First Time Managers

Newly minted first-time managers and new leaders are usually part of the biggest population of leaders in any organization: frontline, first-line, and entry-level managers, supervisors, and directors. They directly manage more people than any other managerial level. The stats show first-time managers and new leaders rarely get the training they need to be effective in their new position.

For at least the past five years employee engagement has been has been a major topic for HR professionals and thought leaders around the world. You can find conferences, panel discussions, articles, blogs, tweets, etc. about employee engagement. With the dismal numbers of first-time managers and new leaders receiving inadequate training employee engagement will continue to be a major topic for HR professionals and thought leaders around the world.

In my blog post Managers Need Training Too I talked about the importance of managers receiving the proper training to be successful. If first-time managers and new leaders aren’t receiving the training necessary to be successful employee engagement will decrease. If employee engagement decreases the quality of the service being provided or the product being produced will also decrease.

Upper management needs to invest in training so first-time managers and new leaders can be successful. The success of the organization is directly or indirectly tied to the success of first-time managers and new leaders.

Perfect Candidate

The HR field exists for a reason. Let us do our job. One of our specialties is recruiting. When you take HR duties and give them to someone else chaos or least inefficiency ensues.

Looking for perfection in an imperfect world sounds challenging if not impossible. I know someone that is experiencing not being perfect. Since there is no perfect person employers need to take advantage of the transferable skills applicants come with. I was sharing with this person that employers are lazy. They don’t want to take the time to study a resume. The laziness of employers leads to the frustration of job seekers.

ChristopherinHR

What price perfect?

A mark of the modern employment market is the seeming inability to find skilled, competent employees. Companies continually complain about the lack of fundamental skills in recent graduates while government clamors for increased STEM education.

But this mistates the situation.

Even as communities continue to recover from massive outsourcing and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression the truth about the job market is less complex and therefore even more shocking.

Companies are looking for perfect.

Somewhere along the way with the HR function fully complicit we lost sight of hiring people to do a job and started to think about hiring brand extensions. We started to look for people without any blemish professionally or interpersonally and turned hiring into a lottery as opposed to a competitive process.

The job market still functions at the extremes. For people with no absolute skill there are minimum…

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Employees or Children

Who needs supervision more employees or children? Children between the ages of one and ten need a babysitter. Due to the lack of boundaries in the workplace managers view themselves as babysitters.

Just like children, employees are a product of their environment. In 2014 what type of environment are managers creating for their employees? When I was in the eighth grade every day in my algebra class was a circus. My teacher didn’t have control of the class. Her lack of control allowed me to sleep 2-3 days a week.

If managers don’t set expectations for their employees’ performance and behavior the employees will do whatever comes to mind. Regardless of age people need boundaries. Setting boundaries is the only way to properly govern the performance and behavior of employees.

Managers, if you need to treat your employees like children then by all means act accordingly. I had a supervisor that said I have no problem treating you all like children. My supervisor set expectations for her employees’ performance and behavior. She constantly communicated those expectations. The repetitiveness of her expectations made it difficult to forget how you were expected to conduct yourself. Managers what message are you communicating to your employees? Are you communicating expectations or mayhem?

Managers have the responsibility to create an environment in which employees can grow professionally. Mayhem creates an unhealthy work environment which produces sub-par performance. A healthy work environment allows employees to reach their potential.

A healthy work environment has boundaries that govern the actions and performance of its employees. People need boundaries and without them mayhem ensues.
If you want to create a healthy work environment I can be reached at:
corjoejen@yahoo.com and
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/cornell-jenkins/11/476/897/

Slow Down

In 2013 most people have a full schedule five to seven days a week. The hectic pace that most of us live at is not physically, mentally, or emotionally healthy. Many people don’t know when to slow down and take a break.

It is difficult to take care of home (e.g. children and spouses) if we always have a high stress level. A high stress level makes you irritable and the smallest thing can send you over the edge. Stress manifests itself differently in everyone. Some people over-eat, some can’t sleep, and some may have headaches or develop ulcers etc. All of us need time to rest!

Wisdom is saying it’s time for me to slow down. Starting today instead of posting every Monday I will post every other Monday. My next post will be two weeks from today.

If you have a question or comment leave it below or email me at corjoejen@yahoo.com

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