Personnel management is a type of management that deals with the relationship between an employee and a company. Why could this be important? It is because personnel are the backbone and embodiment of every organization. Their actions or inactions determine how well a company performs. These actions or inactions are influenced by their level of satisfaction, their access to resources, and the expertise or skill which they possess. All of these things, in turn, could be provided through effective personnel management. 

To figure out if effective personnel management is the key to building a dream team, we will look at what the concept involves, what benefits it holds, and what might be lacking in teams when they utilize effective personnel management. 

What Effective Personnel Management Involves

Understanding Your Team

Understanding your team is a major point in effective personnel management. It aims to generate a manual of some sort. And with this guidance, founders have an idea of how each individual fits into the team, what roles they would perform best in, and perhaps, when or how long these first two apply. 

A founder can be said to understand his team when he figures out the strengths and weaknesses of team members, for instance whether they are good at mathematics or calculation but poor at literature or history; when he knows their preferences for example, whether they would rather work hard than skip job processes; when he knows their perspectives, for example, whether they think they are underpaid or not; and more. 

They would also have a good idea of team schedules like meetings, leaves, breaks, and training. 

Effective Resource Allocation

Effective resource allocation deals with sharing resources in a way that promotes optimal operations. This key activity has far-reaching benefits. It ensures that no personnel feels left out, since they all get the resources they need when they need them. In addition to this, companies can build a team that is generally skilled. Such a team would consist of personnel who have the experience of using all the available resources.  

Project Monitoring 

Project monitoring typically promotes productivity and inspires team spirit. However, monitoring a large team is difficult. As a result, many managers either fail to go round the entire team or do so much monitoring that it becomes a nuisance and constantly interrupts the job being done. So how can managers effectively perform project monitoring? First, large teams should be broken down into smaller groups. Managers can then monitor these groups by using time records, holding meetings, and reviewing process steps or entire goals. 

Identifying Gaps

By utilizing effective personnel management, founders are able to see lapses in small groups and in the entire team of workers. This refers to situations where workers possess less than the required skill or expertise necessary to perform their job. Additionally, they identify people or aspects of the team in need of support including resources like hardware or a simple advice. 

Effective Decision Making

Understanding your team, allocating resources, monitoring projects and identifying lapses all lead to making effective decisions. What do we mean? When you take the first four steps, you build your expertise. You learn about your team, you are aware of what resources are available and how easy or difficult it is to apply them, and you have good knowledge of the team’s strong points. All of this adds up to valuable expertise which will help you make effective decisions later on. 

Ways in Which Effective Personnel Management Impacts Teams

It Reduces Friction and Overall Waste

As we mentioned earlier, one of the key steps to effective personnel management is understanding your team. Ticking this box will get you to know who is good at what. In effect, tasks will be assigned based on the capabilities of team members. 

This significantly reduces the time each team member spends on their job. It also reduces production difficulties since projects effortlessly move from one point to the next. Moreover, when founders effectively allocate resources, they also get to reduce wastage of these resources. 

The way this works is that resources are only shared at the time when they are needed, and in the quantity in which they are needed. Furthermore, team members in this type of setting are well trained to manage resources and that is exactly what they do. 

It Ensures Achievement of Set Goals

Project monitoring is not done for the fun of it. Founders need to see progress and this is the goal behind keeping an eye on the team. In the short run, project monitoring ensures that the entire team is doing its thing right. And what happens in the long run? It is that the team achieves its set goals. 

It Highlights Support Points

As we mentioned earlier, monitoring team projects allows managers to identify and pinpoint areas of difficulty. They may find out that an individual or a group is underperforming, perhaps, due to a lack of resources or expertise. With this, they can take steps to resolve the issue.

It Improves Overall Decision Making Skill

‍

Everyone knows that business conditions are unpredictable. Nevertheless, the decisions managers make also go a long way to determining whether the business succeeds or not. Effective personnel management, therefore, fine tunes founders to improve their overall decision-making skills. It is relevant in impromptu or difficult situations, for example, when businesses experience a production downtime. 

What More Does It Take To Build A Dream Team?

‍

After seeing the benefits we’ve listed above, you might ask “what more would it take to build a dream team?” The answer is nothing. 

This article by AG5 highlights what we mean by that. It mentions that effective personnel management combines strategic, tactical, and operational management of a business’s staff. 

Strategic management here deals with the psychological well-being of employees, the recruitment policy of a company, and other things workers need. On the other hand, tactical management takes care of resources including the availability of tools and access to staff training, whereas operational management is tied to personnel-related processes for example, employee recruitment, medical examination, I.D issuance, and even safety processes.  

All of these intrinsic steps and categories come together to form a holistic, 360^o approach to managing employees. It proves effective because it addresses personnel, production as it relates to the personnel, and the relationship that exists between human resources and every other aspect of a business. 

‍