Appreciating Employees, Here's A New Idea

Let’s start with this story of the monthly Shining Star award at Deloitte. It’s worth $50 in voucher and can be won by an individual or a team. The high point of the prize is the fun part where everyone shares drinks and snacks. Now, yours doesn’t have to be a monetary reward. It can either be in the form of public recognition at the next staff briefing. 

Appreciating employees can come in the form of gifts. The gifts can be tailored to the employees’ interest and hobbies, let’s say cycling or culinary classes. You can even go a step higher with getaways or even smart devices. This is a level higher than just gifting them a $100 gift card. 

What of employees’ birthdays? There’s no better time to remind them how valuable they have been to the firm in the past 365 days. Give them the day off on their birthdays and maybe surprise them with the trending smart home divide they have been raving about all year. 

Now, on your social media profiles, recognize staffs by highlighting what they’ve done for the business and why the company considers it a great deed. Other ideas you can consider include wall of fame, spontaneous treats, commute help, peer recognition program and much more.

You Need to Maintain Positive Relationships at Work

According to a poll by Gallup, if you have a best friend at work, you are likely to be engaged at your work. It doesn’t have to be a best friend at work; a good friend will make you love your job the more. As humans, we are not just biological beings that crave food and water; we are also social beings in need of friendship and positive interaction. 

Theodore Roosevelt once said that getting along with people is the single most vital ingredient to achieve success. Positive relationships at work breed honesty and trust in the work environment. This helps the achievement of organizational goals. Through a positive and supportive relationship at work, you can do your work in a happy, healthy, and fulfilling work environment. 

Maintaining a positive relationship at work starts with you. When it comes to the performance of tasks, don’t let your specific responsibility affect others. Be conscious of the time and pace of work. Make yourself available to help others if they need your help. In communicating with your peers, maintain transparency as the opposite breeds distrust and bad blood. 

More importantly, maintain eye contact with your colleagues and never stop using typical day courtesies; it will go a long way to build positive relationships

Building Skills Needed To Succeed as a Manager of People and Resources

If you desire to succeed as a manager you need to pay attention to several aspects of leadership, management and learning within your work-space. Thus it is difficult to successfully enumerate and say the following 5 items are the skills needed to succeed as a manager. Different articles are doled out daily with variations on the same theme but the following as the basic skills you require to successfully harness people and resources.

Effective and responsive interpersonal relationship is integral as a manager. Your subordinates will appreciate your ability to demonstrate attentiveness, care, respect and trust without compromising your professional boundaries. You also need to master proper communication skills, including oral, written and good listening skills.

As a manager, you are the liaison between the senior management and the front line staffs so you need to communicate ideas with total clarity. You also need to make yourself available and accessible to your staff where necessary.  Organization and delegation is also a major key. You’ll need to organize, delegate and joggle things up on a daily basis. Contemporaneously, you need to manage your workload, oversee employees and feed the board back without any slacks.

Getting Noticed and Getting Ahead

There’s nothing as harmful to your career than getting lost in the crowd of other performers. Yes, you have the skills to deliver, but what’s taking the shine away from you? You don’t have an idea, that’s precisely the first reason. You are lost in your self-consciousness, unable to locate your unique selling points. If you are never noticed, it will become a hassle to forge ahead. 

Remember you are competing against other high flyers who come to work early, deliver before deadlines, and display professionalism on every task. That means you have to do more and be different. Offer to help on new projects in your own free time, that’s after you have delivered excellently. Offer to help, in the process; you will learn new skills and gather experience. 

Every time you are engaging your boss or a colleague on an idea, back it up with specific and related examples. This will show that much thought has gone into the concept. At company meetings and events, speak up and offer your opinions. If you don’t have a new line of thought, back up existing ones. Please don’t overdo it, don’t be seen as an attention seeker. 

More importantly, avoid the murky waters of office politics. If you have to choose a clique, make sure it’s the winning side.

Dealing with Hostility Among Your Employees

Hostility among your employees creates a toxic work environment that doesn’t bode well for interpersonal relations and hinders the overall growth of the organization. You do not need employees who are disrespectful, uncooperative, abusive or downright rude so you cannot just ignore them you have to deal with them.

As hostility reduces productivity, one good way of dealing with a hostile employee is by discussing it with them. Don’t just assume they are aware that what they are doing is wrong and should change. Communicate with them, listen actively and never raise your voice. Be calm and collected but ensure you get your message across to them.

Give employees a chance to defend themselves fairly. Ensure that employees are aware of what the disciplinary actions for different misconducts are and follow through with the punishment without bias or favoritism.

Never judge an employee’s general behavior base on specific actions. Just because an employee was late in submitting his last week’s report does not make him a slow person. Attacking the personality of an employee will do nothing short of causing resentment and escalating the situation.