Effective people management

September brings the start of a new academic year, but it’s not just children who could benefit from broadening their horizons. Every day is a school day in the business world as well – especially when it comes to building a harmonious working culture.

As experts in people management, WhosOffice has put together some top tips for ensuring your workforce collaborates positively and productively. We hope you find these 4 key lessons useful.

1. Create a clear, visible schedule

Working together successfully begins with getting the right staff in the right place, at the right time. Many people management problems begin with confusion over scheduling – staff are unaware of last-minute changes to their shift pattern, or they are unsure which senior personnel are available while they are working, if they require support.

To create a culture of transparency, make sure you plan shift patterns well in advance, making certain that team members have visibility of not only their own schedule, but who else is due to be working at the same time.

It’s also important to have a strong chain of command in place, so that if there are any last-minute alterations to your working patterns, then managers and team leaders can easily notify those people who will be affected.

2. Centralise communications

Leading on from our previous point, the way in which you communicate updates with your workforce is critical to strong collaboration. Many employees are currently using a mishmash of different systems and processes to manage daily admin, ranging from print outs to emails and online tools. With so many different elements to juggle, it’s easy for important messages to slip through the net.

Centralising all your communications around scheduling, task management, annual leave and absences can make it much easier for staff to keep on top of their workload, and senior personnel to know what’s happening across their team. People only have to look in one place to see the latest updates, and if these can be channelled digitally rather than through paper handouts, you know that everyone will have instant access to the latest business information.

3. Integrate leave management

We’ve touched on annual leave, and this is a really important element of good people management practice. Too many companies find processes fall apart at the seams when employees try to take holiday.

One of the key reasons for this chaos is that holiday calendars aren’t synchronised with shift planning tools, meaning managers can schedule staff to work when they’ve already approved their time off. This is often not discovered until late in the day – or in worst case scenarios, when a member of the team fails to show up for their shift.

Managing leave requests and workload scheduling within the same system makes it really easy to integrate information, so your workforce can see exactly who’s available at any point in time. This way, staff at all levels know who is on shift, and managerial personnel can factor-in holidays when planning ahead, filling in any open shift opportunities.

4. Find the right tools for the jobs

Just as schools have moved from overhead projectors and blackboards to tablets and interactive whiteboards, companies need to upgrade the tools you’re using to manage staff effectively.

People management platforms like WhosOffice enable organisations to manage every aspect of your workforce through a single online portal – from creating schedules and managing leave requests, to sharing rosters and advertising available shifts.

By digitising your business infrastructure, you can give employees at all levels access to the information they need to do their job effectively, with additional features and functions for managerial staff.

This way, you can run a best-in-class operation every day, at the same time as reducing the time and effort your team spends on admin.

Book a free WhosOffice trial to see how our software can innovate your people management capabilities.

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