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Enhancing the Capabilities of Your Staff is Essential

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In general, the more empowered your staff are to make decisions and to interface with their daily tasks in a responsible way, the better a business becomes, and the more people appreciate the work you do in order to help them.

Most business owners have felt frustrated when calling the customer service department of a business that, due to its size, can only provide you with pre-written scripts as to how they handle your complaint, never allowing their staff (or outsourced help) to act with any authority or autonomy at all. This one example shows just how much it matters for staff to be able to interface with their jobs more reasonably, as people with skills, not just robots.

Of course, this also improves the general working satisfaction of those in your firm to begin with. It feels good to be trusted, to be empowered, and to be given tools so that employees can creatively apply themselves to problems. 

In this article, we’ll discuss a few measures you can use when enhancing the capabilities of your staff:

Easy software & utilities

Providing your staff with the digital resources and capabilities they need to perform their jobs well is essential. This might mean investing in the best video conferencing software, so they can talk to one another, book meetings, and stay secure the entire time.

It may also mean providing them with the right, and most secure devices necessary for remote or portable work. This is why iPad rentals have become so popular in so many industries, as the ease of use they can provide allows for further collaboration, creative planning, and easy organization. 

Gentle oversight

It’s a good idea to have strong oversight in your company, of course, but also to ensure that it’s gently applied, so that staff don’t feel you breathing down their neck at every single moment of the day. An open-door policy with morning briefings and secure, quick communication channels can do this well.

Many business owners know what it’s like to be micromanaged or to have your bosses constantly nitpicking what you do, and this can be a problem. If you can instead approach your oversight to the things that really matter, such as signing off on proposals, looking over stock sheets before closing for the night, or making sure that spot checks for health and safety are conducted as necessary, you can help out your team without seeing like a tiresome parent.

Resources at any time

When staff need the resources to do their jobs, it’s important to have a robust requesting process in place so that the needs can be attended to quickly. This might involve ensuring that chefs can go out to market to pick up out-of-stock items for tonight’s service, or confirming that toner deliveries have been ordered so staff can actually print out their reports.

It’s good to make sure technical support is available too. Often, managed IT service providers will add immediate support to your package should a system go down or a server become inaccessible. Budgeting for that can make a big difference, increasing your uptime and limiting the time where staff are unable to fully actualize their daily tasks.

Encouraging initiative

It’s good to encourage initiative within your time rather than stifling it. Opening up a period for staff contributions in meetings will help you hear out ideas and ensure the best ones rise to the top.

The initiative might also mean funding certain efforts. Perhaps your team wish to run an event this year in order to team build. Perhaps they’d like an employee of the month system, too. Hiring internally for positions is also a big one, as when promotions are on the table, staff feel as though their hard work could all be worth it. 

Furthermore, it’s important to make sure that overtime is paid, that staff hours are tracked, and that you don’t use salaried positions as a means by which to ensure staff work dozens more hours than they’re paid for on a rotating basis. 

In other words, part of giving staff enhanced capability and autonomy in their jobs is just being fair to them. You will see how they go above and beyond should you do this, especially if you give them the benefit of the doubt in certain situations - like a customer support agent feeling free to hang up on a customer throwing insults over the phone. It’s often the little efforts that signal the biggest difference.

With this advice, we’re certain you’ll enhance the capabilities of your staff, from now into the future. It may seem simple now, but over time, you’ll notice a marked improvement.

How to support staff better? What ideas are there to show employees they are appreciated? Business, Employees, Employers, Work Tips, Customer Service, Software, Oversight, Resources

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