Making mistakes is part of the learning experience. You grow as an individual, in personal relationships and can make smarter business decisions based on your knowledge. But the learning curve becomes a problem when you are holding a position of power and the mistakes are repetitive.
Your actions, your decisions and the way you choose to manage your employees can play a major influence on your overall business success.
What happens when your employees aren’t properly managed?
Retaining employees becomes more difficult and your business begins facing high turnover costs, one of the highest expenses in current industry. Finding new staff replacements is time consuming. The recruitment process requires your business to spend a great deal of energy and resources.
Employees leave their bosses, not their jobs. One of the top reasons cited for turnover is the relationship (or lack of) between employees and their managers.
Ask yourself: are you making these common mistakes when managing your staff?
#1 You are more unavailable than you are available.
A major risk for high employee disengagement is ineffective and infrequent communication.
Ask yourself:
1. Do your staff have an easy way to get in contact with you?
2. How are you managing staff requests?
3. Do you have a means of employee communication to efficiently update staff?
4. Does your communication system allow for connections in the workplace?
Businesses that consciously implement an employee communication system can efficiently notify staff about changes
Regular communication with management actually shows a rate of nearly 3 times more staff engagement than infrequent communication.
#2 You don’t set clear expectations.
Miscommunication and misunderstanding of the “big picture” and job expectations is one of the biggest reasons for lower employee engagement and higher turnover rates.
Ask yourself:
1. Do your staff clearly understand what is expected of them?
2. In what way were staff expectations and requirements made? (via interview process, email, team training, one-on-one)
3. Is there a way for your staff to acknowledge or confirm their understanding of what is expected?
4. Did you provide your staff with all of the necessary resources, information and training?
5. Did you set enough time in advance to allow staff to prepare?
If every task is a priority, very quickly staff will believe that there are no priorities.
Be clear with what the ultimate goals are and be sure to iterate any requirements such as behavior, dress code, etc. that are significant to the job.
#3 Employees are being under or overworked.
Inconvenient schedules can quickly cause an employee burnout when staff are being overworked, or frustration when other employees don’t get the opportunity to work harder and longer.
Ask yourself:
1. Do you find yourself repeatedly in situations where you need to surprise staff with longer working hours or overtime?
2. Are you fairly dividing working hours and shifts among employees?
3. Is the schedule you create rigid? Or flexible and allowing for changes?
Avoid regularly giving the wrong employees the wrong shifts and try to create a smart schedule that works for everyone.
#4 Lack of feedback and input.
It is important to manage employee performance and be open to feedback.
Ask yourself:
When is the last time you left feedback about staff?
Do your employees, captains or managers have an easy place to leave input for you?
1. Do you have a system for rewarding high-working staff?
2. Decide whose function it is to rate and manage employee feedback, whether it is the manager, operational leaders or team captains.
3. When you give employee feedback and reviews, your staff know where and when to focus on improvement. You can store this information in an organized way for your business.
#5 You’re not making the job fun.
Managers tend to forget that staff need to enjoy what they are doing and have a bit of fun throughout the work day.
Without that light-hearted feeling, employees end up coming to work and just doing the bare minimum in order to cross off their checklist for that day.
Ask yourself:
1. Are you creating an overly serious or competitive environment?
2. Are you providing means of motivating and engaging staff? (Incentives, designated breaks, investing in an employee management tool)
3. Are you preventing staff from certain things (like using social media during the job) but blatantly doing those things yourself?
Making the workplace a more fun and engaging place will keep your staff engaged and motivated, and help your business avoid making management mistakes — and from paying the toll.
