Being a senior manager of any company is a difficult job. You’re smack dab in the middle of the corporate ladder between the executives at the top, and the customer-facing, entry-level, or production personnel. That means that you have to manage the corporate office’s lofty expectations while setting realistic goals for your team members.
Executives don’t accept excuses. They only care about results, and your job as the senior manager is to make sure that you get them. Some managers believe the best way to get results is by micromanaging their team members, whilst others believe in a more laidback approach. No matter what your management style is, these tools will help make your job a little easier.
1. HR Software
Many companies are shifting away from hiring entire HR departments to train their managers to do more, and are instead providing them with the technical tools that they need. If you’re the senior manager at a company that doesn’t have an HR department on location, you could greatly benefit from HR software.
HR software can be used for everything from recruiting, hiring, and onboarding to scheduling and payroll. As the boss, it’s your job to have a thorough understanding of what’s going on in all of those areas of administration. With HR software, you get all of those capabilities centralized in an easy-to-use enterprise-level software program. The good news is that you won’t need an IT department to run the program for you. To learn more about what HR information software can do for you and your company, visit https://arcoro.com/blog/hris-guide/.
2. Consultants and Facilitators
If you’re struggling to get the results you need from your team members and the company itself as it’s currently constructed, then you should bring in a facilitator or consultant. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is take a step back and let someone else show you how you and your team members could be improved.
It’s usually your job as the manager to ensure that things run smoothly and your branch meets corporate goals. However, even the best managers could use a little outside help from time to time and benefit from the improvement opportunities that a consultant or facilitator will bring.
You and your team members could also probably benefit from value stream mapping. The process itself involves analyzing the current state of operations and using the metrics to create an ideal future state of operations. With the goal of the future state being set as optimal, analyzing the current state of operations is critical to the optimization of operations, products/services, and logistics by creating new ways of doing things in specific processes.
A consultant could help you find ways to lower costs, streamline critical processes, and value stream map processes to see how you can enhance them. You can learn how to apply its principles to your operations at a value stream mapping workshop.
3. Project Management Software
At the end of the day, a senior manager’s main function is to make sure that everyone is on the same page and on board with the company’s set objectives. With more people across the United States working remotely, project management software has become essential for many companies.
If you’re a senior manager in an office, then it would be a good idea to implement project management software in your company’s enterprise infrastructure. The pandemic has shown us how unpredictable life and business can be and how–at any time–your physical office could be shut down.
Project management software allows you to assign tasks remotely and oversee their completion while collaborating with team members each step of the way. It’s like having a virtual office–and the best thing about a virtual office is you don’t have to buy everyone coffee.
Many of the new tools at your disposal are apart of Industry 4.0. What is industry 4.0, you ask? What you should know about Industry 4.0 is that it’s bringing tools like machine learning and artificial intelligence to life in everyday operations. There’s no better friend to the 21st century senior manager than new technology.
4. Employee Feedback
A great leader is one who can learn from their subordinates. If you want to improve as a manager, the best tool you have at your disposal is the opinions of the people who work directly under you. It’s easy to let a performance evaluation be your guide, but those only deal in results. To become the best manager possible, you need to know what your employees think of your management style.