Managers play a significant role in any team’s success or failure. They are responsible for fostering an environment of growth, respect, and mutual understanding among all employees.
However, a shocking Predictive Index survey concluded that 63% of the employees were planning to leave their jobs due to poor managers, highlighting the lack of effective leadership.
Many people leave their jobs due to bad managers and ineffective management strategies.
An SHRM survey found that 84% of U.S. workers state badly trained managers are responsible for unnecessary stress, and 57% believe their performance would improve if their manager received better training.
Poor management not only causes deep disrespect for the employees but also a lack of attention towards key management issues within the firm.
If a manager is indifferent to critical management issues, it’s a total failure on the top management side.
A study by the Niagara Institute found that 57% of employees left their jobs because of their manager, and 32% had considered leaving for the same reason. This shows just how vital managerial quality is to retention.
Managers need to realize the need for attentiveness to address the issues of their employees before they shift to “quiet quitting” or, even worse, quit for good.
If they follow a well-established routine throughout the day at work, they might see much improvement across the board.
Here is how managers should spend time keeping all their employees satisfied and contributing to their overall happiness.
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Communicating with employees and delivering expectations.
Effective communication is an essential tool for every leader or manager. Unfortunately, this is where most of the managers lack.
Many managers believe that their only job is to oversee, completely disregarding the need to become active leaders who assist their employees in achieving the organization’s goals.
While poor leadership plays a major role, a recent study revealed that stress, often caused by work overload, is the most cited reason for discretionary turnover, with management issues following closely
Due to the communication gap, employees face many difficulties.
- Sometimes they fail to deliver because they are unaware of managers’ expectations and objectives.
- Often, newcomers lack the skills or coaching to do their job. So they rely on other employees, and it is quite disruptive for both employees.
- It also causes unnecessary pressure on employees.
The solution is pretty easy.
If a manager takes the time to communicate the organization’s expectations and core values to the team, it can provide greater clarity and greatly improve teamwork.
Gallup’s research states that managers are responsible for up to 70% of the variance in team engagement, a powerful predictor of performance, efficiency, and loyalty.
Coaching and training the team.
Another big issue that managers usually face is untrained employees. It can be either technical skills or soft skills; some employees lack at least one of them.
Managers must ensure proper training of their employees, with available training manuals serving as the guiding principles of performance standards, workplace procedures, and the consistent application of organizational policies.
Once the fear of unfamiliarity fades, things become clear, and people start getting a hold of their jobs.
There is a long debate about whom you should spend more time with. Which employees should managers focus on more? Top performers or poor performers?
Many business coaches believe in the 80/20 rule. They say 80% of your business will come from 20% of your employees. So it would be wise if you focused more on the top performers.
Others apply the principle differently, stating that businesses should avoid wasting 80% of their resources on efforts or employees that produce minimal results.
The best opinion is that you should prioritize both the top and poor performers equally when they show high potential.
If some employees have the potential to be top performers with guidance, they will bring you magical results. Because growth encourages happiness, and when you invest in and value these employees, they are more likely to find happiness at their workplace and remain loyal to the organization.
Follow up on the work you assigned to the team.
Once you have communicated well with the team and trained employees, scheduling follow-ups is the next big thing (actually, a huge thing).
If you have assigned the work and keep sitting in your office chair, you will never know what’s happening in the organization. You again depend on employees’ instincts, which you should never do.
Spending time cross-checking if things are working fine and they don’t face difficulties will get you excellent results over time.
It will also help you keep your eyes on the high achievers and difficult employees.
Handling difficult employees.
One study concluded that you would not get optimal results if you don’t prioritize managing difficult employees.
Let’s say your bad employees will ruin your good employees, too.
It doesn’t take much of a manager’s time to manage difficult employees, but it’s a hectic job. Due to difficult employees, you can’t focus on the high performers, and thus, your high performers feel disappointed.
As difficult employees are part of daily life, we have discussed the best ways to tackle bad employees. Managers must read this.
Work on best practices to make employees loyal.
Managers can be game changers for any business if they use their energies. For instance, they can work to their team’s satisfaction, boost employees’ loyalty, and get the best from their teams.
But, as discussed in the article, the best practices to make employees loyal, the team’s loyalty starts with managers’ loyalty.
That’s what doesn’t often happen in companies.
So, managers should learn the best practices and do their best for employee satisfaction.
This will get incredible results in the long run.
Spare time to reward employees.
Good managers always appreciate their teams.
If you focus on rewarding and appreciating employees in a well-mannered way, you can’t get excellent results.
Human beings need appreciation and encouragement. If you are not feeding your team with appreciation (that doesn’t cost money, like you can even make them with workiversary messages), you are missing an important tool to boost their energies.
You can also praise the great teamwork individually and in monthly appreciation meetings.
Suppose you appreciate all the employees and offer a gift to one employee without hurting the others’ feelings. In that case, it will create a competitive ground for all employees, and employees will work harder to be the next “employee of the month.”
You should only keep in mind that you should not hurt others’ feelings. Let’s say you can say that I noticed that all were doing a great job. It was pretty hard for me to choose employee of the month, but due to this and that reason, this employee deserved to be the employee of the month.
So if you spend time on all these critical areas, you will get optimal results.