Manage a worker
Categories:
Training
Another key role of a manager is to encourage workers to continuously develop. There may be training courses that would be appropriate, training days, online resources or DVDs that will help an employee develop and grow. Some training can be done in house using the expertise and skills of the team. Schools workers come form all walks of life and may have transferrable skills that can be used in in-house training.
Part of a schools workers training should be to talk through organisational policies and procedures regularly. Sometimes it’s just a case of reminding yourselves of the way you work, sometimes it will be to report changes or pass on new information.
Management vs. mentoring
One of the traps that Christian organsiations fall into is when we focus too much on the pastoral needs of our staff. Of course it’s vital that we care for our workers and take an interest in them personally, but that must never be intrusive or take the place of the management relationship. It may sound harsh, but as an employer your primary role should be to get the best out of an employee, this will have some cross over with their mental health, but don’t make the mistake of becoming their counselor or mentor.
However, it does seem sensible to encourage staff to engage with a mentor of some description. Part of the role of a manager is to identify needs of the individual and to begin to address them. Often this will mean making suggestions for external help. They may need a professional mentor who can help guide them through the maze of the working world. It may be that they need a spiritual mentor, who can pray with them and challenge them about their faith. There are loads of people around in local churches who have amazing skills in these areas and are delighted to help.
Networking
Even if your organisation is growing, the chances are it will still be quite small, this is where networking can play a crucial role in a worker’s well being. Nothing can replace having peers to talk through issues and strains with. Join up with youth workers in the local area to meet and pray regularly, maybe you could meet up with some from the schoolswork.co.uk site, or use the blog to discuss and link up with other schools workers.
Everyone needs support, everyone needs rest, everyone needs to be fed. Effective management is about finding ways of encouraging all of≥ these things in a balanced and fair way. If all else fails, the most important skill a manager can learn, is to listen.
Stick or carrot?
Being managed is not all about negotiation, there has to be an element of simply doing what you’re told. Knowing when you stop allowing your employee to have a say and when you simply expect a task to be done is crucial. It is important as a manager to remember that you are the boss. However much you want to nurture and encourage staff, you are also there to get a job done.
Healthy management is about balancing stick and carrot approaches. Human nature says that to get the best out of people, they need to be encouraged, coaxed and offered incentives; but there are times when they need to be told to do something they just don’t want to do. As long as, as a manager, you have a just reason for doing that, then it is right to put your foot down and be authoritative. It’s often in these situations, when a staff member is really stretched, that they achieve things they wouldn’t have dreamed of. Sometimes it can be the making of an employee.
One aspect of management that is often lost sight of, especially in the Christian sector, is the responsibility to help people to grow. If employees are allowed to do whatever they like when they like, they are not being encouraged to grow good personal or professional discipline. One of the roles of a good employer is to encourage good self discipline. The letter to the Hebrews talks about how discipline is good for us. It refines our character, honing us to become more like Christ.
It’s important to both challenge people to have a healthy work life balance and to motivate them to work if they are being lazy. This is where an employer’s own approach and style of working becomes significant. It’s a good idea for managers to assess their own practice and challenge themselves (or ask someone else to if that’s too difficult) so that they can model great practice to those who work for them. No one is going to listen to someone who doesn’t practice what they preach.
When things go wrong
Of course one of the hardest aspects of management is dealing with problems with staff. Christians are not immune to making big mistakes and when this happens it needs to be dealt with in a clear and efficient manner. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to lay down expectations at the outset. If you have been clear, it is much easier to see where the mistakes or problem areas are and then deal with them appropriately.
Know your policy
The first thing you need to do is ensure that you have good disciplinary and grievance policies. They should clearly detail what constitutes misconduct and what steps are to be taken when acceptable standards have been breached. Also ensure that your policy complies with statutory requirements. You can commission a professional body to write all your documentation, or go to an employment law solicitor for advice.
Then it’s important to follow your policy accurately and document this. If, sadly, you end up having to terminate an employee’s contract, all documentation and the process adhered to must be clear. If, for whatever reason, the matter was taken further (eg. an employee claims unfair dismissal) any mistake you have made in procedure could make you personally or corporately liable.
Dealing with conflict
Of course the hope is that a situation wouldn’t ever get as serious as dismissal. Most things can be de escalated before they become more serious. A good manager will help and support their employees in order that termination will not be necessary.
As a manager, you can’t be too scared to deal with conflict. Situations that aren’t dealt with build up and ultimately cause more problems. For Christian schools workers, looking at God’s perspective is key. The Bible talks at length about God’s justice and how he doesn’t avoid difficult situations. In the gospels, Jesus doesn’t usually cause riots, but he does speak the truth and see that justice is done. So it seems that the Godly thing to do is to confront and work through issues before they escalate.
When a problem arises it must be dealt with as quickly as is practical. Annual reviews are not the place to raise problems you have been storing up all year. Each situation should be dealt with as it arises and employees should be given the opportunity and space to correct any mistakes. If a staff member is struggling with a task, their manager should come alongside them and facilitate them to complete it. Employees deserve to be given all the support and encouragement you can. It’s not possible, or right, to do everything alongside them, but from time to time working on the detail with someone is appropriate and a great boost to confidence.
If the conflict is between two members of staff, you may want to mediate a meeting between them. If you speak to them individually, you run the risk of polarising the situation and making the problem worse.
It is good and right to expect your employees to carry out their role in a professional manner. You can’t expect everyone to like each other, but it is important that any issues between members of staff do not detrimentally impact the way they work. It’s important to address unacceptable behaviour immediately. Nothing lowers morale more than seeing other people’s poor behaviour or working practices go unchallenged.
Conclusion
There are no hard a fast rules in management. Each individual grows and changes as they learn ‘on task’. There are basic keys to help and pitfalls to avoid, the beautiful thing about management is that the rest can be down to interpretation. There are as many different ways to manage as there are different people.
If there is one thing that all managers should do, it is to listen. Listening communicates importance and value. It gives a fresh perspective to a problem or situation. It encourages and builds good relationship.
To keep staff; value them, support them, listen to them.
Finding more help
http://www.volunteering.org.uk/Resources/goodpracticebank/
http://www.volunteering.org.uk/Resources/EVM/
Feel free to use and distribute this guide but please acknowledge schoolswork.co.uk as the source.