According to American Intercontinental University, contemporary business managers have to take broader and complex roles in their organizations. In any business firm, commonly accepted roles of business managers include planning, organizing, controlling, and leading. However, human resource and business managers often have to focus heavily on their controlling aspect to ensure the success of their business.
In today’s technology-driven organizations, having more managerial control allows leaders to focus on the efficient utilization of their human resources.
Whether you are an HR manager in a construction company or a high-tech firm, exercising the controlling aspect of management is vital for achieving the organization’s objectives.
According to Forbes, management is the integrating force in all organized activity. For human resource managers, organizing, planning, and controlling human resources helps to optimize results. That means the controlling aspect of management is a dynamic function that is interlinked with other modern management.
Since the importance of control has become pivotal in today’s business environments, this post discusses the most obvious advantages and methods of control to help business managers make effective decisions. Let us get started!
What is the Control Function of Management?
Cambridge dictionary describes control as an action that influences the behavior of others in a business setting. For example, from a managerial perspective, controlling or running an organization refers to applying methods and strategies that impact the behavior of employees. This means within a business entity, controlling is a function of controlling the status of operations effectively to meet productivity goals.
According to Project Management Institute (PMI), effective control in organizations requires tools and plans to achieve the organization’s objectives. For instance, organizations exercise performance audits in modern enterprises to exercise better control over employees. Managers must control several tasks in an organization including processes, operations, and compliance with rules and policies.
In modern enterprises, a significant part of a manager’s work is to control the processes of business operations. Since it is pivotal for the manager to set higher standards of production and performance, controlling also involves taking any corrective measures to improve the actions of employees.
This shows that an interactive use of controlling mechanisms in an organization can become a vital force to drive learning and productivity across departments. Therefore, in small and medium organizations, the concept of controlling helps human resource managers to measure the performance of human capital according to set objectives.
Another vital attribute of control in an organization is that it is always proactive. The ideas and strategies of managers must allow employees to enhance their skills instead of hoping for the best. Controlling means that managers must save their ship before it crashes into an iceberg.
How Business Managers Exercise Control?
Controlling in an organization is all about regulating the actions of employees according to the plans formulated by senior executives. Controlling is the fourth and most important function of management that allows managers to measure the performance of departments. That means managers can use several methods like audits and appraisals to evaluate which areas of business needs improvement.
According to Forbes, controlling is a continuous process of taking action and navigation to help people reach their destinations. This means that controlling mechanisms also apply cycles of checks when employees are drifting off course.
With effective control, if something goes wrong, managers can restate all aspects of business and correlate all actions to make corrective plans. This also means that controlling measures and plans assure managers that workers are not deviating from their goals.
For exercising control, upper-level managers often set strategic goals for both short and long terms. That may involve developing strategies to maximize the operational efficiency of employees.
Line managers are responsible for controlling the actions of workers to make sure that their activities are aligned with the company’s goals. Therefore, managers can exercise control using myriad tactics including:
- Setting objectives and goals
- Setting company’s standards
- Measuring employees’ performance against set standards
- Planning any corrective action
Here’s how business managers can take action and improve their controlling aspect of management to produce better outcomes.
1. Identify Control Needs of your Organization
To enhance your company’s performance, identify which controls could be most beneficial for your staff. Identify where money is being wasted and plan corrective measures accordingly. Analyze controls to benefit both staff and business.
2. Use a Time Tracking Tool
Many companies hire work-from-home or freelance employees. They are paid on an hourly basis. Make sure that your company does not lose many productive hours. Without a time-tracker tool, managers have no way to measure the lost productive hours.
The best way to enhance control over productivity is to utilize time-tracking software. Time-tracking tools allow managers to hire and employ an accountable workforce. It also helps managers to increase transparency and involves employees in their tasks.
3. Use an Employee Monitoring Software
Do you have a remote work culture? As an HR manager, you can use a reliable employee monitoring system in your firm that ensures optimum productivity of remote employees. Employee monitoring apps such as Xnspy can be significantly handy for HR managers to improve their controlling aspect. For instance, if you have a suspicion that many young employees spend much of their working hours on web surfing, social media chatting, or gaming, then the top-ranked employee tracking tool can provide you real-time details of their unwanted activities.
A combination of real-time analytics, reports, and insights can help you to pinpoint the productivity of each employee. Employee monitoring app such as Xnspy can be extremely helpful to safeguard a company’s sensitive resources and saves them from exploitations. How?
Suppose your social media marketers working remotely are producing low results with no significant engagements and conversions. If the social media content is not converting or being posted regularly, then social media managers must identify the problem and plan corrective action. This is where Xnspy, the world’s best social media monitoring app can come in handy.
From your web-based control panel, you can track all the social media activities of your under-productive employees. You can choose to monitor several social media platforms accessed by your employees such as:
- Viber
- Line
- And many more
You can also track your employee’s iPhone or iPad remotely and all the text messages sent and received through these devices. The app will even show you the date and timestamps and display all iMessage conversations on your dashboard.
Do you think this is where the benefits end? No!
Using the best employee monitoring app, Xnspy, you can enhance your controlling function by tracking all emails of your employees (sent and received). That means keeping tabs on the websites and emails of your employees is so easy. The app allows you to view all their bookmarks, photos, multimedia files, and appointments.
The app provides beneficial features such as analytics about the top ten websites visited and top five calls attended by your employees. The app even helps your managers to monitor the keystrokes of your employees. In addition to social media monitoring, if you are wondering where your sales employees are at a particular moment, then you can remotely monitor their smartphones using Xnspy. Such incredible features give immense power to HR managers to enforce and improve their controlling aspect of management in any business firm.
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Hi! Thanks for sharing this great article. I’m sure many managers will find it very useful.