A happy employee is a more productive and content employee. So what makes an employee happy with their job? A good salary, with good benefits and a good work environment only go so far. Employees want job satisfaction, they want to feel like they are a part of something and that their contributions are appreciated. Recognition This is one of the biggest complaints employees have. They feel their … [Read more...]
Four Essential Skills For Managers to Master
All managers can agree that many skills are needed to be an effective manager. But what skills are the most important skills that a manager needs to master? To be a more effective manager you should master four skills. Communications, motivation, building trust and leadership are critical skills for every manager. These four skills are essential for a productive work environment, a cohesive and … [Read more...]
Management Skills – Professional Communications
We all want to be seen as professional. But professionalism is in the eye of the beholder so even though you may think you are coming off as professional, in reality you may not. Over the next few articles I will explain how our professionalism is judged and give some tips on how to maintain your professional reputation. We Are Judged on Our Communications Effective communicators must be able to … [Read more...]
What to Do With Under Performing Employees
Turn an under performing employee around by couching, motivating the employee, giving them clearly defined expectations and make sure they are fully trained. Every company has some "ducks." Ducks are employees who have a detrimental effect on productivity. Their work is consistently substandard, they rarely meet deadlines, and their skills are out of date. They hate change, resist taking … [Read more...]
How To Work Under Pressure
In the IT world working under pressure is a daily event. Knowing the steps to take when faced with an issue can lessen the stress of working under pressure. Deadlines, project changes, unforeseen obstacles, critical outages are only a few of the stressful issues that can arise in the IT world. We face these circumstances often and can feel a great deal of pressure to get them taken care … [Read more...]
Why You Should Cross Train Employees
Being able to staff critical positions is important to maintaining an IT departments level of service. Vacations, sick days, family emergencies and medical leaves are but a few of the normal threats to staffing critical positions. How are these normal absences a threat to an IT department? In the same manner that retirements are a threat by having all of those skills walk out the door, see “IT … [Read more...]
The Office Politics of Email
Email has become the de facto standard for business communications. It is on our desktop, our laptop and our phone. For this reason email has become the new form of “on the record” types of communications within organizations, thus like everything else subject to politics. Office politics within an organization seems to be an unavoidable part of the job. Many have an agenda, turf to protect or … [Read more...]
Management Tool – Employee Performance Log (PLog) System
There are many times when a manager needs to recall facts and information about an employee. During performance reviews and dealing with disciplinary issues top the list. As a manager one tool I have found to be very useful for this task is keeping an employee performance log (PLog) for each of my reports. An employee performance log is a written record of performance issues, kudos and any … [Read more...]