You can’t always control the decisions made by your employees.  Some will choose to relocate, become pregnant, or continue their education.  Sometimes, an employee’s decision to leave is a direct result of something that has happened, or is currently happening, within your firm.  For instance, some may leave because they don’t like their boss, were denied a promotion, or have problems with the organization’s culture.   It is vital to understand the reasons behind your employee turnover to improve your management decision making in the future.

Interview Template

The goal of your questioning should be to gather as much information as possible.  You should allow your departing employee to be honest, open, and as straightforward as possible.  With this in mind, it is critical that you consistently ask the same questions of all exiting employees to allow you to draw conclusions from your data.  The following template can help you consistently ask questions that will allow you to effectively gather and use data.

1.  Why are you leaving?  Is it something specific to the company, such as management or culture, or are you leaving for a personal reason?
2.  What did you enjoy most about working here?
3.  What would you say was the biggest difficulty in being employed by XYZ Corporation?
4.  On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your manager?
5.  If given the opportunity to change one thing about this company, what would it be?
6.  What would you say it takes for an employee to be successful at XYZ Corporation?
7.  How often did your manager provide you with feedback?
8.  How helpful would you say this feedback was?
9.  What advice, if any, would you give to your replacement?
10. Are you planning to stay in the same industry?
11. How will you be compensated at your next place of employment?
12. If given the opportunity in the future, would you return to this company?

Exit Interview Musts

There are several factors that are necessary to make an exit interview successful.  For your exit interview to achieve its goals, you should offer:

Private:

It is important that the departing employee’s direct manager or supervisor not conduct the exit interview.  This can often lead to misleading or dishonest answers.

Secluded:

The exit interview must be conducted in a part of the office in which no other employee can hear what transpires.  If the departing employee is afraid that someone might hear him, he may not be forthright with his observations.

Voluntary:

Finally, the exit interview should not be forced upon a departing employee.  Only accept feedback that is freely offered.  Doing so will help glean the most honest and straightforward answers.  

The unfortunate result of many performance appraisals is that managers spend a large chunk of their time trying to justify their company worth or value. This is what you want to avoid. After all, many of the most important things an employee does are not always measurable by tangible performance metrics. Effective managers can create an appraisal system that links an employee’s compensation to specific performance metrics.

Performance management systems can help managers achieve the real objective of staff development and company progress. Managers can choose to concentrate on the specific areas in which they want to see improvement and development.

Managers often feel that the employee review process is front loaded and time consuming. By creating a system to review all employees, managers can avoid many of the headaches involved with performance development meetings.

The following is a checklist that can help managers implement an overall performance management and employee review process.

1. Identify job description and obligations
2. Set realistic goals and associated metrics
3. Determine job function priorities
4. Create a calendar for manager and employee feedback sessions
5. Create a tentative plan for action should employee not reach objectives

Performance Development Appraisal Meetings

Preparation

First, a manager should schedule an appointment with the employee to discuss and review job performance. The manager should prepare for the PDP session by analyzing the employee’s work habits, up-to-date job performance, attendance records, and solicit input from colleagues. The employee should come prepared with a self assessment of work done on the job so far. It is also common for managers to ask for personal feedback in his own job performance.

At the PDP Meeting

Managers should set a designated area where all PDP meetings will take place. This can mean a conference room, personal office, or any other section of the office that can be cordoned off for privacy. Both the manager and employee should reach an early agreement about the meeting’s objectives. The manager should ask the employee to define both his personal and career goals, and what needs to be done to make them become a reality. Once these basic principles have been established, the manager needs to come up with some basic suggestions about how they can be achieved, and corresponding performance metrics for later evaluation. The employee and manager should also agree on a time in the future for a follow-up PDP meeting.

Difference Between Strategic Planning and Business Planning

Strategic planning should be universal. It is typically defined as the process of specifying the higher level, birds-eye mission of an organization. Depending on your goals, the strategic planning process can take on many different shapes and forms. It’s important to remember that strategic planning should cut across all departments and divisions of a company.

Business planning is more closely tied to individual products, services, or merchandise. Your company should set different plans in place in accordance with the specific line of product. After all, different customers buy different things, so you need to craft unique plans for each set of them.

Organizational Structure

Organizational structure and size will affect the way you implement your plans. Your process will depend on whether your company is public, private, a C-corp, S-corp, or non-profit. You must take numerous things into consideration such as tax status, and whether or not your financial information is required to be published.

What Strategic Planning Can do for Your Business

1. Specify and articulate the company’s mission or objective.
2. Outline goals company-wide to speak to all employees and ensure understanding.
3. Enhance employee accountability.
4. Narrow organizational focus to a specific set of priorities.
5. Create benchmarks and scorecards.
6. Establish consensus and agreement among management.
7. Bring employees together and make sure that everyone is on the same page.
8. Team building.
9. Increase management visibility.
10. Increase cost-assurance and employee productivity all company divisions.

1. Focus

Innovative companies meticulously and relentlessly seek an understanding of how to transform customer service. Instead of favoring every last revenue and sales opportunity, innovative companies move beyond products and services that don’t add customer value. They eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy at every corner – regardless of their best intentions. Successful companies solely target the core aspects of the business about which customers care the most. Additionally, contemporary innovators target the most loyal and profitable customer segments.

2. Channeling the Customer

Innovative managers have an uncanny ability to tap into the collective consciousness of their customers. They listen actively and intently, and pay attention to their thoughts clearly.

3. Collaboration

Furthermore, you must collaborate with your entire company. Today’s companies must be both responsive and flexible to dominate the field in providing products and services. This cannot be done without collaboration across differing business divisions. This shouldn’t mean that you set up teams simply for the sake of setting up teams. You must first and foremost set up effective teams which are empowered to effectively share and process valuable information.

4. Enthusiastic Customers

Merely delivering a quality product or service is no longer enough. To gain competitive advantage, you must perfect your interactions with customers to garner enthusiastic support. You should aim to beat your competitors by not only providing a superior product, but by outperforming them in the way your product is sold, serviced, and promoted.

5. Shared Leadership

For your company to be a leader, your employees need to be leaders. Regardless of their role within the organization, your staff should be empowered to offer input, ask questions, help customers, and contribute in any way possible.

Process Oriented

Innovative managers won’t be able to truly hit their targets by cautiously tending to minor and specific tasks and thinking “inside the box”. To effectively implement change, managers must evaluate processes as a whole that transcend organizational boundaries.

Ambitious

Without ambition, managers will struggle to realize breakthrough change. Trivial improvements just won’t cut it. Innovative managers think big.

Irreverence

Managers must disregard tradition and rethink their processes. They must do whatever it takes to ignore long-held assumptions related to specialization, timing, and role definition.

Creativity

Breakthrough companies move beyond the “old way” of doing business by quickly adopting new technology to implement new process models. Technology can be a vehicle through which your company can radically introduce new methods.

Despite the scope and scale of change, many managers lack the tools to connect them all. They can become overwhelmed by the juggling and multi-tasking of thought processes change management can take. When all of these factors are considered to be separate and different, they can become difficult to digest. However, seeing “change” as a holistic process can make the entire thing to be to manage.

Companies that flourish are those that create an environment that encourages creativity and fresh ideas. If you want your company to be a leader, you must first be a leader yourself. This means you must master the ability to learn and grow.

Don’t get me wrong, change isn’t easy. Being a “change agent” is even more difficult, just ask President Obama. It still can be done. There are several key traits necessary for a leader to be a successful change agent.

First, you must be open minded. Rather than being a critical devil’s advocate, you must welcome new thoughts and ideas and give them every chance to succeed. If not, your staff may hesitate to propose new ideas for fear that you might immediately shoot them down and embarrass them. This is the most critical characteristic of innovative management.

Second, you must be open to changing not only your organization, but yourself. You must force yourself to reach out to disconnected members of your organization, even when it’s uncomfortable. If not, you will only instigate resistance from the disconnected. You should make a statement to your peers that you care about teamwork, innovation, growth, and community. If a proposal is in conflict with these values, you should go in a different direction.

By opening up, sharing, and defining your values, your staff will see you as more credible, and be more receptive to change.

The world is changing and new obstacles face managers on a regular basis.  A common dilemma of today’s manager is the Evolving customer demands, increasing competition, and a changing global landscape are forcing businesses to rethink the way they operate.  Many entrepreneurs often think that they are just one great product away from solving all of their problems.  However, great products don’t make great companies.  Rather, great companies create great products.  The primary difference between thriving companies and those that disappear into the ether, is that innovative companies understand how to do their work better.  This is the most fundamental point to consider when formulating a strategy to improve your business.

So, how can you implement the change necessary to make your business work better?  First, you must recognize that it isn’t a one-man operation.  No individual in your organization will participate in every function or process, so it is critical that managers buy in to your philosophy across the board.  Simply fixing individual tasks will fall short and not completely do the trick.  In fact, a micro focus will virtually guarantee failure.  Rather, you should focus on your processes as a whole.

Second, you must decide which individual, or group of individuals, will be in charge of overseeing processes.  And you can’t just settle for tinkering that will leave the primary corporate framework in place.  It must start from the top and essentially be viewed as “starting over”.   Innovative managers are able to forget the status-quo and idealize what the company should look like if they were to start over today, and implement the changes necessary to realize the idealized vision.  You must go back to square one and invent better processes of accomplishing your work.

If you can figure out how to re-invent your company holistically, you can avoid being sent back to the bottom of the mountain time and time again.

The primary job of your staff is to please and placate customers.  Exactly how well they cope with an enraged customer will essentially measure their proficiency in customer support.

The first thing you must stress to your reps is that any time he or she faces an angry customer it is often because they have a specific gripe or complaint.

The complaint may very well be reasonable.  Often, they make no sense, but unfortunately, they are directing the issue to your company and staff.  It is essential that your reps understand that this is typical and not to take it personally.  Customers generally just want to get something off of their chests and target the person who answers the phone.

When faced with this situation, your agents should capture itemized insights of each and every customer complaint.  They should listen quietly and attentively, and once the caller is done, your rep should go into full damage control.

First, she should start the conversation by showing her understanding of what the customer is experiencing.

Second, she should recap what the individual told her without coming across as harsh or irritated.  Under no circumstances should she condemn the client for the problem.  By systematically dealing with the complaints at hand, your rep will show that she was paying attention.  The caller will respect the care, and usually calm down to some degree.

Finally, your rep should be accountable.  She should strive to handle the matter on her own, and not jump at the likely opportunity to pass the call off to her supervisor.  After all, there’s nothing more aggravating than having to re-explain a dilemma to a new listener.

Angry customers usually call support lines with low expectations.  If your rep can excel at satisfying the caller, the once-problem can turn into a positive opportunity.  The now-happy caller might tell others about the the quality and resolve of your customer service department.

In other words, the more negative the customer’s mindset, the better your chances are to significantly exceed their outlook.  Authentic customer assistance frequently turns into customer loyalty.

The bottom line is this:  If your reps can provide quality support, they can turn lemons into lemonade by transforming a negative into a positive.

Outbound telemarketing shouldn’t be viewed as a chore. It should be seen as a highly effective sales program and taken seriously. Be enthusiastic about your products or services, your peers, and chiefly the customers you are calling. If you are not both eager and positive about what you offer, many people are going to notice almost right away.

Although this might sound plainly obvious, always be honest, straightforward, and genuine on the phone. After all, you need to establish a successful long term connection with the potential client, and want to connect with that individual many times, so develop an trustworthy affiliation.

No matter what industry you are in, odds are that you devote at the least some effort in meetings. Your meetings might be large organization get-togethers, one-on-ones, or online group chats. No matter what type of meeting you’ve scheduled, though, these tips can help you improve your sales skills.

Before you set an appointment, make sure you genuinely need to have a meeting. Most appointments are established for basic issues that can be handled over the phone. Prior to actually setting your appointment, give some thought to whether or not the question could possibly be handled in a quicker method.

You can curtail time obligations by suggesting that you get together at your own offices, meet halfway, or avoid meeting in person altogether. Methods including phone calls or video conferencing can sometimes take care of all of the demands of that appointment for which you were going to drive across town. Also, you probably won’t need the whole company there for a progress report. Preferably, you should settle on who realistically needs to be in on your consultation. You can always send out a mass email or newsletter later on if people feel left out.

Set plenty of time for follow ups. Whenever you confirm an appointment, keep in mind precisely what you have to do to prepare for it — review a report, prepare a presentation, or iron your shirt. Follow these steps in advance of each and every time you schedule a consultation.

Differentiate between personal and business scheduled visits. Many of us try to load every appointment into one day. Yet, if only one appointment runs late, your entire schedule can be thrown off. When this happens, you can run into the issue of trying to switch gears between the presentation you just gave to a client and the unexpected timing of your previous appointment. That sort of mental switch up can only make it harder to handle your later appointments.

A good place to start is creating an environment of mutual respect between manager and employees. You must recognize that the company’s most valuable assets are customers, followed by employees. This mindset must come from the top of an organization. Managers must show respect and recognize that each and every employee is important and makes a difference. Managers shouldn’t be afraid to surrender some authority. Many respected leaders believe that the more power a manager distributes, the more power he actually has.

Make empowerment a way of life for your company. Managers should empower their employees to be all that they can be. This can mean allowing independence, and let them control their own destinies. Taking care of each individual will take care of the company as a whole. You must be able to trust them, and they should trust you in return.

Empowerment centers around genuinely honoring and caring for your employees, and bringing the best out in them. Seek advice from your staff. Let them make some decisions on their own. When you entrust once sacred cows to your staff, you might be surprised at the time and care they put into making the right decision. Employees can truly realize their full potential when they feel important and accountable.

Encourage fun. Enabling a strong home-work balance among your staff will go a long ways towards your ultimate success. Enable employees to balance their work and personal lives, and reap the benefits. After all, one component’s struggles affects the other.

By empowering and enabling your staff, you will save yourself from many of the troubles managers can experience over the long run. The respect you receive from your employees will make your words mean more, and allow you to have more control over your organization.