Effective leadership and employee management require motivating your people on a regular basis. This essence of motivation instigates a desire to improve and growth among employees. Effective leadership also cultivates loyalty in the team towards colleagues and the company. Leadership may seem daunting, but when carried out with the right priorities and the right attitude, it can be highly beneficial.
As a leader, manager or supervisor, you should give high importance to your ability to manage, motivate, supervise and lead your team. Monitoring your team and improving performance is one of the most important aspects of management. Even if your company has an appraisal process describing manual, there are certain performance management principles every manager should follow.
Principles of Performance Management
There are two most important functions of a well-described appraisal process. Firstly, an organisation should have a clear picture of the persisting employee-manager relationship. Secondly, the organisation should develop an effective and structured performance management system to clear out the organisation and individual relationship. Although, as managers and leaders, we do understand the importance of systematic management, the second function is often neglected or poorly utilized.
The best way to improve employee engagement is by showing the team member how their contribution adds to the success of the department or organisation as a whole.
How to measure the level of engagement?
Level of employee engagement is an ongoing process. It changes with time-based on how smoothly the day-to-day tasks of the organisation are taken care of. Also, the degree of empathy and progress of the department contributes to the personalities of the manager, as well as the employee. It is important to understand how your personality as a manager or leader can influence the performance of your team to achieve success and bring out the best performance. As described in the UK government’s MacLeod Report in 2009, the correlation between employee engagement and the high-performance level is the key to success.
What are the four main employee engagement drivers?
As reported by Nita Clarke and David MacLeod in their report to Government, some studies described better financial performance based on higher levels of engagement in private sector and better results in public sector.
#1 Any leadership that believes in an explicit, strong, transparent organizational culture that can give the employees a straight sight between the aims and vision of the organisation, and their job.
#2 Managers who are capable of engaging employees via clarity, contribution and appreciation of efforts, treat every team member as an effective individual. To make the employees feel valuable supported and equipped with their job, the manager should ensure everything is effectively and efficiently organised.
#3 If your employees feel they can voice their ideas and are listened to, they will feel more engaged. Indulge your employees in the decision making of their department, with problem sharing and challenges, to help them commit to joint solutions.
#4 Employees should trust that the organisation is committed to its core values, that it promotes. Also, make sure your employees can see a consistent behavior of top management throughout the organisation, with its set values. This will help in building employee trust and integrity and fill the gaps.
OSCAR Principles to Maximize Engagement
As a leader or manager, there are certain thing you can integrate within the current appraisal process, which will eventually help you maximize employee engagement and motivate your team to acquire high-level performance.
- Regardless what you feel, be fair and objective towards your staff always.
- Set SMART goals for your staff that can enhance and bring out every individual’s maximum potential.
- While observing your team’s performance, assess them through the competencies they show as per their job specific responsibilities.
- Assess every individual based on the job role and tasks assigned in their job description.
- While reviewing any person of your team, you should make sure you check their overall performance based on the described role contribution to the organisation. Verify that the person has a clear picture about how their input to the organisation contributes to the company’s overall success.
Do not forget to develop a safe and secure environment during the appraisals, which allows open and in-depth discussion between you and your employees. Also, as part of your management preparation for the evaluation meetings or plannings, you should produce a draft of individual task goals for every team member. Remember assessing and improving performance is a continuous process which comprises of several discrete stages.
While you are busy assessing your team, remember you are not at war, but work. Be loyal to your team members as well as the organisation. Include your staff or team members in the decision-making process to keep them engaged.
Show your leadership qualities to your team by working hard towards your own set goals. If you do not maintain your work standards, you employees will not respect the tasks you assign them.
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