Managing your staff: workforce planning

As an employer, it is important to understand how to motivate your employees, and how to manage their performance in order to the get the best out of you staff.

The downloadable resources on this page are referred to in Your Workforce - a workforce planning guide. 

Read about how to use the workforce templates to customise the documents for your business.

Motivating employees

Motivate your employees by appealing to each of the following ‘Three needs’ factors:

1. Achievement

Employees need to know when they’ve done a job well and be recognised for it.

2. Power

Employees need to have some control over their own actions, and perhaps the actions and outputs of others.

3. Affiliation

Employees need to feel part of a team and have some social connection to colleagues.

4.1 Motivate, manage and reward employees checklist DOCX (44.5 KB)
4.1 Motivate, manage and reward employees checklist PDF (83.3 KB)

4.2 Ways to motivate and reward your employees form DOCX (44.4 KB)
4.2 Ways to motivate and reward your employees form PDF (49.3 KB)

Managing performance

To successfully manage your employees’ performance, follow all of these steps:

Step 1. Reach an agreement with each employee on what you expect them to contribute and document this agreement.

Step 2. Inform employees what the business goals are and how they will contribute to them.

Step 3. Decide what you want to measure - eg: the number of sales made by each individual and each team.

Step 4. Decide how to measure it - eg: by tracking the number of sales every day, week or month.

Step 5. Give feedback to individuals and teams.

Step 6. Set up regular performance appraisal appointments to discuss each employee’s progress.

Step 7. Record each performance appraisal to track their progress from one appraisal meeting to the next.

Step 8. Set employees’ goals for the coming year and work out if they will need extra training or support - keeps goals realistic and valid.

Step 9. Regularly measure your business’ progress against the business goals and let everyone know.

Step 10. Repeat this process regularly, modifying the goals as your business changes.

4.3 Job performance appraisal form DOCX (46.3 KB)
4.3 Job performance appraisal form PDF (52.4 KB)

4.4 Structured methods of performance review factsheet DOCX (45.5 KB)
4.4 Structured methods of performance review factsheet PDF (51.8 KB)

4.5 Employee exit checklist DOCX (45.1 KB)
4.5 Employee exit checklist PDF (49.9 KB)

4.6 Employee exit interview form DOCX (48.7 KB)
4.6 Employee exit interview form PDF (60.0 KB)

Rewarding performance

To maintain employee motivation, it’s important to reward and recognise good performance.

Reward your high-performing staff with a mixture of the following:

Financial rewards

In addition to salary or wage remuneration, you may consider rewarding staff with other financial rewards including any of the following:

• private use of a work car
• access to a cheap loan
• a gym membership
• entertainment such as free tickets to concerts
• covering employee expenses such as school fees
• giving benefits under a salary sacrifice arrangement
• extra superannuation payments.

Non-financial rewards

Non-financial rewards may include any of the following:

• recognition
• higher status
• positive feedback
• more responsibility
• greater participation.

Other rewards

Other types of rewards may include any of the following:

• extra leave
• Christmas or birthday gifts
• work-life balance benefits such as flexible working hours
• subsidised staff canteens and free tea and coffee
• personal development training
• gifts
• subsidised goods or services.