Employee managing is changing. Period. A world where businesses expect theeir workforce to follow instructions blindly doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, there is a need to communicate with employees effectively, through digital employee management.
The stats speak for themselves; disengaged employees cost organizations an average of $450-550 billion per year.
Luckily for small to medium sized businesses, we’re looking at five tips for managing employees and avoiding basic HR mistakes. Digital employee management takes time and effort to implement, but the benefits are worth much more than the cost.
1. Connect with Your Workforce
Don’t make teams work in the dark. Share the company vision and future plans for the company with them. Lay out all the objectives and goals and explain how the workforce can contribute.
Teams that work towards a common purpose are more incentivized. It stands to reason, when employees feel a connection to what they are working towards, they’ll stick around.
Top Tip: Try using employee engagement software to help with this task.
2. Appreciate Your Workforce
Value what each of the workers is good at and listen to them, rather than taking an “I’m right, I’m your manager” line. Create an inclusive workplace, where employees can come to the manager with ideas and concerns, and where they are involved in company decision making.
3. Incentivize
Improve productivity by providing people with incentives they can work towards. For example, a health plan or performance bonuses. You’ll benefit in the long run and attract a higher caliber workforce in return.
4. Managing and Hiring Managers
Every workforce includes managers, so don’t forget about them! You need to handle them like you might other employees while giving them a chance to develop their own management style.
When hiring managers, select people who value teamwork. They should want a workforce where employees are happy, engaged and can cope without micromanaging or castigating.
Don’t be afraid to delegate either. Allow all of the managers to manage, but remember – don’t only delegate the menial stuff you don’t want to do!
5. Be Aware
Remember, you’re the boss. Everyone is looking to you and noting your behavior. If the person – or people at the top of the organization walk around looking angry, everyone in the workforce will pick up on it.
Don’t spend all day with the office door shut. What message does that give to the managers and employees?
Remember every decision made can affect the employees, sometimes negatively.
Implementing Digital Employee Management
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Be inclusive with what the company does, how it’s doing and where it’s going. These are relevant aspects of employee managing.
Ensure everyone knows where to go to find out important company news. Have a regular means of communicating with the teams, whether it’s via an app, a newsletter, face-to-face or hopefully all three!
Give the employees a context in which they’re working. They’ll thank you and work better, harder and for longer. Give people useful feedback. Make sure to recognize and reward them when they (and the company) does well.
Include Everyone
To create a workplace that people want to be a part of, these are the steps to follow. For more information on how to create employee loyalty, check out our other business and management ideas.
Analog to Digital
Changing over from the analog way of managing to digital is known as “digitization” in HR circles. Digitization is the technical process of converting analogue HR information into digital HR information that allows for automated processing. There is also a socio-technical process that exploits the potential of digitization for the purpose of operational and strategic staff management. the human-side process id called the digitalization of human resources management.
Benefits
Human Resources managers call digital employee management “Digital HR Transformation.” They say the benefits include “Creating the Workforce of the Future” and other smart-sounding phrases. But small to medium sized companies don’t need all those flashy words, that are just HR-speak. What’s important is a better working experience for employees, increased efficiency and agility for the business and a better experience for customers.
A happy company leads to happy customers, and happy customers mean a happy company. It’s a circular benefit assisted by digital employee management.
