The Advantages Of Knowing Your Employees

Editor’s note: Saviroff presented this information in January at the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Convention in Hershey, PA.

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Employers cannot be good supervisors and have a good professional relationship with every worker without making the effort to know the employees. They might be good teachers and technical experts. They may have regular meetings with employees to keep everyone updated. But the human element is too often missing.
Supervisors often overlook the need to know employees as individuals. The great workplace leaders understand this. It builds bonds that allow your organization to solve big problems, face great challenges, and obtain extraordinary results from all types of people.

How Do You Really Know Your Employees?

A good beginning is at the hiring process. An interview is the chance to go beyond the résumé and make objective observations about a candidate’s qualifications, demeanor, professionalism, and actual interest in the available position. You need also to consider who’s in your employee audience before beginning any communication program. Understand how generational groups can be motivated differently.
Millennial employees still in their 20s and 30s are hungering for experience and recognition. These workers are more likely to take to social networks, and as a result, they crave public accolades for a job well done — both in person and via technology networks. Engage early and often. Compile salary data to inform communication, especially about pay, savings, retirement, stock, and any other financially based programs.
As a manager, you need to know some basic details of your employees. Take some time to sit with your team members to understand their expectations, interest levels, grievances, or any other problems they face in their day-to-day operations.
Knowing employees helps managers extract the best out of staff members. They will develop a sense of belonging and feel empowered. Let your employees know you care for them. Schedule one-on-ones, a 10- to 20-minute session with each employee. Schedule some small group discussions and introduce a topic to get their information on it. Continue to dig deeper. As you move forward find out: Are they looking for more money? Recognition? Stability? A challenge? More meaning? More variety?

Now That You Have Gotten To Know Them, What’s Next?

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Continue to develop these relationships and build trust and rapport. It is to the manager’s advantage to get to know personalities and find out who the team cheerleaders are as well as those who are reluctant to change. Getting the early support and using the one-on-one time to personally explain processes, improvements to those that are hesitant, is critical for being able to quickly move forward with any improvements you may want. Share about yourself and your leadership journey (be open and a bit vulnerable to build trust and encourage candid communication).
Most employees prefer straightforward communications to oblique comments that need to be pieced together like a puzzle. When a manager sugar-coats a message, the message can easily be missed. If you want a high employee retention rate, make employee engagement a high priority in your company. Devote time and energy to understand your employees and to being understood. It’s a wise investment.

How Do You Balance Getting To Know Them While Maintaining Boundaries?

Bernie Erven, a professor emeritus at The Ohio State University and consultant at Erven HR Services, advocates being friendly with all employees and buddies with none of them. His argument is based on the expectations that come with buddy relationships, and the length of time of these relationships. His guidelines are:
Avoid getting involved in personal problems. These guidelines suggest that employees have the responsibility to leave their personal problems at home and with their buddies.
Be prepared to deal with real employee crisis in a timely and caring way showing all employees that exceptions in genuine crises are possible. The distinction here is between typical personal problems, e.g., child with a cold, cash shortage, and broken romance, and personal crises, e.g., child having major surgery, major house fire, and death of a spouse.
A final guideline for employees and supervisors is to work hard at building friendships outside the business. Resorting to the business for friendships contributes directly to the problems from employees becoming buddies.

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