What are the challenges facing managers in the contemporary business environment and their solutions?

Answer 1

The contemporary business managers face problems with the intelligence, ethics, and capabilities of employees more than any other issue. The education system in most countries is failing to produce productive, moral, responsible and creative thinking people. It is being taught, even at university level, now that to be actively seeking to better one's self is a "bad" thing.

You must be able to weed through the individual issues to ascertain what REAL capabilities you can get from anyone. It is RARE to find anyone who actually is 100% ethical in today's work force. This is due to the demoralization and socialization of most countries. It is the "why should I work hard" ideology of the weak minded.

In every company that I was an employee for before I worked for myself, I put out more work than was expected and did not bitch about anything. This is because if you just do the job as best as possible, you will be rewarded. Putting in extra hours to make the company money is what makes you valuable. Not some nonsense of equality or anything else.

I always got raises and praises from management, and got extra hours and pay for being part of the solution and not part of the problem.

It is the profitability of the company and employee contributions that determine employee value, not some imaginary equality. If an employee is better than the next guy they should be paid more. If not they cannot be allowed to reduce the moral by getting paid for not doing the work. Nothing erodes productivity like a really weak link being allowed to affect others.

I STRONGLY suggest you buy, make or design testing for any employee you are considering. Even if they pass a test you must put in some sort of qualifying time or probation period for them to prove themselves. Testing is only part of the issues, the others are performance, attitude and quality of work.

3 months (as is standard) is not long enough. I have had to hire people who seem to work hard for the first few months then when they think they found the "gravy train" they waste a lot of time and can actually become a "virus" that destroys the moral of your company.

Human Resource management is the number one problem of ALL companies.

Good employees who are creative and have intelligence are at the foundation of all success.

You need to have a structure to this system developed early on in any company. This will make or break a company today or a department you are managing.

There is absolutely no assurance of anyone with a PhD who is of any value to you. You must determine that as if they were never educated and see what they can really do. The universities are graduating many educated idiots today.

Wishful thinking and faith in the education system is the biggest obstacle to developing a good staff. Pretend like a degree is meaningless and then test for yourself.

There are companies today you can hire to test candidates. These companies exist because of the poor education system today.

Building a trusting and close knit set of managers is the most difficult thing to do today.

Having to deal with modern workers is the most difficult task. Lay down the laws clearly and never let anyone get away with anything, otherwise it becomes a mess of chaos.

I speak from experience of trying to be "liberal" and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and being "conservative" and using and imposing rules and the company making money.

Set up ways to correct employees and never wait to correct. As soon as someone breaks a rule that will destroy production, quality, or moral, pull them aside and correct them.