Image Credit: Pascal Colin
One of a managers biggest tasks is to use our manager skills to build a successful team. Once we have been able to do that, our job is not done. Instead, it’s just starting. There is always the possibility that the best members of our team are going to leave. If they are good workers for us, then they would probably be good workers for another firm and those firms will always be reaching out trying to see if your team members are interested in joining them. As a manager you need to be aware that this is going on. We don’t have any manager training in how to keep our best workers. What will you do to retain your best workers?
How To Keep Your Best Workers
Managers are always dealing with the question of how do you keep good employees? We’d all like to know what motivates them to stay? Sure we know what we think the answers are: compensation, community involvement and awards have always been inspirational employee retention tools. What we need realize is that now, during today’s anything-but-normal work environment, they’ve become even more important to our best workers.
Managers Need To Encourage Peer Validation
How does your company measure its success? In many industries teams are very much driven by clients’ success. If this is how things are at your company, then the question that you have to answer is how do you make sure your staff feels these wins as well? One way to make this happen is to give your staff awards and celebrations frequently and quickly:
No matter which department the employee is part of, they will always have clients. It’s most important that the recognition comes from colleagues and that the wording of the award corresponds in some way to the mission or values of the company. Efforts to make the business part of the community are indispensable. If a manager can make this happen the rewards for the company and staff flow back in incalculable ways. A company should use whatever it does to reach its community. It’s a chance to do both good and invaluable marketing for the company.
Find Ways To Get What You Pay For, And Make Sure You Pay For What You Get
Every manager has relied on compensation when trying to attract and retain staff, but beyond just numbers, what’s the best way to use money to motivate staff? One thing that you can do is to look at your company’s finances holistically. In these days of working remotely, a manager can spend a little in unconventional directions to benefit staff. Things that you can do are to allocate money to give your staff home-cleaning services, internet allowances, better hardware for them to use at home and paperless tools.
Regarding compensation, managers are going to want to reward quickly and transparently. An example of doing this is having complete transparency on bonuses. One other thing that you might want to do is to pay them out monthly or quarterly instead of waiting until year’s end. These awards can be handed out at team building events.
Raises can always be a sticking point and can be a reason that a lot of workers choose to leave the firm. What managers are going to want to do is to create a culture where no one has to “ask” for a raise. Any company should see this as being in its metrics. If a manager is able to implement a system like this then this will help to remove subjectivity so employees don’t have to feel as if they must be someone’s favorite. If you can accomplish this, then you will have created a system that is the fairest and the best way to use compensation to attract and retain talent.
What All Of This Means For You
One of a managers biggest challenges is building a successful team. Once we have accomplished this goal, our next biggest challenge is to find a way to keep all of our team members from leaving! Managers need to take the time to think about what they can do in order to create an environment that will allow them to retain their best workers.
Historically, the things that have caused team members to stay with our company have been things like awards and compensation. However, as the workplace has become more complicated it turns out that these things have become even more important. What managers need to do is to make sure that their team members get recognized for their accomplishments right off the bat. Most firms like to use compensation to retain their workers. Managers need to take this just a little bit further. We can offer to pay for additional items that are an important part of our worker’s lives. Finding ways to make raises a normal part of life and not a big deal is also something that managers can do.
Having built a team that can be successful, managers need to understand that their job is not done. Instead, their job shifts to finding ways to keep their team together. The good news is that this can be done. However, what we need to do is to start to find ways to keep our best workers engaged and excited about their jobs.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Just like everyone else, managers dread having to go on a job interview. I mean, we interview people for a living, shouldn’t we get some sort of special treatment because of our manager skills and not have to go through this step? However, we don’t control how things work and so we have to interview for new jobs just like everyone else. The question that you need to be able to answer is do you know how to interview in order to get the job that you want?