Micromanaging is a style of management in which a person dictates exactly how an employee works, and watches over every little thing they do. This is a style you want to avoid, as it demoralises your staff and disconnects them from their work.
Here are a few tips to avoid micromanaging whilst still monitoring your workforce.
Motivation
If you work to create an environment that is motivating, your workforce will be engaged in their work without you having to constantly monitor their productivity. Feeling like they’re constantly being monitored will lead your employees to think you believe them incapable of completing their work. Rather, create a sense of pride by giving them ownership over what they’re doing. They will appreciate the level of trust you’re putting in them and, in return, feel motivated to work harder.
Provide Support
Employees are bound to face issues that could adversely affect their health or work performance, regardless of whether these issues are created in their business life or personal. An EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) such as that from LifeWorks provides employees with the support they need to overcome personal issues as and when they feel it necessary.
The LifeWorks EAP reduces the pressure of direct monitoring as workers can get help on both work-related and personal issues without having to let you know, providing privacy and security.
Track Performance, Not Time
One thing micromanagers tend to do is evaluate a workers’ productivity through time, not performance. This can often leave workers feeling underappreciated, and so it’s important to be evaluating outcomes rather than output. Just because one employee completes fewer tasks than another in the same time frame doesn’t mean they aren’t of the same quality.
Maybe introduce rewards for good performance, helping employees to feel like their hard work isn’t going unnoticed and, in return, leaving them more excited to work for your business.
Learn to Trust
There’s a very fine line between blind trust and micromanagement. Blindly trusting your team can actually lead to a lack of trust on the employees’ part, yet micromanaging can leave your workforce lacking in morale. So, finding the perfect balance is the key to good management.
You can achieve this by creating expectations and responsibility on both sides; you should be able to trust your workers and they should be able to trust you. If your workers know they can come to you when they feel something is wrong, work will be completed to an overall higher standard.
Communication
Maintaining consistent and clear communication can be a pretty efficient way of tracking an employee’s productivity without micromanaging. It may be the case that an employee is behind on work because they didn’t understand the initial brief, and so providing them with an environment to voice concerns will boost morale.
Try introducing weekly meetings where workers can discuss their tasks, deadlines and clear up any issues rather than getting stressed about it alone. It may seem like a small thing, but it can go a long way in helping your business productivity.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
