What are the traits of a good supervisor/boss?

One sunny day you get the good news that you have been promoted and now you will get to have a team of employees reporting into you. While this may sound very exciting, since you have finally  become “THE BOSS” & get to have people do your work , this responsibility  comes with its fair share of issues. In my 6 years of experience as HR manager, I frequently collect feedback from team members about their supervisors and share it with their bosses as a process for their self improvement. Good bosses are ones that have developed such a strong relationship with their team that they not only manage to extract the best performance from them but have them as their collaeagues in which ever organisation they work in.

  

You must have frequently heard that “employees do not leave the organisation, they leave only their boss”. The following traits are  collation of the feedback which gather from workplace.

1.       Excellent knowledge of your core  function  : There is nothing more frustrating that working with a boss who has very little knowledge of their own function. You cannot be a boss who enters the office and announces “we need to achieve 100% of the target” & pressure the team to perform without knowing how to achieve that 100%.

In order to properly supervise your employees, you must know all of the intricate details of the processes of their jobs. If you do not know as well as you should then get your hands dirty & “LEARN”.

2.      Create team bonding : Its your responsibility as a boss to get your team together. If your team is spread across different location go on frequent conference calls/webinars but ensure you get your team together. Ensuring a healthy working relation between your teammates get more productive results & creates a competitive atmosphere to excel at workplace.

3.      Praise in public , criticise in private : Most bosses do the opposite. If your subordinate has made a mistake, shield them & privately share your disapproval. Whenever they do an exceptionally good job ensure that you praise them in front of all. You will positively gain the respect from your team.

4.      Empower  your team member: Give them freedom to take their own initiatives , remember if you don’t encourage to think & act different , your department/function can not score over others.

5.      Appraisal is an ongoing process & not an annual activity : Ensure that you share the  KRA of the job as soon as the same is communicated from the  management team. Don’t give your subordinates an opportunity to tell you that you never shared your expectation with them. Ensure you keep a log of their performance & share on a frequent basis  so that their performance rating does not come as a shock/surprise at the end of the financial year. Frequently share your feedback based on outcome alone and not your personal opinion.

6.      Avoid interfering in their personal lives: There is nothing more irritating than a bosses who asks personal questions.  There are many supervisors who just don’t know where to draw the line while connecting with their subordinates. One such supervisor faced suspension from work when he asked his female subordinate out for a date.

7.      Don’t be a barrier for your team members to reach out to other avenues for advise and personal growth

8.      Motivate-motivate- motive – remember its your team that enables you to do your work as per your vision hence they have to be motivated and highly charged to deliver the outcome.

9.      Be with your team in times of crisis – You customer has asked for a set of deliverables on weekend , you pass the buck to your team members but ensure that you be with them.

10.  Share communication from top management with your team – Supervisors are spoke person for the all internal communication

11.  Patience-patience & more patience – Your subordinates will test you,  make mistakes &  repeat mistakes. Do not blow your top . Always keep your cool with your subordinates or they will not respect you. Same goes with your superiors. They will test you to see if you have what it takes to be a good supervisor.

13.  Do not demand respect , command respect - As a new supervisor, you must know that your job is harder now than it will ever be in your Supervisory career. You must earn the respect of your employees. Don't expect instant respect or they will dislike you for it.

How to create & implement the prefect knowledge management system for your organisation?

The latest in the KRA of most human resource professionals is creating knowledge management tools/systems/processes for the organisation. So before we start working on the above let us understand the following:

1.      What are the benefits of creating KMS (knowledge management system)

2.      What are the various components/types within a KMS

3.      How to guide employees to create these components in a KMS

1.      Benefits of knowledge management systems to the organisation & employees

•         For the organization

–        KMS tool would enable a uniform/standard platform  for capturing experiences of employees.

–         Knowledge gained / developed is not regularly documented and hence gets reinvented every time resulting in wastage of time & resources. Hence assets need to be built so that we can reuse and create things in lesser time frame.

–        Strong branding both internally and externally for the organization.

–         Good training tools for leadership and consulting skills

–        Good training tool for new joinees & for induction

–        Beneficial for those organization that operate from multiple location & have many clients

•          For employees

–         Experience of writing professional paper / case study

–         Intellectually satisfying

–        Visibility and satisfaction of self work being recognized widely

–         Satisfaction of sharing experience

2.      What are the various components/types within a KMS

                    i.            Case study

                  ii.            Caselet

                iii.            White paper

                iv.            Best practice & lessons learnt

                  v.            Success story

                vi.            Presentation & proposals

i.                    Case study

a.       A Case Study is an illustrated example from  work. It is typically used to describe the actual situation/ context, the diverse perspectives around a particular happening/ event/problem.

b.      It also describes the various approaches to solve the particular problem, the alternatives that are available, the impact analysis of each of the alternatives, the possibility of acceptance of the proposed solution by multiple stakeholders who own the problem are discussed.

c.       In the discussion, the soft aspects of understanding/ exploring a situation also gets expressed.

d.      In other words, it is a true story, narrative, with detailed backgrounds such as: problem, approach, methodology, analysis including calculations, drawings, budget, and schedule elements etc

e.       An intensive, detailed description and analysis of a single project or program in the context of its environment.

f.       A written or recorded, detailed analysis of some targeted stress factor(s), for the purpose of noting success or failure.

ii.                  Caselet

            Case let is a brief case study.

It talks about the customer/ internal context, the scenario with which the employee  challenges, the approach / methodology adopted- including new concepts, fresh understanding, innovation that have been brought about and the benefits that given to the customers or internally to the organization

iii.                White paper

a.       A white paper can be an authoritative report on a major issue whose purpose is to educate the industry / customers about a new framework/ methodology. They espouse the benefits of particular technologies/ frameworks and products.

b.       They are often marketing  / branding communications and are designed to promote company's frameworks/solutions as it relates to the issue or topic examined and enables the organization to communicate the standard of operation existing in the organization.

c.       It may also include any conceptual/ technical solution overviews with a focus on implementation or deployment.

iv.                Best practice & lessons learnt

·         Best practices are a result of particular way of doing things. This brings out a set of situations where a practice was used on a pilot basis or on a smaller group.

·         Once it is established as a best practice, it can be easily replicated across the organization.  

·         Lessons learnt, talk about how an approach/ methodology failed and in what context.

·         Lessons learnt, discuss about risks involved, what employees have done and why things failed. This typically acts as a caution, on “what not to do things”.

v.                  Success story

–        An example of a successful occurrence -- the company has achieved documented successful results.

–        The context, the problem, the approach, methodology and the impact of the work is documented in detail.

–        This also includes accolades, internal and external awards won and customer appreciations.

–        The important thing to remember here is that, what might work for one situation might work or not work in another situation and hence cannot be used as such in a different situation without checking the applicability.

              vii.            Presentation & proposals

On a regular basis employees from marketing/branding/communication teams make presentations & proposals to multiple audience like customers/campuses/events gathering etc. A common folder to upload the same can serve as reference purpose to all.

3.      How to guide employees to create these components/assets in a KMS

HRs should communicate that before employees create the above assets they should think & write the following :

–        What am I going to write about- Subject

–        For whom is this important – Audience

–        What will they look for in my work – Content

–        In what way is this useful to them – Differentiators

–        What is the best form which will be useful  - What type of asset should I contribute

•         Caselet

•         Case study

•         White paper

•         Best practice

•         Lessons learnt

•         Success story

•         Guideline document

–        Sanitization

•         Am I revealing any Customer confidential information in what I am writing. If so, please remove customer confidential information

•         Review

•         Have I put in what I wanted to write – Content validation- To be done by author

•         Is it relevant to a context- Context validation- To be done by reviewer

•         Is the language apt and is it easy to read- To be reviewed by internal branding team

•         Is the asset ready to be published – To be reviewed by HR KMS team

Finally work along with your in-house automation team to create the common folder in the  company's intranet. It would also be a great idea to promote the KMS aggresively by the internal branding team. One year post the launch record the number of responses posted by employees as measure of effectiveness of the tool. Number of visitors & downloads/per day is also an important indicator of the sucess of the KMS tool.

Top 10 ways to motivate employees at workplace

For all HR managers & line managers who have been suffering from sleepless nights on how to motivate employees , lets get one thing straight – “Do not waste time finding ways to motivate employee” . This  may sound controversial and totally anti-HR but the fact remains that human beings are embedded with  hard work and sacrifice as traits. So does that mean we do not worry about retention of employees or is our job only to weed out demotivated employees from our payroll.

No , we only need to change the way we think. So lets find out ways on “how not to demotivate employees”.

Following are the top 10 work cultural traits that are a sure short answer to better employee retention.    

1. Transparency in communication

So    Is the junior most employee of your company aware of the new business unit launched in the company ? Is he/she aware of the new policy rolled out ? Are your employees aware of the reason for managements decision on the new cost cutting exercise ? Are employees spending more time on corridor talks than in their work station ? If the answer to any of the above is "YES".  then there is  a serious communication break down.

Plug the above issue immediately by ensuring that your leadership team frequently sends out communication via e-mails , town halls, conference calls , internal blog posts, one-on-one interaction .

 

2.    2. Personalised support as per individual needs :

T   This is  something that supervisors need to initiate for their team members/subordinates.  Do you  approve  unplanned leaves  for employees who are in need of one ?  Do you  permit flexi- working hours to women employees ?  Do you permit your employee to leave  early when  they have some personal work ? These options seem very  simple  to implement but  they go a long way in keeping  employees motivated.      

         3. Effective reward & recognition program :

         On the spot awards , recognition in large forums , team awards ,assigning high performing employees to special projects. The list if endless . An effective  R&R program should be a norm in all organisation. 

     

R    Refer to my blog on : Reward  & recognition programs : How best to implement.

       4. Access to leadership -                                               

M     Most employee just know their CEO , MD , VPs etc only by  their name. Its very important for leadership group to have an "open door" policy . Top management should allocate certain number of hours to listen , solve , help middle & junior level employees. Most top leaders are so engrossed in chasing clients to build business that they forget that their employees are their key assets.

          

 5    Performance management program  -

In    In majority of the companies the percentage of attrition peaks post performance appraisal season. Poor PMS systems is a key demotivator in workplace.

     Refer to my blog on : 10 PMS pitfall to avoid in work place

6. Intrapreneurship/  entrepreneurial opportunities within the company :

 A     All organisation have enterprising employees that are go-getters and are always fired up at the idea of starting their own venture. If their business ideas for new product or service is in line with the business , then why not fund their ideas & share profit. Kodak, Toyota, Yahoo are all examples of success stories in the area of intrapreneurship. 

      

7. Monetary benefits -  

M     HR managers shy away from this fact . However on doing a reality check it is a fact that BPO industriy that has the maximum number of HR concerns thrive on "on the spot pay check ", generous bonus for employee referrals , monthly increments to sustain themselves. Tagging  high performing middle /senior managers  to new business opportunities where variable allowance is linked to a percentage of revenue earned in the year is also a good idea. 

     8. Work life balance

O  Organisation that have been consistently winning the best employer award swear by this mantra. Your organisation may not be the best pay master in the industry but by creating 5-days work culture , flexi- timings , work from home alternatives , you allow your employees to spend more time with their family , pursing hobbies etc.

       9.Clarity in career path/new career opportunities :

T     There is always a grey area but if your organisation can create vertical & horizontal career paths then it becomes a dream organisation for any employee. Can a technical guy move into finance , can the finance guy move into HR , can HR move into project management etc. Its very important for HR to create a blue print where the technical/functional/behaviour competency is listed complete with the learning curve in each role. Then on an annual basis top performers should be given a choice to select their next role . With sufficient hand-holding it would be easy for this set of highly motivated employees to opt for career transition .

10.Empowerment
So what does this fancy sounding English word actually mean. Its very simple "trust your employee  enough to give them freedom to execute". There is nothing much HR managers can do to ensure empowerment , this is completely up to  individual supervisors. What we can do is frequently take feedback from employees  to check if their supervisors  encourage  employee to take  new  initiatives  without breathing down their necks  for approvals.

How can human resource professional become strategic business partners?

Strategic business partner is the latest jargon doing the round in human resource field. While this is a dream role for most human resource professionals, how to go about achieving the same is still ambiguous. The following 10 points has been summarised post discussion with top HR professionals from the industry.

1. Understand business: this is probably common sense but in reality most HR managers have no clarity on the type of business, revenue, profit margin etc of the company. While HR managers create induction programs, this is the most important information that should be a part of a HR professional’s induction.

How to achieve the above : Spend as much time going through the company website , working along side your line managers & being part of their business review meet (if you are not invited , get yourself invited). Understand the revenue & profit model.

2. Be data driven : The biggest problem that HR departments face is poor data orientation. Basic HR statistics like recruitment numbers , sourcing channel % , cost per hire , attrition figure etc should be in the finger tips .

How to achieve the above : Most HRs manage all their data on excel. However as long term solution, its best to either create an in-house automation tool (if your IT department can create one) else look out for various options available in the market.
Refer to my blog on cost-quality parameters on the top HRMS (human resource management systems) available in the market

3. Every HR initiatives should have a MOE (measure of effectiveness) : So has HR you have launched “fun Friday”. How you can showcase this event as a success story ? Share data points on number of participation , % of participation verses the number of employee , employee satisfaction score/event feedback score . With reference to point number 2 , always workout some form of measure that showcases the effectiveness of the program. However remember the golden rule , never manipulate the data , else as HR we will lose our integrity .


4. Innovate : For HR departments to prevent itself from becoming extinct or getting outsourced , its very important to keep innovating. Remember never hesitate to seek advise/inputs/feedback from your line managers/colleagues/peers etc. Be active on networking space and keep track of the HR best practises of your competitors. The best HRs in the industry and ones who get 10 solutions to every problem & implement the best.


Refer my blog on top 10 innovation in the space of human resources in India & internationally.


5. Ensure there is value addition /process improvement in every activity : Ok , so your company has be best performance management system , you have an excellent automation tool to ensure all appraisal details are captured ,you have an excellent communication channel to ensure all managers & the employees complete their appraisal on time. So what next ? Exactly , this should be the approach for every efficient HR manager “what next”? How about linking performance management with competency management or proactively identifying new portfolios for high performer post appraisal. The options are unlimited as per the business requirement. Our role in HR is to ensure there is constant value addition in every existing activity.

6. HR department should be more cost effective : Keep identifying areas where costs can be saved and simultaneously, where best to invest . To start with create an annual cost tracker of all HR activities i.e. recruitment, training & development, PMS etc . Then identify areas of cost cutting , if there is increase in manpower requirement as per business requirement , then cut cost on recruitment consultancy and increase the % on resume sourcing via job portals/networking/employee referrals etc. If there is an increase in the requirement for a particular form of training , then cut cost by training top performing employees as trainers and create an in-house training centre.


7. Keep taking feedback : For HRs to become change agents , we need to create platforms where we keep taking feedback from all levels i.e. from the junior most trainee to the CEO.