Understand that each employee is different.
Although it may be easy to paint all employees with the same brush, it is vital to realize that everyone is unique. Rather than considering your employees as a single, homogeneous workforce, ensure that you recognise the diversity of your employees and the potential inherent in that diversity. Realizing that your employees have different needs, requirements, expectations—and advantages—is the first step to realizing their full potential. For instance, you may have highly disorganized employees, but they have brilliant sales skills, so what’s the best way to manage them?
Manage your expectations
Perhaps your employee isn’t the problem—maybe it’s you! It is essential for any employer to lay out specific expectations and benchmarks ahead of the game. Sitting down and drawing up a plan of action and expectations is a beneficial exercise to ensure that your employee stays on track and that you do as well. Back to our earlier example, many top salespeople are disorganized, so you’ll have to understand this “yin and yang” of personality attributes.
Manage your employee’s expectations.
Along with managing your expectations as an employer, you must also manage your employee’s expectations. Transparency and open, honest communications between employer and employee will ensure that you are both on the same wavelength and avoid confusion about expectations and responsibilities.
Utilize development resources
Don’t be afraid to reach out and utilize some of the many development resources that exist out there. You have a range of options available to you to aid you in the process of getting the most out of your employees. While some of those options can be pricey, there are good tools you can use that are easily accessible and won’t break the bank. Other ideas include:
Inviting industry experts to coach and work with your employees.
Pairing up employees with mentors.
Creating coaching plans.
Joining professional networks.
For example, assessment tools can help you learn how to manage a weak-performing salesperson best: how to get the best performance out of them, and where/how to draw the line on the behaviour you may not understand.
Provide a challenging environment.
Put yourself in your employees’ shoes—if you were placed in an unchallenging and monotonous environment, you wouldn’t like it either. Instead, provide a challenging, dynamic work environment fostering creativity and excitement.
Lead by example
One of the greatest motivators for an employee is seeing a manager or supervisor who works harder than anyone else in the company. Leading by example is an underestimated motivator that can foster a company’s productive work ethic and produce great results.
Engage your workers
Ensure that your workforce is engaged. This means that employees have a say in decisions (where appropriate) and can communicate ideas and feedback to supervisors and management. An engaging employer will surely be rewarded by an engaged and entitled employee who wants to succeed in the workplace.
Reward your employees (and not just with money!)
Even though this may seem like a risky proposition, rewarding employees can be a great motivator. Rewards do not necessarily have to be in the form of money. Rewards can include verbal recognition, employee perks such as lunches, or even other ongoing incentives such as paying for daily commutes to and from work.
Foster strengths and work on weaknesses.
While you don’t want to ignore a person’s weakness completely, it’s important to foster their strength while being aware of their shortcomings. Realizing an individual’s strengths will enable you to leverage those into productive and rewarding work. At the same time, working on a person’s weaknesses can also benefit both employer and employee, and it works to strengthen the professional bond between the two. Back to our salesperson example, you don’t want to ignore their lack of organization; merely make sure it does not get out of control and hurt their performance or relationship with your other workers.
Don’t be afraid to cut.
While it is never the intention of an employer to hire someone who doesn’t work out, sometimes cutting an employee loose to maintain workplace harmony, avoid conflict, or, for a simple lack of ability, is a necessary part of running a business. As an employer, you can’t and shouldn’t avoid taking the lead on issues that jeopardize any aspect of your business. The longer you wait, the more damage that will be done. We’ve received thank you notes from former employees who have not worked out but are thankful for our frankness in constructively guiding them toward a new career that might fit them better.
