Managerial structure is one of the most important aspects of a company’s corporate behavior. If you do not have appropriate, effective, and knowledgeable managers, you don’t have happy employees. There is a well-known saying that employees leave managers, not companies. That is a fairly accurate statement, the management is what the employee has the most contact with. A poor manager can be easily spotted by the amount of turnover they have in their department. According to Forbes, 31% of employees quit their jobs solely because of their supervisors. So how can you make the most of your management team? Let’s discuss it together.
Clearly Defined Management
Clearly defining your management team is important. Defining your management team means that you have an outline of the managers by hierarchy. It is also helpful to have their job functions listed, but since some managers handle a lot of different tasks, that may not be possible. An employee does not want to have 17 bosses, and not know which one they need to report to. Every new employee orientation should include information on the management. You can give your employees the information in a list, or in a chart. Some people feel like it is easier to receive this information in the form of a chart, but you should utilize whichever is easier for the employees to process.
Qualified Management Team
Having a qualified management team is very important. When you are a leader, you need to have the respect of your employees. Those employees need to be able to look to you for guidance on their positions. As a supervisor you should be able to perform the employees’ job function forwards and backwards, figuratively speaking. This knowledge is important for guidance, and training, but also for evaluating. How can you effectively evaluate your employees if you don’t understand the aspects of their job function?
Obvious Advancement Path
Employees want to be able to see where their managers came from. They want to feel like if they do a great job, eventually they too can climb up the company ladder. An environment that does not provide encouragement for employees to strive for the best is detrimental to employee morale. There are thousands of employees who leave their positions each year because they felt like they had no room for professional growth. Having a clearly defined advancement path is one way to help an employee rise to their potential, and stay with your company. You can help your employees see that there are ways to rise up the corporate ladder in your company by showing them! Offering professional development courses and tuition reimbursement are just a few ways you can show your employees you want them for the long haul.
Apparent Grievance Procedures
A grievance is a real or imagined wrong or other cause for complaint or protest, especially unfair treatment. Unfortunately in any work environment, there are going to be grievances or problems. It is very important for a company to have clearly defined grievance procedure. When these unfortunate incidents happen, an employee needs to know the proper steps to report these grievances. They also need to be able to understand that the company has their best interests at heart, and has provided a safe arena for them to report grievances. The grievance procedures should include how to report a grievance and what steps will be followed once a grievance is filed. As a company, you want to provide an environment where employees are free to report problems, and not feel like they will be ignored or targeted.
This post is from November’s topic on Developing Corporate Behavior.