Managing employee performance

IN today’s target driven work environment, employees have embraced a contemporary lifestyle that has led to an ever-increasing array of work-life challenges. Boosting employee morale has never been more important as a key to drive to drive performance which places emphasis on getting results. Employers have also realised that it is a necessity required to boost productivity and increase profits. The focus is on ensuring that you have a system that works in which the process runs smoothly and without any hindrance to the employees, employers or the profitability of the organisation. This will lead to the achievement of organisational objectives.

Generally, employees do not make a lot of demands from their employers. In truth, their expectations are very limited while under employ. All they say; give is a job, create a conducive work environment for the work to thrive in, pay us a decent salary and allow us manage our careers as we advance in your organisation. As simple as this sounds, the process altogether has become almost unattainable. However, there is a general perception that the average Nigerian employer doesn’t care about the well-being of their employees. While they might have carefully carved out beautiful vision and mission statements endorsing the need for highly motivated and competent human resources, their actions sometimes are totally different from their words.

More than ever, there is now a high degree of importance placed on the need for a skilled workforce, equipped with the right skills and competencies required to ensure top-notch performance. Forward looking employers now focus on activities that lead to the achievement of set goals. While this might sound like the right thing to do, the question will be how many of them are sincere in doing as they profess. Indeed there might be policies to cover most processes and procedures in most organisations, they are at best generic and so do not focus on the minutest details especially as the issues arise. The end result is that the employer is not fully protected when the need for protection arises.

Employers ought to know that the future of their businesses require them to be creative to build employees that are most productive. This should move them to ensure that no stone is left unturned in managing employee expectations knowing that the peculiarities of the work environment comes with its own fair share of stressors. The demands of the work can sometimes put pressure on the employees and sometimes lead to negativity on the part of the employees which ultimately reduces performance. However it is important to note that not all pressure or stress lead to negative performance.

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Sometimes the demands can just be the booster the employees need to fire them up.
While stress may appear endemic to business, it is not inevitable. A productive workforce can be promoted by breaking through barriers of ignorance. Managers should be trained and developed in the necessary skills required in recognising and dealing with work -related issues, stress being one of the major issues faced by employees. A Stress audit is a useful indicator of the well-being of an organisation’s employees. It assesses the risks associated with work-related stress by identifying major sources of stress in the work place. Any findings from a stress audit should be confirmed with staff by consulting with them to further explore the problems identified and discuss possible solutions.

Today, many organisations are recognising the importance of having a working environment that is supportive to the needs of their staff. Organisations with a genuine interest for their employees should be ‘putting their money where their mouth is’ and organisations that have not considered employee well-being as important in relation to improving business performance, should re-think their strategy and follow suite. The benefits associated with increased employee well-being are self-evident and any organisation alleging to take the management of its human resource issues seriously, should consider the options available to it. A useful starting point is by the means of a Stress audit, which will kick off the process by identifying the resident stressors in the current work environment, thus, setting the tone for devising appropriate organisational interventions.

An easy way to manage employee performance will be to make them buy into the organisation. This does not mean necessarily giving them shares in your organisation, but helping them to take the organisation as their own. It is best to develop entrepreneurial employees who will see the business as theirs and run it with utmost professionalism and sincerity since they see themselves as a part of it.