Employer of Choice – Expanding on the Basics
Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 2 of 6)
If you missed part 1 of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.
The various human resource management issues detailed in part 1 of our HRM series for employers are consistently found throughout businesses in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sector. Business owners are rightly concerned about the impacts upon their business as they are very serious.
One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.
Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability
EMPLOYER OF CHOICE – Expanding on the Basics
An Employer of Choice is an organisation that outperforms its competitors in attracting, developing and retaining talent through innovative human resource management initiatives.
As noted in the previous article, the foundations to becoming an employer of choice are Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures. But, there is much more!
The Second Step – Expanding on the Basics
Effective Communications – Create Pathways to Success
Good communication creates engaged and aligned employees who work effectively and efficiently together. The human resource management processes listed above (and described in part 1 of this series) provide a framework of communication between the manager and his or her team, so necessary for human success in any business. However, communication can’t stop there.
Effective Meetings – Aligning Individuals and Teams
Meetings can burn resources and waste money like nothing else on planet Earth. Managed well, they can be very effective.
- Meetings must have a clear purpose that is clearly understood.
- Meetings must be two-way, everyone has input.
- Meetings must be effective and professionally run:
- Set agenda.
- Minutes taken and reviewed.
- Meeting chaired.
- Meetings must have accountable outcomes where action results.
If a meeting fulfils the above criteria, it can serve a practical purpose and engage and align staff in the process. They can also strengthen and build relationships within teams and across teams.
Meetings are necessary for a number of reasons:
- Toolbox/Team Meetings to mutually understand and address team issues.
- Safety/Environmental/Quality Meetings to mutually understand and address safety, environmental and quality issues.
- Interdepartmental Meetings to mutually understand and address interdepartmental issues.
- Vision meetings where the company vison is shared with staff.
- Sales Meetings to review and strategise business development.
- Management Meetings to review performance and strategise and implement the strategic direction of the business.
Meetings are an essential and effective way to communicate and ensure that teams are engaged and aligned in specific areas of the business which are relevant to individual and team roles in the organisation.
Effective Day-to-Day Goal Setting and Feedback – Fine Tuning for Success
Performance Management in human resource management provides a framework for managing goals and expectations based around personal objectives of employees and business objectives. However, business is dynamic and ever changing. Supervisors and managers must practice setting, reinforcing and correcting performance to short-term objectives to reinforce and/or modify behaviour and consistently develop individual and team performance. These simple people management skills applied diligently, skillfully and consistently, will help build high performance teams in your business.
Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.
You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need a hand, talk to an experienced business consultant.
The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Rewards and Recognition‘.