Communication with clients is an essential part of any company’s performance that in many ways defines the organization’s success among the target customers. Therefore, for a firm to succeed in the target market, it is essential to make sure that the frontline staff is skilled and resourceful.
Hence the necessity to carry out regular assessments of the frontline managers’ skills emerges. As the frontline manager’s task concerns mostly communication issues, it will be reasonable to put a stronger emphasis on the communication issues, particularly, the skill of solving conflicts and negotiating.
When defining the key characteristics of a good method for assessing the performance of frontline supervisors, one will have to consider the Likert-type questions as the basic means to measure the quality of the specified specialists’ skills. By introducing the respondents to a scale for the evaluation of the frontline managers’ skills, one will be able to define not only the areas that cause the greatest concern, but also the urgency of the problems to be addressed and, therefore, the severity of the key concerns.
The questions will concern defining the extent of the frontline managers’ skills, while the answers to the questions will range from “1” (“very bad”) to “5” (“very good”). Rather popular in staff assessment, Likert-type surveys help range the issues according to their severity (Feeney & Boardman, 2011).
As far as the actual questions are concerned, the survey will have to incorporate the ones that measure the managers’ approaches to conflict solving and negotiation processes. To be more specific, the questions such as “Do you agree that the company’s managers are never personal when they address a specific issue?” and “Do you think that the company’s frontline managers prefer the collaborative strategy when negotiating with the staff and the clients?” should be incorporated into the survey.
Thus, it will be possible to outline the issues that the company’s staff considers to be the key concern with the current frontline management staff (Bush, 2013).
The questions concerning the clarity of the communication process must also be included into the survey. With the help of the questions like “Do the instructions provided by the frontline staff help address the problem timely and properly?”, the issue of staff instruction can be addressed and improved.
Unless a frontline manager provides clear and concise information concerning the issues that need to be addressed, no major improvement will occur in the production process (Hales & Rabey, 2011). Hence, it is imperative to incorporate the questions that aim at defining the efficacy of the frontline managers’ ability to stream the staff’s efforts the right direction. The questions such as “Are the instructions provided by the frontline management clear and concise?” must be included into the survey as well.
Due to the need to converse with a range of clients and, therefore, the necessity to incorporate a variety of communication skills in general and conflict solving abilities in particular into the assessment of the frontline managers’ skills.
To be more specific, it is crucial that the frontline managers should be able to choose the proper negotiation strategy in case of a conflict and use all resources available in order to prevent one from occurring. A test based on a Likert-type scale will allow for an efficient assessment of the staff’s skills and provide rather detailed instructions on the further methods of addressing the problem.
Reference List
Bush, T. K. (2013). Determining competencies for frontline sales managers in for-profit organizations. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 15(3), 296–313.
Feeney, M. K. & Boardman, C. (2011). Organizational confidence: An empirical assessment of highly positive public managers. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, 21(4), 673–697.
Hales, S. & Rabey, G. (2011). The frontline manager: fronting up to organisational change. Industrial and Commercial Training, 43(6), 368–376.