Manage

Teams that operate without confidence operate from a place of fear – fear to try new technologies, fear to report problems, fear to share ideas or observations.

This leads to a culture of stagnation, blame, exclusion “need-to-know mentality,” and lost productivity, among other negatives. Quality and quantity of output almost always suffer. 

By contrast, teams that operate with confidence are characterized by a variety of positive traits, which may vary depending on the culture and context and business needs – high rate of innovation, smooth change management, reduced error rates, collaborative and supportive environments, calculated risk-taking, and swift response to unforeseen circumstances. 

Confident teams are agile, friendly and provide great customer service.

Put in simple terms, the way a person feels about his or her work determines how engaged or disengaged they are – and being confident about one’s performance on the job is a key indicator of overall employee satisfaction. 

Below are some reasons that employees in general – especially high-performing employees on which companies heavily rely – either stay highly engaged and motivated, or completely disengage.

The Importance of Strong, Positive Leadership

It is easy to forget sometimes that employees are human beings, often trying to do their best to balance the commitments of their lives. Employees disengage at high rates when they do not feel like the work they do is important, especially in the younger generations. This may be a result of any of a number of core issues; most often related to issues with process and management.

They may be micromanaged. Their core values may not be aligned with the company mission. The cumbersome processes they navigate on a daily basis may make a saint curse. They may not realize how their contributions support others. They may be in the wrong position for their talents. They may not be the right person for the job. They may not have the training they need to operate at optimal performance. They may have something else on their mind.

In general, an employee will re-engage if he or she receives recognition and praise at least twice a month for what they bring to the team – better if more often, best if related to specific achievements and given publicly.

How Tech Tools Can Help

One way to keep employees motivated is to clear all the small-minded administrivia off their plates. 

Employees want to function at a high level and think creatively. Freeing them up motivates them. One way to do this is to implement automation tools to make their lives easier and eat up a lot of the busy work. 

Automated management software can take over a lot of these tasks, like scheduling and reporting. Other tools are more specific. Some focus on marketing outreach, others focus on invoicing, some focus on data backup, and on and on. 

Software can make it easy for managers to track employee advances and contributions for recognition. Teams can use it to improve outdated business processes and update vital information systems. 

Attainment of goals and department contributions can be visually shared on a weekly basis. Latent talents can be uncovered. Employees that are the wrong fit can be identified early on and transferred. Employee training can be managed. Management problems can be identified. These are all positives. 

Let Employees Know You Value Them

Getting high-performing individual employees and teams to remain engaged and fully support the company objectives involves showing them that their contributions are valued. 

Take time to recognize them in the company newsletter for going above and beyond. Provide incentives. Provide the recognition listed above. However, most importantly, take the time to arrange their workload so that almost every day they get the chance to work on what they do best – and reduce the amount of non-value-added tasks they have to perform. 

Consider the employee’s education level, training, and ability. Are you making a highly skilled employee spend more than 50% of their time on tasks that a high school student could do? If so, you are both woefully losing out. 

If you are asking a person with a master’s degree in economics to scrub floors and spend all of time on data entry, do not expect them to wait long before looking for another job. The work that your employees do should reflect the real potential that they bring to the corporation.

One of the biggest hurdles to reaching the magic “80%” mark – where 80% of the time, an employee is confidently working in his or her area of added-value. Streamlining your business processes, and automating and updating your processes and systems, can free up valuable time where a good employee can better be contributing his analysis, her business acumen, their overhaul of your customer service program. 

Instead of spending two hours a day on reports, they can spend two hours a day brainstorming next year’s product line. A great way to build more efficiency into your company and processes is to optimize the use of good business process management software platforms, which simplify complex interactions and reduce duplication of effort. 

They can also handle things like electronic signatures, simultaneous review, and system upgrades. Clear expectations and goals and targets are also easy to create and communicate with the platforms offered by a number of software firms.

Think About  What They Need

The number one reason that employees disengage is that they not understand, clearly what is required of them. Only slightly behind is not having the tools they need to effectively, efficiently, and/ or responsibly do the work that is asked. The best employee in the world cannot do a job that requires a database if he or she does not have a well-designed, responsive database that creates the type of report they need to provide. 

The best thing you can do for your employees in this regard is understand the work they do, and respond adequately to their stated needs. Improve workflow processes and systems, and teach employees how to optimize their use. You can incorporate the use of software packages to proactively anticipate demand, examine inefficiencies, and test the performance of proposed solutions. 

Include employee feedback in the design, implementation, testing, and operational feedback of systems and processes- and use software to track and analyze this feedback.

Understand Who They Are

Many employers mistakenly think that pay and benefits are all that employees care about. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. You need to create the type of environment where the type of employee you want, actually wants to work.

Think about the needs of your employees as individuals. Know who is an introvert. Know who is best motivated by teamwork. Know what intrinsically motivates your employees – pleasure, pleasantness, and sense of security? Power, importance and influence? Being an outstanding contributor? Opportunities to learn and grow? Specific guidance on every task, or do need to figure it out themselves? Do they a 9-5 schedule, or will they be best suited by a flexible schedule?

Apart the above-mentioned focusing them on their best field of work expertise, also know what motivations and conditions encourage them do their best work. Try to work those things into their work to the extent possible, and also use your software platforms to encourage collaboration of complementary work styles and strengths.

Focus on Personal Growth, Relationships and Collaboration

Employees often feel isolated and insecure when they are not encouraged to create professional friendships at work. To build confidence in your team, encourage professional networking, collaboration and friendship building within your team. 

Encourage team-building, not just once a year, but at regular intervals. Let employees train each other. Celebrate each month’s birthdays. Provide safe spaces for employees to voice concerns and ideas. Provide platforms for anonymous feedback. provide platforms for employees to recognize each other. provide the types of workspaces that aid both employees who need to focus on a task at hand, and those who want to collaborate. 

Provide cloud sharing and virtual meeting spaces for employees who work remotely. Remember to include and recognize the contributions of your remote employees as well, and invite them to company functions. Keep a “who to call” database of employee strengths for resolving challenges. 

Inventory forecasting or estimation can be explained as a financial routine of preempting or forecasting future inventory on a particular timescale. More mundane it is a scientific take on predicting specified future sales regarding a based proposed marketing approach and competitive and uncontrollable sets of forces. 

The future of your retail is predominant on Forecasting inventory and plays a big role in figures of profitability. The type of system you use is supposed to consider sales or purchases encountered in the past month; past season, and the customized duration that depends on future business transactions.

Inventory Planning In Relation To Past Month Sale
When planning the inventory for a coming month using the past month sale, the number of planning days on the inventory is pertinent. (For this scenario, 30 days) in touch with how long you intend the inventory arrangement to be worked on in regards to (for this scenario, past 30 days).

Ascertained to a specific vendor or product, it is feasible to use a brand name based filter. You will be provided with a suggested quantitative by the system you are using when filling in your inventory. 

This will be based on the past month daily average sale. The systems suggested quantity can also be used to calculate the precise delivery time of a product by a vendor.

Inventory Planning In Relation To Past Season Sale

As the one above, you will be provided with the quantities that are suggested by the system. This can help you in the afore planning of holidays like Christmas to come based mostly on how much you sold on the previous Christmas. 

In this case, you will need to have the required days, 60 days that’s for December and January in conjunction with the previous December and January to calculate a perfect inventory prediction.

With that said, looking at your fresh stock and how fast or slow they are moving is also essential. On bigger occasions like Christmas, it is imperative to apply other factors to your inventory planning on fresh stocks will help you in keeping your customers for lack of new stock.

Why Both Beginning And Ending Inventory Cost Calculations Are Important 
Firstly it aids you in monitoring your business’ current trends. For instance, on one side a beginning inventory that is decreased is a nice omen since it might result from that sales growth of a certain period.

While on the other side, it might result from problems in the processes of your inventory management or supply chain.  

For the beginning inventory cost that has increased, it might arise either from a sales’ downward trend or having stock build-up prior to a busy period like prior to holidays. Thus it is crucial to be very accurate draw right conclusions as well as make good decisions while calculating both the beginning and ending inventories.

How to Calculate Ending Inventory
Are you having difficulties on how to calculate ending inventory? Basically ending inventory is calculated by annexing new purchases with the beginning inventory then deducting the sold goods costs. In other simpler words, ending inventory is a product of the available goods that have not been sold at an accounting period end. 

Despite the unit number at the end of an accounting period is not dominant to the inventory outcome; the type of valuation system has an impact on the value of the dollar of ending inventory.

So management has to be very careful on the type of system they use.
In a time of inflationary pressures or rising of prices, FIFO brings out a bigger ending inventory valuation as compared to LIFO. In that regards, specific businesses strategically choose FIFO or LIFO techniques based on the environment the businesses are located at.

Ending Inventory Breakdown
A physical inventory count may lead to additional correct inventory valuation. However, for enormous businesses, that’s unpractical. RFID systems, Inventory management software, as well as other technologies leveraging platforms and connected devices advancements, may ease the challenge of valuation.

Other inclusive problems are:
• Listing down theft inventory levels, general obsolescence, and decreases in market value.
• A popular item of the balance sheet is the Ending inventory that is important for obtaining financing. Creditors and investors closely monitor financial statements that are owned by manufacturing and retail businesses that are inventory rich.
• Correct inventory valuations can have an impact on several popular metrics of financial statements.  

Income statement items are inclusive of gross profit, cost of goods sold as well as net income. Equity, total assets, current assets as well as working capital emanate from a balance sheet.

Every item is crucial for having a business’ performance and financial statements assessed.
Conclusion
Therefore, when it comes to forecasting, several uncertainties are for sure for every organization. To have these uncertainties’’ adverse effects reduced an organization needs to take an iterative approach to determine a projected inventory in the future.

When you have data available, everything is measurable. However, to forecast inventory accurately, you need to be focused on relevant data points. It is important to take a few points when you are forecasting inventory.

BAn untold truth about HRs is that all efforts put in from finding the right candidate, interviewing them, selecting, onboarding and finally handling their separation costs money. Hence, it becomes an additional responsibility of the HR to always go the extra mile to find the right candidate for the company who will be a part of the company for a long run and help the company grow. 

Usually these expenses are centrally handles by the finance department but, with Pocket HRMS, your HR can not only automate the expense management, but also monitor the ROI behind every spending and aim to be more efficient in the spending. A smart HRMS solution like Pocket HRMS gives you the freedom to choose from varied modules to suit your business needs. 

Read also: How cloud payroll software can help your business in times of disaster?

How does an HR software help you automate your expense management?

1. Taxation and Standard Deductions 

With Pocket HRMS, the employees can file their declaration for the year and the algorithm in the system will help the HR calculate the Income Tax and other deductions for the individual. Seeing everything clearly, helps the employee plan his/her taxes in advance and file for returns without any hiccups eliminating any type any human error.

1. Claims Reporting

Either travel expenses or taking the client out for dinner/lunch is an expense that the sales person has to borne to make a potential sales. With the help of a smart HRMS software, you can manage all your claims in one place along with the proper approval system and add that up when the payout is to be made. 

1. Transparency in approvals:

With integrated HRMS software comes a business card for all types of transactions with automated and streamlined transparent expense management system. Now employees can track all their reimbursements processes with ease along with their approvals avoiding any chances of fraud cases between claimers and approvers.

1. Quick operations:

Processing for medical claims is another huge task for the HR wherein they not only have to deal with the employee, but also the TPA of the insurance company. Having one streamlined software makes it easier for all the communication to be logged along with providing transparency to all the parties. Lodging all your claims are now just one click away.

1. Easy ROI reporting:

Many businesses, during their procurement period, find reporting on their Return on Investment (ROI) the most tedious and tough task to perform. Doing it manually, does not only arises errors but also consumes tons of minutes which could rather be focused on other productive activities. Switching your accounts’ department to automated expense management gives you an easier way of reporting within no time. Automating expense management and budgeting with a system can eliminate all errors and increase efficiency.

Epilogue:

Including an HRMS system into your expense management department can be a beneficial act. It is intelligent enough to manage compliances, deductions, taxations and all other expenses automatically without any error. 

Ritik Singh writes about HR (Human Resource) software, cloud and enterprise technology. A dynamic content writer who writes for PocketHRMS, a leading provider of cloud based HR software with inbuilt AI-powered HR chatbot (smHRty) to small and mid-sized businesses across India.

Any company would agree that it’s critical to maintain a harmonious atmosphere in the office for maximum productivity and collaboration between your team members. However, managing and retaining talents of all ages may come off a bit more challenging than you think.

 

For one, the disparity between age groups of different employees is an interesting subject in today’s diverse workplace. A lot of assumptions and stereotypes have been thrown at either party: Millennials are stubborn and entitled; the older generation is inflexible and old-fashioned. These stereotypes fuel the friction that may sometimes arise in a multigenerational company.

 

It’s important to understand that each group has unique personalities and work ethics based on the culture and time they grew up in. An effective recruitment agency or HR consultant should look at candidates objectively and evaluate what these prospective hires can bring to the table instead of easily believing pre-conceived notions. It’s refreshing to have different perspectives in the workplace so long as everyone fits in the culture.

 

While millennials are currently the youngest in the spectrum, they are not new to the working scene. They are not as naughty as others paint them to be, yet they still receive a lot of flak for their ingenious and radical ways in the workplace. The oldest millennials today are aged 37 years old, which may already assume managerial positions in some companies.

 

This age group is also set to comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025, so learning how to harness their skills is vital to any company. Millennials will indeed continue to revolutionize the workplace in the coming years.

 

The same courtesy of understanding applies to Gen X and baby boomers as well. They know the industry that should be valued, and younger people should be more open to their traditional yet effective processes. After all, the goal of every company is to make all of their team members feel valued and heard at work, meaning all opinions count and contribute to the betterment of the majority.

 

Thankfully, there are actionable steps to managing your multigenerational workplace better. Baby Boomers, Gen X, and millennial workers can become each other’s best assets when given a chance. The secret is to unlock their potential and show them that they can teach valuable lessons to each other, both professionally and personally.

 

Besides that, managers should teach all of their employees to be aware and respectful of each other’s ideas and working styles instead of criticizing or complaining about them. Instill a sense of pride in your team for being part of an age-diverse company, because this will do nothing but bolster their career growth.

 

It won’t be long until the newly graduated Gen Zers joins the workforce. As early as now, your company should be able to smoothen out any tension and successfully promote a safe and fair working environment for everyone involved. If you want to learn more about how millennials and older generations can successfully collaborate in the workplace, continue reading the infographic below: