As a Project Manager do you give much thought as to ways to reward employees - although more likely as a Project manager it would be ways to reward your Project Team. Depending on your organisational structure it may not be within the power of the Project Manager to give pay rises, so here are some suggestions as to different forms of renumeration
One of my favorite ways to reward high performing employees is with public recognition. Whether you run a pizza joint or a Fortune 500 company, never underestimate the significance of public recognition. By praising an employee in front of his peers, you indicate what types of behavior are most valued and give your employee increased esteem to recognize his good work. This is no small motivating factor, and can inspire hard workers to work even harder.
Of course, bonuses are a great way to reward employees. These awards don't have to only come in the form of money, however. Some of the most popular ways to reward employees in lower paid industries are with tickets to various events, but these methods can also be transferred to higher-level positions. Why not give your top performer an all expense paid trip to some local resort town? Why not treat your star manager to a weekend yacht cruise? With the connections that many companies have, these can be surprisingly affordable ways to reward employees.
Finding ways to reward employees that don't single out any particular worker can be a little bit more tricky. You see, after work events will not always be seen as a reward. No matter how hard you try to get people in your company together, they may not enjoy socializing outside the workplace. Nonetheless, in most situations you can take the office out for a nice dinner as a way to show your appreciation for good all-around performance. Even when this isn't one of the most appreciated ways to reward employees, they will see where you're coming from. Whether or not they enjoy themselves, they will recognize that they are being taken out because they did a good job.
Project Management Articles
IT Project Management Training: Filling the Gap
If you should ask any experienced major information technology service provider what the biggest challenge is that they face each day chances are their response will be "project management." Obviously, the success of any information technology initiative is dependent on organized, resourceful and efficient project management. However, traditional information technology project management training has often been underemphasized and downplayed by most management teams.
There are different types of project management training programs for different occupations. Software project management training is very different from other project management training for instance construction management project training. Different personnel spread across the world can work on a single IT project. So the needs of information technology project are entirely different from those of other business projects and hence there are various management-training programs.
Most colleges do not offer specialized majors in project management. Courses exist on the subject but to get an actual degree in the field is rare. Because of this, it is difficult to hire and place personnel directly into jobs specifically about project management. Because the success of a project is often directly related to the skill of the project manager, companies need to be sure to...
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How to Define Tasks for MS Project
Training is an important step in learning to use Microsoft Project. It is a complicated piece of software which is very powerful but can be frustrating to the new user. Instructor-led courses let users get proficient with the software much more quickly than self-study will.
However MS Project training courses teaches students how the use the software and not how to plan projects. Slapping in arbitrary and unrealistic schedules simple makes Project an effective way to track the company's downfall.
Let's start with the basics: proper task definition. All projects break down to individual tasks assigned to individual people and if the tasks are not well characterized the plan is doomed to fail.
Think In Hours Not In Weeks
One of the most common mistakes new project planners make is to define the tasks far too broadly. If the plan has a task such as "Write documentation - 2 months" then there is no way that task will be completed on time.
When a planner creates such a large task then no thought has been given to the individual steps the task comprises and that...
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