Getting The Best Out Of Your Staff

Guest post by Rebecca of chillsauce.

The key to being a great manager is to monitor your staff’s performance, identify strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately make sure your team is working productively. There are many approaches to motivating your staff and rewarding them for hard work and success, from a mention in a meeting or in a internal publication to a promotion in the company hierarchy.
Whilst these methods work great on a longer term scale, staff need incentives on a more regular basis in order to reach goals and gain work life satisfaction. Recognising this need within your team makes you a fair and dedicated manager.

Changes in work culture

Where the demands of work have increased, so have the expectations for rewards. Many companies will offer great social reward opportunities from the start of an employment contract and this can be a great way to gain and retain great staff. It is always important to remember that as well as individual rewards, group incentives work well, building moral for the company and better communicative relationships between teams and departments.

Individual Rewards

Individual rewards can be presented for best performances over the financial year or quarter in monetary or gift form. It is important to personalise these gifts to an extent, considering the source of vouchers or gift depending on the person. This will show your staff that there is an element of personality to the company and build positive work relationships for you. Depending on the tasks you carry out as an organisation and the deadlines you have to meet will mean you can vary the terms of your incentives, it may also take time to get the best procedure in place; requiring some trial and error.

Group Incentives

A great incentive for teams or departments are social activities, either attended as a group or tickets for events offered to the few highest performers. Not only is this an individual reward but it can be enjoyed amongst the team. Team building is one of the most effective tools for productivity and improving office communications, so this has two way benefits. Always ensure you set the boundaries and time scale for rewards, and also have a plan if the goal is not reached. All these elements will be relevant to what your organisation does and the roles that are within it, so you will need to decide the upon the best approach.

The power to maximise out put and boost motivation is in your hands so make sure you have a strategy set in place from the start and begin to see the benefits.

Image: flickr.

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).