3 Team Management elements critical to developing great employee relationships

We recently explored the incredible benefits of great customer service and how it should be a top priority for every business. There are a number of factors that contribute to executing fantastic customer interactions, and one of the main ones is employee happiness.

Statistics show that 69% of employees would work harder if they felt more appreciated. If you focused more on the satisfaction and mind frame of your team, imagine the results your company could be enjoying! 

Before we delve into strategies, let’s talk about what management and leadership actually is. We love John Maxwell’s quote - “Leaders become great not because of their power but, because of their ability to empower others.” Leaders create a vision, set goals and energise people in committing to the plan. Managers are responsible for ensuring the specifics of the vision and goal are implemented efficiently and effectively. These two roles do overlap and to be effective you have to fulfil both roles. There’s no point in inspiring your team to work towards a fantastic vision only to fail when it comes to implementation.

Your team’s performance depends on your performance, that’s why the top tip for every manager is to always upskill. It is your duty to set the example and everything else will follow. YMtech is expertly equipped with the knowledge to conduct thorough consultations, provide advice or integrate a suite of great tools into your business to help boost team performance.

When it comes to Team Management strategies, we recommend exploring these three elements: 

1.     Effective Communication

2.     Task Delegation

3.     Performance Reviews

Effective Communication

We believe that effective communication is one of the most important tools in managing business relationships with both internal and external stakeholders. Leaders who possess high-level engaging, commanding and supportive communication skills are more likely to see better productivity and improved healthy relationships within their teams.

It often feels like effective communication is instinctive - you either have it, or you don’t. However, this isn’t entirely true. For most of us, communicating more clearly, frequently and effectively actually requires learning.  So, how do you learn to communicate well in business?

1.     Become an engaged listener. Effective communication is not just about talking. It’s also about listening and the ability to offer empathy, constructive feedback and open-mindedness. When you are an engaged listener, you are not just hearing a person’s words, you are making them feel heard and understood, which helps build stronger connections. 

2.     Avoid interrupting or trying to redirect the conversation to focus on your concerns. Listening is not the same as waiting for your turn to talk. Often the speaker can read your facial expressions and know that your mind is elsewhere.

3.     Pay attention to non-verbal signals. The way you look, listen, move and react to another person tells them more about how you’re feeling than words alone can ever tell. This includes facial expressions, body movement, eye contact, posture, the tone of your voice and even muscle tension and breathing.

4.     Be clear in your delivery. When sharing information with your employees, communicate clear instructions and explain your point or task clearly and succinctly. It is also wise to back-up verbal communication with written information to use as a reference point. 

Task Delegation

You may believe that no one can complete a task better than you, but realistically without delegation you will never achieve the goals you are striving for. Managers struggle to delegate for many reasons including the fear of failure having put the responsibility in another’s hands and the belief that it will take longer than simply completing the task themselves. 

Task delegation can be a tough skill to learn for some as it requires a high level of trust, coordination and you guessed it, effective communication! Most importantly, it is definitely not a sign of weakness!

You may never realise the true potential, the creativity thinking capacity and the problem-solving abilities of your team members if you never allow them the opportunity to show you. Great leadership lies in gifting your employees the chance to explore, experiment and showcase their own unique offering.

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of task delegation:

-       Eases your workload so you can focus on more crucial tasks.

-       Generates a sense of empowerment within your team while assisting with personal development.

-       Allows your team to develop new skills and gain knowledge, preparing them for new responsibilities and future role progression.

-       Makes your team feel they are trusted and respected which tends to lead to a higher level of commitment to their work.

-       Boosts team moral, improves productivity, and promotes enthusiasm and innovation.

Performance Reviews

Performance Reviews aren’t something to dread or to avoid. In fact, if done well and regularly, a review can be a very effective tool in cultivating powerful employee-leader relationships.

The specifics of Performance Reviews and the way in which they are carried out will vary from business to business. Your company’s performance management system will be unique to your company culture and your values, goals and vision. But to be effective, reviews should happen regularly enough to not leave employees feeling anxious in the lead-up to review time. In fact, Performance Reviews should actually couple nicely with other tools that encourage employees to share feedback in real-time, ensuring an open line of communication at all times. It’s also important to remember that your team reviews don’t necessarily have to be held in a traditional formal setting which can feel daunting and overwhelming for some. Hone into your core values, the nature of your operation, the demographic of your team and your unique business operation and create a performance management system perfect for your business. 

Often the anxiety-inducing negative stigma surrounding Performance Reviews can overshadow their many positive benefits. That’s why we wanted to shine the spotlight on just some of reasons why reviews are vital to a business’ success. Performance Reviews:

-       Help develop trusting and supportive relationships between managers and team member.

-       Allow for two-way communication in a trusted, comfortable setting.

-       Show you care about your team and their wants, needs and career development.

-       Help you understand weaknesses of both you and your employees.

-       Enhance indi­vid­ual per­for­mance by revealing potential areas for upskilling.

-       Offer an opportunity to provide reward and recognition. 

-       Uncover problem areas needing attention.

-       Offer a safe platform for management to receive new business ideas direct from the frontline.

How to secure your passwords?

The password “123456” is still used today by 23 million holders. Are you one of them?

 

While every one of us has heard about hackers stealing personal information, bank details or social media profiles, most of us still have poor password habits. If hackers steal your social media account – it’s a problem that involves only you. But what if the whole business suffers because one employee is neglecting simple password security rules? Yes, it takes only one employee to open the door to the company network, exposing it to a data breach that could cause thousands of password breaches and data leaks.

You are not only risking data theft but are putting your reputation and entire business in general under threat. 33% of account-compromise victims have stopped doing business with companies and websites that leaked their credentials. Yet this still doesn’t change the fact that about 40% of organizations store privileged and administrative passwords in Word documents or Exel spreadsheets.

If you think that stealing usernames and passwords might be harmless, you should think twice. Credential theft opens up endless criminal possibilities for hackers, including opening fraudulent bank accounts, making purchases online or applying for loans. That’s why data is the most valuable asset for every company or individual and has to be protected by trusted services and technologies, especially if you are responsible for the personal information of your clients or customers.

 

At YMtech we take security extremely seriously. We have practices and procedures in place to ensure all the data is stored securely and correctly. Furthermore, our team has developed a great tool that can assist you with safe information (not just passwords) sharing between your team – https://sharepass.online. This tool is completely free and will assist you in developing a safe practice of sharing passwords, messages, credentials and files. It will help you to generate a link, that can be transferred to another user and the information will disappear upon the opening of the file, password or message.

 

While we use our newly developed platform for password and information sharing, we also follow a few simple rules to ensure that our passwords are as strong as possible giving hackers no chance in stealing any form of information.

1.         Use a password manager

As well as creating a safe password/information sharing platform, we also work with MYKI – a safe password management system. It’s a great way to safely store and share passwords within your team. We can integrate and setup MYKI for your business and make sure that it’s used correctly.

2.         Longer passwords are better: 8 characters minimum 

Beginning with an 8 character password is highly recommended when creating a strong password. It’s also a great idea to use a passphrase that is composed of unconnected words, which is always more difficult to guess. To make sure you don’t forget those passwords, go to point 1 and use a password manager.

 

3.         Include numbers, symbols, and uppercase and lowercase letters

Randomly mix up symbols and numbers with letters. You could substitute a zero for the letter O or @ for the letter a.

4.         Avoid using obvious personal information

While it’s very tempting to use your date of birth, address, city of birth or your kid’s birthdays in a password, try to avoid it. These kinds of passwords are very easy to guess.

5.         Change your passwords regularly

The more sensitive your information is, the more often you should change your password. Once it’s changed, do not use that password again for a very long time.

6.         Use two-factor or multi-factor authentication

Instead of only entering a password to login into your account, you will need to enter a second piece of information that falls within two categories: “something I have” or “something I am”. Currently, most services use the “something I have” option, which means that after entering the password, the company will send a short code to either your phone, email or an app you have installed on your phone.

Some new emerging technologies are beginning to use the “something I am” authentication – a thumbprint scan, a facial recognition scan etc.

7.         And last but not least – don’t use dictionary words

When thefts try to access your accounts, they run different dictionaries against your passwords in a break-in attempt. This is not limited to the English language only. That’s why you should get creative and always mix and match.

What’s important to remember is that your passwords will never be 100% hack-proof, but by using the tips outlined in this article you can ensure a high level of protection for your accounts.

If you are concerned about the safety of your data, feel free to contact us today. Our services and resources are customised to keep your data safe and secure.

YMtech