Originally posted on http://yourlifeafter25.com/2019/07/23/the-keys-to-managing-your-staff/

Whatever kind of business it is that you happen to run, one of the main things you need to think about is managing your staff properly. This is one of the more difficult elements of running a business, and something which you will find takes a lot of time and trial and error to get right. However, it is going to prove essential if you want to know that you are doing everything you can to manage your business right. So what is involved in managing your staff well? The truth is that there are lots of things you need to think about here, but as long as you are focused on a few key things in particular you should find it especially likely to work out well. In this post, we will look at what those specifics are.

Hiring The Right People

One of the most important elements to managing your staff well is to ensure that you have the right people in the first place. If you start off on the wrong foot in this way, it is only going to mean that you struggle to make your business and your workplace come together in the way you would hope. Of course, it is a challenge just to be able to find people that suit your role, let alone the most ideal. But if you allow yourself plenty of time when you are recruiting, you should be able to make it much more likely that you come across the people you really need.

Of course, you should be sure that you are fully aware of what qualities and characteristics you hope for in your employees, as that is the only real way to ensure that you know what you are looking for, and that will help your recruitment process along greatly. You should mostly look for those with experience, a passion for what you are doing in business, and the ability to work well alongside you and the other people in the team. If everyone has all that, then you know that you are finding the right people for the job. Once you have hired your people, and you are happy that they are good fits for their roles, you can then look into some of the other ways in which you might hope to manage them more effectively.

Arranging Workload

A big part of managing lots of people is managing their workload, and you will need to find a good way to approach this if you want to be the best manager you can be. In general, you want to keep the workload to that which is specifically necessary, and to make sure that there is no duplicate work where there doesn’t need to be. Just by arranging for those two things, you will already have made a huge difference to how effectively your people can work. But you will also need to make sure that the right work is sitting on the right desk – otherwise, you might start to see a lowered quality of work as well as your people going about working much more slowly than you would ideally like to see.

To be sure that the right people have the right work on their desk, make a point of playing to everyone’s strengths. That will also have the added benefit of making sure that people feel appreciated, as it shows that you have been paying attention to who is good at what. This will also, of course, result in a much more efficient share of the workload, which is always a huge benefit to a business. By getting the workload right for everyone, which is a delicate balance at the best of times, you can be sure that your staff are going to be able to deliver much more than if you were to get this wrong. It’s a central part of managing your business, and something you will have to perfect over time.

Scheduling

Related to this question of workload is the issue of scheduling. The better that you can schedule work shifts between your employees, the more sensibly your business can be run. This is something that a lot of managers find particularly galling and headache-inducing at first, but by focusing on a few key points you can make sure that you are scheduling your staff out as well as possible. That will make for less wasted time and a more efficient workplace, and even happier staff, so it’s clearly vital to be sure of this.

One way to ensure that you are scheduling properly is to simply make a point of using a decent workforce management software. That will enable you to see clearly what is going on at any one time, and to change things around as you see fit without it becoming too confusing. It is well worth investing in such an app for the kind of ease it can bring to your role as manager of the office and so many people. You can also improve your scheduling by hiring someone to help you with that specifically, which is something that more and more managers are doing these days, due to how difficult it really can be.

Payroll & Holiday

One of the quickest ways to get on the bad side of your employees is to get the payroll wrong. Whether it’s underpaying, paying late, overtaxing or miscalculating holidays and benefits, you can be sure that this is going to result in your employees being much less keen on working for your business. You therefore need to make sure that you are going to get payroll right, and the best way to be sure of that is to hire an HR manager to do it all for you. If you can find someone you really trust to participate in that role, you will find that it takes a great deal of stress out of trying to arrange payroll, so it is definitely worth doing. Paying your people right is so vital, so make sure you think about this.