5 ways to manage other people at work and at home

When you are promoted as a manager for the first time, you may feel nervous and uncertain about many things, because management has an entirely different set of goals, rules and required skills.
Here, we will help you understand the job of a manager, assisting you through the process of goal setting and managing staff both at work and from home.

Identify your goals
Make sure your team understands your measured goals, which may include the hourly, daily and weekly targets you have to meet. Write them down and post them prominently as a checklist. The list may change over time and according to different circumstances – some items may remain the same but other things may change, depending on the strategies handed down to you from the Executive Management suites. Review this checklist frequently and critically and make sure the entire team understands these goals and strive to work towards them.

 
Know your team
Efficient teamwork depends on the mutual understanding between all the team members. As the manager, you need to know the individual strengths and weaknesses for each team member. This knowledge can help you balance the productivity of your team – to be more specific, you can use such information to match people with work. Someone may have spectacular customer relationships but can never say “no” to the clients while another one has excellent technical skills but falls short in people skills. You want to play into each person’s strengths and minimize work assignments that target his or her weak parts. Put together people with complimentary skill sets, bring into play their strong points, and you will find they will work more efficiently.

Regular meetings
One-on-one meetings are critical to good management. During the meeting, you can give feedback on one’s job performance, outline the action items for the next production review, and ask for their ideas so that your staff feel engaged. This is also a good opportunity to motivate your team members and use the feedback to improve their contribution.

Reward performance
When you see someone doing a good job, let them know it is appreciated. No employee likes a boss who only points out people’s flaws and shortcomings – they will get demotivated when that occurs! By contrast, recognition is much more effective. If you have the authority, grant performance leave, which could be an extra day off for doing something exceptional. Make the rewards attainable but difficult, and most importantly, make it public.

Seek professional help
If you just started working as a manager, you may want to have a mentor which can be a great help. Also consider hiring a coach, who is trained professionally with no agenda to pursue but yours and will help you develop your own authentic management style. You can even get useful information from companies providing professional human resource solutions. For example, PayGlobal’s integrated HR and Payroll software simplifies workforce management into scalable HR solution which makes your work as a manager much easier.

Yuan Liu is a freelancer who has recently taken a course in workforce management.

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