What do employees want to hear from their supervisors?

Employees want to hear from their supervisors and managers anything and everything to help with motivation. This is particularly true when change is happening within a company.

Change management and the process of change is high on the list of any manager involved in human resources.

- Employees want to know how they are getting on at work and also within the company
- Every employee wants to hear that they are appreciated.
- Employees want to be updated on any developments in the workplace and as human beings,
- Every employee wants to feel that they are a star in their own right and that they are part of a winning team.

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics once said, “There are two things people want more than sex and money…..recognition and praise”.

HR managers are frequently told that the one motivating factor at the top of most employee lists is “appreciation for a job well done”. In performance reviews, management teams know it is the one thing requested more often than money.

A recent Gallup survey revealed:
- 61% of American workers received no praise at work last year and
- The #1 reason people leave their jobs is because they feel unappreciated

If you ask employees why they go to work, their first answer is usually “to get paid” but when you explore further, people will add that their main reason is “I feel I make a difference”. In most cases, that’s the reason why a contented employee decides to get out of bed each morning to go to their workplace.

What can managers do?
Watch out for something to praise – best practices – a task completed to a high standard, a task achieved faster than expected, meetings well run, someone looking particularly smart today or someone greeting a customer enthusiastically and personally, someone remembering a customer’s name.

Managers can also offer training to employees – training the manager undertakes to deliver – using business best practices and in-house resources.

Showing appreciation allows a supervisor or manager to invest in their team – without spending money. Appreciation doesn’t need to be financially costly. It could be a coffee and a cookie or it could be a quick hand-written note. It could be a simple “thank-you”.

The important thing for managers to realize is that employees need appreciation to give of their best, particularly if the supervisor or manager is managing change.

For more tips, articles and ideas take a look at:

- Giving Praise
- Motivate without spending a dime
- What motivates people

Effective Management Skills

Effective management skills are now the currency of success. Whether your organization is concerned with business, commerce or industry, it will need managers who have well developed leadership skills, are excellent communicators and are also effective strategic thinkers.

To manage at all levels, communication skills, leadership skills and time management skills are required. These skills are at the heart of all successful businesses and at the heart of the effective management of teams of people.

Managers are also expected to train their own team members and provide help with team member’s learning. This means that managers must also have coaching skills to support their staff. The skills of a trainer are specialized and will need to be developed. Once again, there will be demand for creativity to achieve this.

Management strategies for building and maintaining team moral, techniques and tips which help to motivate and support people are vital to business success, particularly in a time of economic uncertainty.

In achieving management objectives, of particular importance are interpersonal skills – the so call “soft skills”. The term “soft” can imply that they are skills which are of secondary importance. Secondary for instance to harder skills such to financial management and project management. Such an interpretation is wrong. Soft skills are the complex and demanding and ever-changing skills which effect individuals in organizations – communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, change mamangement, performance appraisal and performance management. Get these wrong and business suffers. Soft skills – interpersonal skills – are the “meat n’ potatoes” of the effective management of human resource; they are essential manager skills.

Human resources management is the key to effective management of any business’ finite financial resources

Effective management is about managing every project well which means managing effectively, efficiently, in a timely manner and with the full co-operation of everyone involved.

There are a huge number of requirements of a manager and yet resources for training are in short supply for most businesses operations these days. It’s likely to become the responsibility of managers to develop their own effective management skills.

In the past, managers could look forward to being sent on training courses to learn or develop a particular skill but now managers must be creative in building their own personal bank of resources to improve their effectiveness. In a climate of economic downturn and dramatically reduced budgets, managers must add innovation to the ever-growing list of requirements of their professional education.

Also, in the past, it was quite easy for a manager to find a class which suited the learning schedule of his professional development but increasingly, classes are run at times which conflict with normal business or personal life commitments of home and family.

Time management is usually a top priority for every manager. It’s the #1 continual gripe of most managers that meetings are not time efficient or well managed. Many managers struggle with acting as the chair-person in a meeting and also with writing the minutes of meetings. A short online management course dealing with a key skill such as “Running effective and efficient meetings” can be of considerable assistance.

Working on presentation skills doesn’t only involve getting to grips with Powerpoint. Presentation skills involves the fundamental skill for a manager of addressing an audience – how to stand, how much you can walk around without distracting your audience and what clothes to wear.

Customer service cannot be allowed to suffer during ecomomic downturn. Keeping every customer satisfied is the cornestone of good business management.

We are all in the business of marketing ourselves as managers. There is no better way to impress a future employer that to be able to demonstrate that you have taken on the task of your own professional and personal development.

Whether you’re in marketing management, regularly dealing with the media or you’re in financial management or project management, you’ll need effective management skills. You and the develpment of your effective management skills are your #1 project – Doing the right thing and doing it well.