As new generations come into play, they shift towards a new company culture and leadership style. Compared to previous generations, the modern workplace holds many different values and inspires a different method of communication.
About 21% of the U.S. population is part of Generation Z. In order to keep up with evolving business landscapes, leaders need to comply with the needs of the current generation and employ new talents.
Times have changed and what worked once might not be the same story now. In this article, we will dive deeper into learning more about what kind of practices you can apply to lead a modern workplace.
The Importance of People Management in the Modern Workplace
No one wants to work when their contribution isn’t recognized. People management skills are important for creating a positive work culture and for contributing to the success of the workplace. People management skills are important for the following reasons:
- They increase employee engagement: Effective people management promotes a positive work environment and encourages employee engagement, increasing job satisfaction.
- Team collaboration: Good managers always know how to promote communication within an organization and manage interpersonal relationships.
- Conflict resolution: A good work environment includes conflict management in the most professional way possible.
- Talent and retention management: A supportive work environment is created through good management skills and increases employee retention rates. Moreover, powerful people management skills will retain top talents, making the organization more competent.
Your goal here is to increase the performance of your business and make sure that it’s increasing your organizational success.
6 Tips to Follow for Effectively Managing Your Workforce
You may be wondering what kind of practices you need to follow for effectively managing individuals on your team. Let’s explore more of these solutions to manage your workforce:
1. Show yourself as a caring leader
A caring leader is always a good one. Generation Z is spending more time indoors than previous generations did. Why so? Well, it’s due to the reason that many modern workplaces are promoting remote work and making younger generations spend more time at home.
Other than that, Generation Z itself wants to work from home compared to older generations that worked a 9-5 job. 16% of worldwide companies are working entirely remotely now and this number has been increasing over the years.
Since Gen Z is spending more time at home, they may be more lonely at times. This is where you can demonstrate your empathy and establish a connection with your team to increase engagement rates, retention and improve employee mental health.
A huge reason why remote work has been more common was due to the pandemic that occurred in early 2020. Isolation did change the mentality of workers and has made many people look for acceptance. While each individual employee might be going through different personal struggles, it’s important to show care for them.
2. Encourage traveling
Traveling is a great way to get away from everyday life scenarios and to release stress. Even if it’s for business purposes, you can still have lots of fun. The good news is that 52% of Gen Z are already frequent travelers. You might be the reason some of your team members get to see new places and what better feeling than being able to do this?
However, keep in mind that you need to always make sure you are saving enough time during your travel planning process. There are many travel management companies that offer software you can use to help you manage the process and not waste too much time during it.
The advantages of a travel management company are that it improves the decision-making process, focuses on fulfilling your travel needs, helps you save money on accommodation, and above all, saves you time.
For instance, a travel management company like TravelPerk offers you an all-in-one digital platform. This is great since you can manage everything from the platform. Platforms that offer all-in-one solutions will offer you the following benefits:
- A simple-to-use booking tool with loyalty points, travel data, preferences and more
- 24/7 business travel assistance with a 15-second response time
- Peace of mind
- Automated travel policies and approval workflows
- Invoices for business travel
- A simple travel expense process
Above all, it’s essential to check out which languages the platform is offered in. Some travel management platforms might even offer services in your local language.
3. Engage each team member
What do we mean by this? It’s important to make everyone feel engaged and you can do this by following certain rules like:
- Make sure each team member engages in meetings and doesn’t interrupt someone else when they talk
- Giving everyone full attention when they have something to say
- Give a warm welcome to each team member
- Be relaxed and don’t look as if you are in a bad mood
- Give everyone a chance to say what they think and feel
- Make equal time for each individual in your organization
As a manager, it’s important to give equal attention to each team member. Nobody wants to feel left out and when they do, they’ll usually pull away from what they have to say and not give maximum effort at the workplace. Moreover, here are some things you need to know:
- People are at ease and won’t interrupt each other, or themselves
- There needs to be agreements and boundaries during collaboration and communication
- Everyone’s agreements and boundaries need to be respected
- Providing each team member with enough information in a given amount of time
- More people will speak since they feel valued and heard
Managers who adopt any of these practices are going to have a team that thinks and performs better. 78% of employees claim that employee recognition increases their productivity rate. Therefore, it’s important to pay close attention to this part.
4. Use workforce management software
Workforce management software is an out-of-box software solution that is created to focus on your workforce management. Primary functions of a workforce management solution include:
- Improved financial planning through automated reports, streamlined resource management, and more.
- Optimize employee scheduling by taking time-off requests, hours worked, prioritizing projects and more.
- Serves as a control center for critical activities between departments.
- Provide insights and data analytics based on delivery outcomes, time spent, allowing decisions to be made quickly and more.
Using software can sometimes be challenging and complex, but having the right amount of support from a knowledgeable software provider makes everything easy to carry out.
5. Be hungry to learn more and to help your team do so
If there’s one trait a good manager has, it’s the hunger to learn more. Creating learning programs for each skill that you need in your business is always a good idea. It can motivate employees to work towards their goals.
Many of these learning programs can also be purchased online and organized in a folder where you can view them yourself. Overall, learning programs are good and can help you learn more about technological changes and trends.
The experience is positive for both you and your team members, allowing you to share skills with each other, knowledge, and much more the program has to offer.
The important part of this is that you have a growth mindset and follow practices that encourage you to learn something new with your team members.
After all, if you don’t have a growth mindset, you can’t expect the people working with you to be any different.
6. Listen closely to everyone
Everyone wants to be listened to and respects it when you do so. When we are talking about listening, we mean a different type of listening. The intention here is to encourage independent thinking from each of your team members and to allow them to express their own feelings and thoughts.
More importantly, it’s essential not to interrupt anyone. Uninterrupted attention is always the best one and allows people to provide quality levels of thinking. When you know this ahead of time, it creates freedom in the minds of people to think effectively.
Statistics show that workers who are interrupted show a 9% higher exhaustion rate compared to those who aren’t. When we are interrupted, automatically, our emotional reactions trigger a threat response and stress hormones get released into our nervous system. Therefore, it’s best to avoid it and to risk ruining long-term relationships.
Leadership Wants You to Adapt to Change
Yes, you read it correctly. Leadership always wants you to adapt to change. You may ask why? Well, it’s because every generation is different and has new requirements. Therefore, you need to always adapt to their mentality and speak their language.
Leadership is all about being able to change the way you work. That’s what improves you and your team on a professional and personal level.
