Better Management Skills Will Improve Employee Performance

Hello Friends,

HR Mangers have an important contribution to play in lifting employee performance by ensuring that they have competent managers and supervisors. The reason for high staff turnover is that people don't leave businesses; they leave their managers.  By developing better leadership skills in these managers, staff retention increases.  An interesting exercise for an HR Manager, is to do a comparison between the cost of staff turnover and the cost of developing the leadership skills of their managers.  There is a strong relationship between leadership competence and staff turnover.

It is important for all HR managers to clearly specify their expectations to their management teams.  These expectations should be expressed as principles or guidelines within which the managers and supervisors should operate.  If they wish to do something which is perceived to be outside the agreed principles, then they should refer the situation back to their HR Manager for discussion.

Try this.  Ask your managers to consider your expectations and judge whether they are fair and reasonable.  If they agree that they are fair and reasonable you can expect them to fulfill them.  If they don't consider them fair and reasonable, then you have something to discuss and negotiate.  Unless they consider them fair and reasonable and had the opportunity to have a discussion, they will ignore them.

Is it a fair expectation that your managers and supervisors will develop their staff to their potential?  Is it also a fair expectation for them to show evidence of a plan to successfully reach their staff development goals?

Ask your managers and supervisors about the strengths of relationships in their teams and what they are going to do so they are constantly being improved. You will need to know how it is planned, implemented and measured

I would ask them to rate their team members on a scale of 1 to 10.  In categories like, attendance, productivity, contribution and value.  Where 1 is unacceptable and 10 is excellent.  I would ask them how they are going to manage the performance of those below 6.  I would ask them of the implications of not managing the performance of those people.  I would like to see a plan of how they intended to either lift the performance of these people or replace them.

After they had been trained in coaching, I would expect them to involve the staff in decision-making and be a resource for their supervisors.  I would expect them to have a good insight into staff morale and create an environment where people are willing to contribute their ideas for improvements and innovative ways of doing things.

I would expect my managers and supervisors to advise me in advance of potentially difficult problems.  As an HR Manager, or executive I would not want to be surprised about anything in the business.

By providing better leadership at managerial and supervisory level, the performance of the staff will follow.  It is totally unrealistic to expect that better performance will start at the bottom.

Poor leadership almost always guarantees poor staff performance.

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By Peter L Mitchell

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