have every opportunity to ask questions, and make sure their questions are answered correctly and completely.  If you have to confer with another expert, make sure you get back to that employee, to answer their question.  Give at least a break or two during the training session.  Everybody needs a little breather.  Whatever you cover in the training sessions, make sure the employees are tested on the material and know what they are doing.  Ensuring your employees are well trained in how you want things to be run will insure that your business will continue to run smoothly, even during a transition to a new employee or a new position.

Filed Under: Training Tagged With: , ,

Hire for the Future, not Just for Today

Hiring practices have changed because the world has changed according to the recession. An employer can no longer hire someone for the job and then expect that person to morph into what the business needs in the future. The employer needs to hire people for what they can bring to the company tomorrow, too.
Cross-trained employees are becoming the new breed of what’s wanted. Businesses who’ve reduced staff because of the economy have put more on their employee’s plates and learned how to do the same amount of business with less help. It was a move out of necessity that’s becoming a business standard.
Employees, Update Your Skill-Sets

A person has to keep up on the current needs, constantly learning new things and updating skills. It’s not something new to the working world.
Say a person has hotel management skills and is applying for that position. The employer will now see previous experience as more important than it used to be, taking in all the potential employee’s skills and not just the ones they went to school for. Hiring with the future in mind is key to having employees that can morph into new times and new needs.
When hiring strategically, there’s three main characteristics identifying the practice:
  • 1.) No cutting corners on hiring; screening and selection should not be taken lightly; check for cross-training and skills that will come in handy down the road, as well as for the job immediately applied for.
  • 2.) Employee turnover should be something that’s controlled and not something that ‘happens to’ a business; it should be a strategic decision.
  • 3.) The business owner should pay attention to what the person can do for the company in the future, and not just right now. Hiring for those positions can and should be done within the company, and not left open to those who aren’t part of the picture already.
Filed Under: Business, Hiring Tagged With: , ,

Update That Resume Right Now

Got a resume? Got a job already? In this day of world-wide recession, nothing is for sure anymore. Businesses that were well established with customer bases have gone out of business because of the recession; either they were directly affected by the slow-down of revenue or their suppliers and vendors have gone out of business, affecting them indirectly, but seriously.
People should update their resume periodically, even if they’re not looking for work at the time. Just keep it ready, just in case; as mentioned before, nothing is for sure and the potential for loss is real. But, just updating the resume with job titles isn’t all that needs to be done. Get new skills as time goes on, as well.
New information should be on there – not meaning in recent job activity, but in skills and experience. It should be always fresh with things the person has learned along the way; new skills, refresher courses, anything that the worker didn’t do or know before.
Get That Update Done! It Just Takes a Minute

Even a waitress has new skills to learn these days, with new popularities all the time, and most restaurants now have a computer-based ordering system and many of those have applications to track the worker’s attendance and tardiness. This means restaurant chefs, managers and everyone – maybe even the dishwasher – has new skills to learn in order to do their job efficiently.
Think of what’s been done that wasn’t common before and think about the level of experience given to it. If a secretary suddenly has to deal with customers as well as the boss’s schedule, some new selling skills, or at least product information will be learned.
Updating regularly is important because we don’t always remember what we did six months ago, or when exactly we learned some certain skill. It’s hard to try and remember everything done, and something important could be inadvertently left off. It’s better to just do it and then it’s done for a while, and when it’s needed all the information will be there.
Filed Under: Business, Hiring Tagged With: , ,

Retraining Might be Better Than Replacement

There are times in every manager’s career when they’re depended upon to motivate employees who are poor producers or who can’t really do the job – and decide if someone should be fired. A person that doesn’t have the training for the job can lose money for the company and offend potential return customers with their ignorance.
In these hard financial times, firing a person is cruel, since jobs are so difficult to find, and it’ll cost the employer more in rehiring and training another person.  For this situation, giving the employee more training is of utmost importance for both the company and the employee because the business has already spent money on training and wages thus far. It would be less expensive to simply retrain (which will go faster since the person has already gotten some of it), and it may make a more loyal employee who knows the job better in the end.
Business Ethics are Invisible, at First

Sometimes people are hired and it’s not obvious what work ethics they have (or don’t have). They start out good, but what about the one that never seems to improve? The one that moves slowly, mismanages time and gets behind easily, or leaves tasks undone at the end of the day should be considered, warned and given a probation period in which the person should improve in order to remain. Retraining may be the answer, and if that doesn‘t help, then replacement is in order. It’s still cheaper than hiring and training a completely new person for the position, and could turn out a good employee afterwards.
People have greater needs during this world-wide recession, and some very creative ways of getting those needs met have become commonplace. Collaboration is one of the new forefronts that’s giving lots of small businesses a way to survive. They share employees, advertising, storefronts and utility bills, and it makes for less overhead and more profits.
Consider the options. A manager can do better at their job when their staff is well trained and wants to stay, and sometimes retraining is the answer.
Filed Under: Business, Hiring Tagged With: , ,

The Good Manager

Every employee in your company is an important part of making your company successful.  If you did not have a mail sorter, a lot of communication would not be happening.  Without a computer tech on hand your computers can spend days not producing work.  Without a team of competent people, who are well versed in your business and its practices, your business would not run well, and would not be profitable.  To that end, without a good management team, the rest of the team would fall apart.  There has to be someone at the forefront directing the flow of creativity.

Good managers are worth keeping.  A good manager works well not only with the employee, but with the boss as well.  While the manager knows exactly what the boss wants and how to get it, he also is very hands on with the employees, so he knows what they are capable of.  He knows how to dole out the responsibilities, and because he works closely with the employees, who knows exactly which employee would be the best for that particular job he needs completed.

A good manager has a great rapport with the employees.  He is easily accessible and more than willing to listen.  He is stern, making everyone work to their potential.  If an employee has an issue and has a manager he feels he can bring this issue to, the problem can be solved, without it having to fester and turn into something more than it need be.  A good manager is a good negotiator.  He can bring issues to the boss, offer solutions that will please both parties, and resolve small problems on his own.  A good manager can strengthen the relationship between boss and employee, boss and customer, employee and customer.

A good employee listens to a good manager, a good boss places his trust in a good manager and a good manager keeps the whole business running smoothly.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Effective Human Resources

Businesses today have both an advantage and a disadvantage.  The advantage is that many good, hard working people are looking for jobs, making the pool of prospective employees much larger to choose from. Good, quality people are an asset to any company, and to keep them happy, your benefits package should be attractive as possible.  Therein lies the disadvantage.  Benefits are expensive and more employees are in need of good benefits.  A good benefit package can actually be the determining factor in garnering the right person for the job.  Many people today consider the benefit package almost as important, if not more important, than the salary itself.

Another advantage is that the insurance companies, as well as the companies that offer other benefits, 401-K plans, unemployment benefits are also vying for your business.  Sifting through the twisted language of the insurance companies can be a job within itself.  The size of your company, the number of employees you need to include in your benefits and the type of benefits required will determine exactly what you are looking for.  Because there is a lot of competition within the insurance company field, take time to speak to different representatives.  Make sure you are getting the most for your money.  With unemployment rates as high as they have ever been across the country, with more people out of work than ever before, the benefit package becomes more important.

If you can offer your employees a benefit package that includes at least medical, dental and prescription coverage, with the least amount of money taken from their individual paychecks, you will be offering a very attractive benefit package.  Many retirement plans are not as expensive, and the amount taken out of each paycheck is minimal, everyone expects that.  However, a good benefit package is a great way to attract the best people for your business.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,
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