In today’s world of economic crisis and trying to cut the bottom line so you can still be profitable, employee behavior can come into play as an important asset or liability. There are positive and productive methods to monitor behavior so you and the employee can learn from them and the company can profit.
Listen
One of the lost skills in today’s society is really listen with a motive to hear what is being said. If you are assigned to do the monitoring of employee behavior, it is vitally important to understand the skill of listening to hear. One way to start listening is to have an open-door policy to your office so the employees can come at any time to discuss issues in their department or even personal problems they are dealing with because these can affect their work and their concentration. This may be a slow process to start so don’t worry if your employees are not lined up at your door ready to talk the next morning.
Document
The effectiveness of documentation will never cease, from the top of the company down to the most insignificant detail. It is also true with documenting employee behavior because it serves much better than memory alone. Also, when you document, it gives you a chance to see a different perspective to the issue and will bring down your anger over an incident that happened. If you document an employee’s behavior, it will help you see a negative pattern you may be able to correct before it becomes a problem.
Schedule Regular Evaluations
The traditional annual evaluations have a purpose but not the purpose of monitoring employee behavior. These can be done on a monthly basis, along with documentation of how their faithfulness in working has increased company production, if that is the case for your company. Monthly evaluations give an opportunity for the employees to talk with you and you with them without having the proverbial “been called to the office” appearance. That scares most employees more than anything else.
The value of monitoring employee behavior has far-reaching effects. There have been too many workplace shootings because of disgruntled employees and deaths have been the aftermath. Monitoring employee behavior along the way and making corrections to avoid problems is positive from all angles.
