Don't you wish employees came with instruction manuals? Studies show managers spend 60% of their time dealing with people problems. That leaves only 40% to work on the organization's objectives. Have you ever become frustrated by an employee's inability to follow simple instructions or ideas, or surprised by an employee's hostility to you or their co workers? It happens all the time.

What is often missing is objective information on an employee's personality and behavioral makeup. If you understand the employee you can communicate more effectively with him, boost his morale and increase his productivity. You can't go on "gut feel" or keep doing the same old thing. You can lose a good employee that way.

There a number of different employee assessments to help solve this problem, but most managers and business owners aren't psychologists, and don't aspire to be one. They should look for a well validated assessment tool that is easy to administer (the good ones can all be done online) and, most of all, provides an easy to read report for both the employee's manager and the employee.

Let's look at an assessment tool called the Profiles Performance Indicator. It can be done online and generates easy to read reports that are like an "instruction manual" for an employee. So what does it tell you? First of all it will tell you whether an employee will adapt to change, a constant in today's business world and if he is a team player. Next it measures seven more behavioral tendencies including;

Productivity

Quality of work

Initiative

Problem solving

Response to stress and conflict

Work motivation

Motivational energy

This will help you easily create a unique professional development plan for the employee. Every person is different and you want to use the right approach with each employee. Morale gets a tremendous boost because you are using a personalized communication plan for each employee. He sees that your attention is directed at his specific needs and personality. Plus he gets a report designed specifically for his own professional development.

Employee development expert, Robert Cameron, states, "Understanding an employee better will make a manager more effective. With the talent wars raging you can ill afford to lose a good employee just because he was not managed effectively". Cameron goes on to say, "Imagine if you had a unique instruction manual for each employee, wouldn't that make things run so much smoother in the workplace?"

Employees quit supervisors not companies, often because we simply don't understand each other well enough. With this simple 20 minute online assessment you can gain a much better understanding of an employee and how to get him to improve his individual and team performance. It can eliminate much of the time, 60 %, spent resolving misunderstandings, stress issues, and other interpersonal problems.

The bottom line is you don't want to risk losing your best employees. Use the tools that are available to gain a better understanding of "what makes them tick" so that they will be happy, contented and productive employees.

Robert Cameron works with employers across the country to help them enhance their selection, hiring and development of employees. He can be reached at 954-385-8701.