What are challenges before the managers in handling team members?

If an organisation has to survive in the global or local competitive environment, it has to continuously evolve and become more adaptable, resilient, agile, and above all customer focussed. To keep all these qualities or strengths intact the reporting manager has to step in and take over some of the responsibilities of the HR manager. If a good employee leaves the organisation for a reason which could have been addressed, it is not only the loss of the organisation but the reporting manger losses a team member who was an asset to the team.

The mangers of today are not only business driven but also counsellors, mentors, coaches and succession planners. They help motivate team members, and reward and recognise their loyalty.

To be successful in achieving business targets, manages not only focus on business strategy but also motivate employees to drive those business strategies and plans. The managers need to efficiently handle following challenges with respect to the team members-

1. Team members from different cultures and diverse background – The age difference is significantly dropped for top level positions. In today’s world, youngsters are in top management positions and they bring with them their style of working. Thanks to globalisation, the management has to deal with people from different age, gender, race, ethnicity, educational background, religious beliefs, and work experience. This can be quite challenging. For example, employees from some Asian countries give lot of respect to position and elderly. In Japan, the decision of the person in higher position is final and is never challenged. They hardly speak against an elderly. So in team meetings, it is the job of manager to motivate all employees to participate and share opinions. Managing people with different set of ideologies, views, lifestyle, and psychology can be very difficult. This is where the manager’s communication skills and motivation skills will be tested.

2. Managing Change – Change is inevitable. One of the fortune 500 company’s Chairman in one of its quarterly address said that, the organisations stop growing and eventually die if it managers don’t learn and adapt regularly. Bringing change in organisation’s processes, procedures, and then implementing and managing it, is a biggest concern for a manager. When computers were introduced in the banking system in government banks in a third world country decades back, the employees of the bank went on a long strike (refused to work as a form of protest). They resisted change and wanted to continue working on registers, paper ledgers using pen and highlighters. It took some convincing to bring them overboard. Technology keeps changing every now and then. It is a constant cycle of upgrading the existing technology and training people on it. It all drills down to how well the manager can handle change and manage people issues to ensure success rate is not slowed down.

3. Retaining Talents – The world is a global village and globalisation gave people freedom to work anywhere in the world where they feel that their talent will be fairly paid. There are endless lucrative opportunities for people. In these times the manager has to put in his best to retain the best talent. It becomes necessary to maintain harmonious relations and create excellent work atmosphere where an employee feels motivated to work. The manager should recommend quality employees for fair remuneration, rewards and recognition to keep team members motivated.

4. Conflict management – There are employer-employee and employee-employee conflicts in all organisations. The manager should ably handle these conflicts without hurting the feelings, and should make sure it doesn’t affects work or results in attrition. Handling such situations tactfully is the skill of a great manager. Listening to each party carefully and communicating the decision in a convincing manner is an art which a successful manager should exhibit.

A successful manager is always proactive with all strategies and action plans for meeting the changing needs of the organisation. He/she should be thorough with the basic function of planning, organising, leading and handling the team members as well as people from other departments.