We get asked HR related questions every day and each week we will be sharing our top question of the week that we have been asked here at The HR Booth.
In this week’s question of the week, Alistair discusses how to manage the day to day performance of staff for a busy business owner.
Question
As a busy business owner I find it difficult to manage the day to day performance of my staff, do you have any suggestions?
Answer
This is something we see frequently and we often give advice on this area.
We appreciate as a busy business owner you are responsible for many things including marketing, business development, managing customer relationships, dealing with suppliers, looking at market trends, trying to stay ahead of your competition and managing your team all at the same time.
For your particular business I think you should appoint a general manager or team leader who will focus on the day to day management of your staff. This will free your time to focus on the other areas in your business as outlined above.
Your new appointment will have responsibility for managing the team, managing the rota, day to day contact with the staff and dealing with any absence and performance issues as they arise.
This will help drive performance and good customer service as someone will be leading the team on a daily basis. Managing performance is something that should happen daily, and is based on observations, and having someone in place to do this and give regular feedback will help drive your business forward.
This should also help with morale which in turn will help with customer service, as your employees will get a response to any questions they have quicker.
We can help train and develop your new appointment and make sure they fully understand your policies and procedures and we can advise on current good HR practice. This will give your new appointment all the tools they need to drive performance in your business.
In terms of who the new person is, you could consider advertising internally and externally. This allows you to understand if any of your existing people could step up and be trained on the line management aspect of the role. An external appointment will already have this expertise but may need training on your products and services.We can help you select the right person for the job, by preparing the job description, advertising the role and shortlisting candidates. We can also support the interview process, helping you select the best candidates.
