Employee Management | read
Employees are the main key to any organization’s success, so it’s important to invest time, effort and resources in them and for them. If your employees are happy to come into work and look forward to being in an office for at least 9 hours of each working day, then you’re definitely doing something right. There are lots of studies out there that show a correlation between happy employees and being highly motivated performers and achievers.
Employee Engagement is about providing the right medium for employees to do their best and achieve what they are expected to do. Therefore, as an organization, how do you go about providing that for them?
Sticking To Your Core Values; if the organization fulfills its promises and acts truthfully on its values then this will build trust and understanding from the employees towards your organization.
Keeping Employees Involved; giving your employees a chance to voice their opinions and views, and most importantly taking account of these views and opinions when making decisions
Asking Employees For Their Feedback; in the areas that matter to the employees in the work environment ask for their feedback through regular surveys
Give Employees Feedback; regular reviews with employees to assess performance gives the opportunity to recognize achievements and help in developing new skills. This has become easier using technology, which is our next point. SimpleStrata is a tool that helps companies in creating, rolling out and managing strategy, monitoring team and employee performance, as well as tracking activities.
Technology; giving employees the tools to make work easier and more enjoyable is an important investment that should not be overlooked. Technology and mobile apps are the newest trends that leading organizations invest heavily in because it guarantees efficiency and overall better productivity and performance. Whether it’s a job specific product or a mobile app that simplifies communication with your HR Department such as Modern Employee Experience, technology will improve employee engagement on so many levels.
If you want to know more about Modern Employee Experience, you can try out the employee application here or request a trial of our product.
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Originally published Jul 18, 2017 1:31:34 PM, updated September 30, 2019
Topics: Employee Management
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Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
Not doing so will put your business at a risk of increased support costs as employees become less productive while trying to figure out how to utilise the business’s technology.
On the operational side, there are 3 categories of platforms that we believe are essential:
Foundations of remote working
Systems of record
Systems of engagement
Laptops
Internet Access
VPN: A Virtual Private Network is imperative to remote working as it creates a secure, reliable, & safe connection between the employee & the organization’s resources.
Storage Platform: Every organization needs a cloud storage platform such as TechnAdopt to enable file sharing and easy access for all employees.
Productivity apps: Teamwork is the number 1 pillar of business in which it involves using shared assets like documents, reports, infographics, & structured & unstructured data. These assets can be created with the likes of the popular office suites like Microsoft Office365 in addition to document management systems, corporate intranet, HR Systems, CRM, & ERP to name a few.
Simple Strata: With this shift in work norms, companies might not have the instant visibility on the efforts taken by an employee to complete a certain job, & consequently might not know what to improve first. Our systems will detect causality and based on that, will analyze and provide reports to identify the employees who are facing difficulties in performing their jobs in comparison to others. With this visibility, the company will be able to adjust its new processes or provide support for employees who are facing challenges in the most suitable way.
ESP: The Enterprise Submission Platform is a linear workflow that enables function owners to automate their business processes without reliance on IT personnel. This platform will allow users to create requests and approvers to approve them from any location with the use of the web or the app. It is necessary especially in remote working situations as operations need to keep moving regardless of the whereabouts of users.
Engagement Pro: Engagement Pro is an application that helps you plan, organize, & track projects - all in one visual, collaborative space - to increase visibility & alignment within team members. This tool facilitates remote collaboration on projects.
Opportunity Pro: Every company with a sales department surely should use a CRM platform. Opportunity Pro enables the sales team to improve their winning rates by having accurate forecasts, details about customers & their needs, & keeping track of all actions taken & planned in order to close a deal. Rather than managing each sales team member individually, managers will be able to have top view visibility on all the pipeline remotely and will be able to review team members accordingly.
Mobile Apps:
As we live in the age of a “smart phone take-over”, it is essential that our work is accessible from the number one tool we use constantly. Whether at home or outside, employees should have the option to interact with team members via their phone.
Similarly, employers should expect their employees to have access to their work from anywhere, especially given the remote working situation. For that reason, all of our recommended products are available as mobile apps in addition to web as we have anticipated that a time will come where reliance will be solely on smart phones. We like to think we are pioneers in this field. 😉
Emails
Idenedi: A communication tool that provides an enjoyable user experience is one that sticks. Idenedi is a tool that has proven to be one of the most requested platforms as it combines ease of access with ability to deliver critical information. While emails remain the number one tool for exchanging work-related documents, they are lacking in the push notification department.
With Idenedi, managers will be able to pass important announcements regarding changes in the work environment with absolute assurance that employees will be notified. This is crucial especially in remote working as managers can track to check if important messages have reached everyone. They can even create a space for team members to interact in the comments section, and soon via chat.
As we have provided our recommendations for the infrastructure on the operational side, we also believe that there are steps to be taken to prepare teams mentally for this sudden shift in our work space.
Check out here our tips on how to adapt in the time of a global pandemic.
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When speaking of performance management, many think of the annual performance review process. But the annual performance review or appraisal is only a small component of employee performance management.
Employee performance management goes much further than the traditional annual review. It involves regular purposeful interaction between management and employees that is focused on job performance as well as direction and support for the employees.
According to Gallup, organisations that successfully engage their customers and their employees, experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to an organisation without engaged employees or engaged customers.
Performance management defines your interaction with an employee at every step of the way in between these major life cycle occurrences.
According to the definition provided by Michael Armstrong in his Handbook of Performance Management,
“Performance management is the continuous process of improving performance by setting individual and team goals which are aligned to the strategic goals of the organisation, planning performance to achieve the goals, reviewing and assessing progress, and developing the knowledge, skills and abilities of people.”
Note how he mentions that performance management is a continuous process — not an annual event.
A performance manager should, therefore, bring together different, integrated activities to form an ongoing”performance management cycle”. Ideal performance management should make every interaction opportunity with an employee into a learning opportunity.
We have put together some tips for optimising your employee performance management system.
As you develop a performance management program, you need to understand what you want to accomplish from it. Ask the following questions to define your goals:
If you know what you want your program to do, it will be easier to build it to accomplish that goal.
Now that you have set your goals, develop a performance plan to go alongside. Develop short term goals. As long term goals can overwhelm the employees even before they start.
Review employee performance regularly. Use metrics and analytics to track how goals are progressing. This will keep the process transparent and allow you to support your employees, whenever necessary.
During the feedback sessions, tensions can arise if the feedback is not constructive and actionable. It is not very helpful for employee morale to blame and point fingers. Instead performance manager should guide employees towards future success.
Managers should make sure to keep feedback professional and remember to focus on behaviour, rather than characteristics.
Ask employees to provide feedback for each other. This will give the performance manager a more holistic view of employee performance. It will also help them understand the challenges that teams are facing, and be able to better offer feedback.
Related: How to Manage Results vs. Efforts and the Communications Gap - FREE Ebook!
Regular coaching can help identify and solve problems before they get out of hand. Monthly or quarterly meetings should be held to help keep employees on the right track. It also helps to organise cross-functional coaching sessions. This helps employees - and managers - understand what other departments do and operate.
It is easy to assume for the management that problems are always caused by employees, but that simply is not the case. Problems can come from various external factors such as availability of supplies, internal processes that are causing issues, or organisational policies. Seek out the other source of problems as precisely as you can in order to fix them.
You cannot expect employees to stay motivated if their achievements are never rewarded. Yet, many organisations overlook this key element. Make sure that employees are not only compensated but also recognised for their hard work. You can rest in peace that they will continue performing for your organisation.
Make sure that your organisation has shared values and cultural alignment. A sense of shared goals, beliefs and expectations among employees creates a pleasant workplace. And a harmonious workplace is good for productivity, positivity and eventually better performances.
In conclusion...
We can all agree that performance management has a significant benefits for employees and managers, as well as for the company as a whole.
For any Human Resources department, performance management is an important system for onboarding, developing and retaining employees, as well as reviewing their performance.
If you are a performance manager or human resource manager it may seem overwhelming to keep up with the entire process. But there are tools to make your life easier at work.
Simple Strata can help you align your entire employee performance management strategy.
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Every sales manager knows that taking proper care of the sales team is an unwritten rule of a business to achieve greater heights.
Every business owner dreams of a sales team that is 100% motivated all the time. Unfortunately, this dream is often not a practical reality.
As the pressure of digitisation on sales functions has grown in the past couple of years, companies are looking for new approaches to optimise sales enablement.
In some ways, empowering a a sales team simply means giving them greater autonomy of decision making and thereby brings better outputs. Sales managers seek out for better ways to do so because no marketing mixture is going to be everlastingly successful!
Training is one of the core elements in empowering any workforce. This is also true for a sales team. There are always new technological developments happening in a company's environment. If they are more technical in nature, giving proper training to the team members is a proactive approach.
The overall skill developed by the sales team is depending upon the quality of the training they receive. It is very important to pay attention to each member and shape them as equally trained and skilled.
Nobody needs to tell you that communication and collaboration are the keys to have a healthy sales campaign. It is all about having up-to-date information and keeping everyone on the same page.
Uninterrupted communication through relentless collaboration enables greater dynamism. Authorities should make sure that there is no communication gap and no one in the team is left behind.
Though sales persons are perceived as the smart ones, there needs to be constant empowerment. They should be more customer-centric for the most part. To have greater customer focus, it is important to have strong back up and this can be provided by the manager who offers ultimate support with solid marketing campaigns.
These campaigns should have the essence that attract and keep the customers hooked. In a way, the management is providing them ultimate authority to do more things which is aimed at bringing more fulfilling outcomes.
Offering more money, time off or a great gift is another great way to give employees a goal to work toward. A recent Aberdeen study shows that non-cash incentives are usually more effective than financial compensation, with top performers 31% more likely to prefer non-cash options.
Your best bet of getting the right incentive for your employees is by giving choices and let them vote on what incentive they’d most prefer. It will give your employees a greater sense of involvement, kickstarting a refreshed sense of excitement.
This should be cited as the most important point because, without the contribution of IT, organisations cannot dream of making it big. These days, marketing success needs smart technology solutions. If the sales team needs to be out in the field, why don’t they have a smart sales application?
We must agree that a sales application can do a lot of automation tasks which have been actually pestering the hapless sales team. It is going to be a great remedy as the features are most advanced and help to sort out several sales issues.
Enabling self-service for B2B buyers isn’t the only benefit of digital commerce. By bringing the sales team into the digital channel, B2B merchants can target the most complex parts of the purchasing experience and turn them into opportunities to retain and grow each account.
The competition in B2B commerce is growing, and the increasing expectations for great digital experiences mean that even long-time industry leaders will need to evolve in order to stay ahead. Empowering the sales channel to provide insightful, consultative selling across all their accounts will resolve the channel conflict that many companies struggle with, accelerating growth for years to come.
Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
When speaking of performance management, many think of the annual performance review process. But the annual performance review or appraisal is only a small component of employee performance management.
Every sales manager knows that taking proper care of the sales team is an unwritten rule of a business to achieve greater heights.