Employee Development

Managers and supervisors can create a workplace where employees have a sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, and the opportunity to advance. As a manager or supervisor, you want to develop and encourage good employee performance. You can do so by creating a workplace environment that will support motivation on the part of the employees. This can be achieved by:  

• Setting goals
• Delegating high-level tasks
• Increasing opportunities for achievement
• Increasing an employee’s level of discretion by allowing employees to make certain decisions
• Assigning projects that will promote learning and growth

Documentation is important to support performance decisions. Managers and supervisors can record both successes and performance that requires improvement. By observing and providing detailed feedback you play a critical role in the employee’s continued success and motivation to meet the performance expectations. 

Effective ongoing feedback and coaching engages you and your staff in interactive dialogue that helps build relationships and develops the skills and abilities of your employees. This will produce better individual and organizational performance. Coaching and feedback are critical to the Performance Management cycle. 

Managers/supervisors can effectively coach and provide feedback by:

• Establishing goals/expectations with the employees.
• Making time in their schedule to meet with employees on a regular basis.
• Focusing on the behavior, not the person.
• Giving specific and timely feedback.
• Using all available learning and training resources to enhance their capability in providing feedback and coaching.

While employees are responsible for their own development, managers can make developmental opportunities available:

• encouraging participation in workshops and development programs
• creating opportunities “in place”  that offer more occasions for genuine development

One way to achieve superior results is finding ways to encourage high-level/”beyond expectations” behaviors. Managers and supervisors can encourage these behaviors to grow results by:

• Identifying the behaviors that create desired results.
• Measure the results of the behaviors.
• Provide feedback to employees.