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Improve the work environment
Make sure that you DO:
- Give sufficient instructions (complete and specific).
- Explain targets, deadlines, and dates for activities in advance.
- Admit your own mistakes.
- Support your subordinates.
- Delegate responsibility appropriately.
- Trust your staff members.
- Recognize merit when it is warranted.
- Supply employees with adequate materials, equipments, and support.
- Give employees the opportunity to participate and to use their own initiative.
- Deal with problems in an honest and straightforward manner.
- Give the real reasons for problems or decisions.
- Make an attempt to see the employee's point of view.
Make sure that you DON'T:
- Scold an employee in the presence of others.
- Show favoritism toward certain employees.
- Blame an employee for your own mistakes.
- Intrude in the personal matters of employees.
- Provide excessive supervision by being too vigilant, checking even unimportant details.
- Gossip with one employee about another.
- React negatively to employees' ideas.
Improving Staff Motivation
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How a supervisor can motivate a staff
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As a supervisor, you can be a powerful motivating force for your staff. You
can help them to carry out their tasks responsibly and efficiently and can
inspire them to strive for higher achievements, even if, as is generally the
case among supervisors, you don't have the power to motivate through
increased financial incentives. You can use a number of non-financial
incentives, such as:
- Having senior staff voice their approval of good performance;
Instilling in employees a belief in the value their work;
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Providing employees with opportunities to use their intelligence to solve
problems;
- Offering employees opportunities to assume more responsibility and
leadership;
- Providing opportunities for advancement and self-improvement.
Improve staff motivation
- Give praise and appreciation often and, whenever possible, publicly.
- Provide explanations and reminders of the value of an employee's work.
- Provide the staff with symbols of the importance and/or official nature of their jobs: uniforms, hats, pins, carrying bags with the program logo, signs for their home or post, diplomas from training courses, prizes, etc.
- Give prompt attention to the obstacles that staff face in their work that are beyond their control.
- Direct attention during a supervisory meeting or visit to the details of the staff person's job (thus communicating that these details are important).
- Seek the opinion of the staff on all matters related to their work. This includes asking for their insights into the problems they are facing and their suggestions for possible solutions.
- Suggest opportunities for advancement.
- Provide regular opportunities for refresher training and upgrading of skills, particularly if travel is involved.
Providing Effective Feedback
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Principles of effective feedback
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Feedback means communicating to the staff your reaction regarding their work
performance. Your feedback lets the employees know what they are doing well,
where they need improvement, and how they can improve.
In order to make sure your feedback is effective, your comments should be:
- Task-related. Your comments should be related to the actual tasks
carried out by the staff and should be based on your own observations of how
these tasks are done.
- Prompt. Give feedback after your observations of employees' work
and your conversations with them and in the presence of other staff members who
are involved. The longer the delay, the weaker the effect of the
feedback.
- Action-oriented. Your comments should relate to improvements that
employees can make through their own efforts.
- Motivating. Start with positive feedback, then progress to what needs
improvement.
- Constructive. Discuss with the staff how they can improve their
performance, taking care to emphasize that their work has value.
In reality, feedback takes place almost continuously during on-site supervision
or during a supervisory visit.
Example
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Ineffective feedback from a supervisor to a CBD agent:
"I've been meaning to tell you, I don't like the way
you handled the visit to Mrs. R's house last month. You spent
too much time talking about unimportant things. This program is
not an excuse to sit and chat with your neighbors! She said
she'd been having headaches and you didn't ask her if
she'd had them before. You obviously haven't remembered
our training sessions very well. Are you too lazy to re-read the
manual? Don't you remember what to do when a client complains
of headaches? Go back and read the manual, and don't let me
catch you making that mistake again!"
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Example
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Effective feedback from a supervisor to a CBD agent:
"During
the visit to Mrs. R's house today, you were very friendly and
warm, and I see that you have established a good relationship with
her. Your reminders to her about how to take the pill were clear
and complete, and it is excellent that you remembered to repeat
them, since she is a first-time user who just started last month.
You listened well when she told you the problems she has been
having with taking the pill.
"However, there are two things
that you should do differently next time you see a client with
these complaints. She is a new pill user, and it is important to
reassure new pill users that their nausea will probably disappear
by the second month. Her headaches could be due to many causes.
Next time a pill user complains of headaches, ask her whether she
had these headaches before she started taking the pill. Take her
blood pressure.* Also, keep track of who is complaining about
headaches. If a woman has this complaint two months in a row,
refer her to the health center. If her headache is severe and
accompanied by nausea, refer her at once. "Later this
afternoon, I'll review our policies for treatment of side
effects of the pill with you, to refresh your memory."
* Not possible in some CBD programs.
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