Managing Employees

Are you comfortable giving feedback to your employees?   My experience has been that managers are not skilled at giving effective feedback to their staff. 

I’ve been in the same situation…not sure how to share my evaluation in a way that keeps them motivated…and still set the stage for change.   It’s easy when the employee is a star performer, but what about the “average” or “under performing” employee.  How do you provide feedback that offers solutions to their growth as well as meet the department’s requirements.

The year is ending and most companies are evaluating the year’s results and ramping up for the new year…new business plans and new budgets.  The new year is also a time when many companies start organizing their yearly performance review process.  

As a HR professional, I’ve heard the groans whenever I mention “performance reviews” and I do understand.  The yearly, or in some companies twice a year, performance reviews take a lot of time.   Since most companies have some form of performance review process, you have to ask what is gained by their yearly ritual.

To be successful in managing employees you have to build a repertoire of skills to motivate employees.  Creating a strong working relationship with your team members occurs when you increase trust with each member of your team.  A team is a group of people, each one influencing the effectiveness of the whole.  A team is successful when they have a trusting relationship with their manager.  

What is trust? 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides several definitions though this is probably the one that is most familiar:

Trust: assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something b: one in which confidence is placed.

You have done all the important steps to drive change in your department:

• Reviewed what needs to change – brainstormed and created a project plan
• Captured potential reactions to the change – this way you can organize how to communicate the change
• Plan the Changes – developed the rollout steps
• Communication of the change(s) – created a project plan just for your verbal and written communication around the change(s)
• Implementation of the change(s)

… now you want to move on to other projects or business responsibilities.  

Do you ever find yourself confused on how to best communicate changes to your employees?    Here is where you need to do some serious brainstorming.  Why?  Because it takes a lot of communication to make a change successful.

As soon as you know that you will be creating change in your department, you must communicate to your employees so they know what is happening.   You are probably thinking…why get them anxious about the change when you don’t know all the details yet.  They sense it already…as if the walls in the conference rooms have ears.  It’s much better to hear from you and not from someone outside the department or company.