Improve Employee Performance – How to Become a Manager Who Inspires Employees to Outperform?

Improving performance and keeping it up is one of the biggest challenges companies are facing. Every manager wants her employees to maximize their potential and grow their talents. But how can that be done?

Studies show that one of the most important ways to boost performance is to communicate with employees in the right way. A work environment which empowers, motivates and promotes engagement is what makes the difference – and managers are responsible for that engagement.
In this article we will talk about the ways you can achieve this type of communication with our employees and help them improve their own achievements and performance.

Transparency and Sharing

Managers should communicate clear goals and expectations to their employees. Many large scale tech companies like Google and Intel are using Objectives and Key Results as their performance management methodology. Each employee has personal goals and objectives, and those are tracked in real time. All metrics are visible for other employees, resulting in transparency, a sense of fairness and alignment. Transparency is almost synonymous with fairness; it also communicates, with great clarity , what needs to be done at work. Employees appreciate open communication and are interested in this kind of open dialogue about performance.

Constant Feedback

Monitoring and evaluating performance is extremely important, since how can you expect employees to improve their job performance if either we or they aren’t aware of how they are actually doing?
Feedback provides employees with the identification of what they are doing very well and which areas need their attention and improvement. Improving performance without knowing how and where to focus is impossible. By emphasizing positive behaviors and habits alongside with reviewing the ways to improve the weaker sides, you create for your employees a much better environment to grow from. Employees need recognition and feedback, and as much as possible. Do not wait to the end of the year, make it a habit to keep your employees aware of their status.

Empowerment Through Recognition

Empowered employees are happy employees and research shows that inner feeling about the workplace – emotional wellness – has an enormous effect on work performance. When employees feel like they are part of the process, that they are treated fairly and recognized – their desire to improve will truly come from within. Personalizing employee training for example, lets them progress at their own pace and develop their skills in a way that fits the position, experience, goals and achievements. Empowered employees aren’t busy in competing and comparing their achievements with others, they measure themselves looking at how they were yesterday and they constantly want to progress and outgrow.

Rewards that Matter

You should be mindful of how you reward employees and remember you want your employees to be truly motivated to improve, and not motivated to get something out of it. You need to make sure you are promoting intrinsic motivation and energizing our employees through modeling, acknowledgements of their hard work and appreciation of their achievements. The solution is using and rewarding goals and objectives which are meaningful to our employees, and which align with the goals and objectives of the organization. These types of rewards can be a sense of accomplishment, mastery, and recognition for an effort being well fulfilled – those will result in the best improvement in their performance.
This is the contrary of pitting employees against each other in a competition, which will cause disengagement and a sense of hopelessness. Competition or cash rewards are examples of extrinsic drivers which do little to boost performance.

Implementing these ideas in your organization will help you transform your management into one that inspires your employees to outperform themselves and reach high achievements.
With the use of positive communication, feedback and smart ways of recognition, you’ll manage to address your employees better and make them understand and align with organizational goals. Accordingly, you’ll be able to shape your employees’ behavior into the one you desire, and encourage behavior and habits that promote constant strive for progress and excellence.
Your employees will be well acknowledged, empowered and motivated to improve their performance and to better than they were before.

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