Management at all levels takes a lot of research, skill, and experience. If you’re in a supervisory role, managing your employees isn’t as simple as telling people what to do or keeping policies in place like a dictator. This is especially true if you’re dealing with a field where you want staff to come up with innovative solutions and think outside the box. The line between routine tasks and innovation in IT, though, is unique. Unlike a creative field where your everyday task is to come up with new ideas, much of IT workload is keeping things steady and dealing with problems as they arise. On the other hand, if you’re not a free thinker who expounds upon the potential of technology, then the role you have as an IT engineer isn’t being fully utilized. This is why it’s necessary to take advantage of the right communication tools that can help you more effectively manage staff, as well as understanding how the human brain works in a team setting. Here are four management tips for IT professionals in today’s competitive workforce.

1. Balancing Thinking Inside and Outside the Box

The IT field attracts a variety of personalities, and making the most of talent is one of the most important parts of managing any staff. Although consistency in everyday operations is essential, you also might be preventing true brilliance from shining through. Baseline posits the view that one of the top roadblocks in getting IT professionals to be more innovative is because they end up wasting time with troubleshooting tasks. A good way to get around this is by streamlining work plans. Prioritize smoothing out wrinkles and unnecessary headaches for your employees who have the most potential to think outside the box and enjoy doing so, and hand over those tasks to staff who prefer to deal with nitpicky details. Usually, there’s a surprising balance of both personality types within a team. That doesn’t mean you should unload a bunch of thankless tasks onto someone who’s not an innovative thinker. Rather, make sure you’re matching each employee’s strength to an appropriate role.

2. Choosing the Right Communication Tools

One of the most important parts of managing, of course, is how you convey information. Since many IT companies these days inevitably deal with off-site workers, using video is a good idea. Blue Jeans video conferencing for IT is currently a popular solution, since it allows for clearer communication. This can also work well for getting everyone into the same virtual conference room to discuss current projects and resolve issues. Even if your staff is all on-site, using technology that goes beyond email and works more quickly will improve productivity and free up precious time for everyone involved.

3. Keeping or Breaking Traditional Managerial Methods

Tweak Your Biz states that one pro of having regular performance reviews is the ability to fairly and accurately quantify achievements and success rates. Rather than being vague in any criticism or praise you might have for an employee, sitting down and going over benchmarks that clearly translate to an evaluation not only provides the employee with a sense of structure, but also fairness. This can be most easily achieved with video conferencing, especially in an IT setting where technology is always at the fore of everyday dealings.

4. Reassessing and Building Your Supervisory Policies

As the workforce becomes more global, you may need to reassess how you manage your staff and what kinds of policies you expect to be able to keep intact or do away with. For example, if you’re going to be managing off-site workers that are geographically diverse, basing your human resources policies solely on face to face interactions isn’t wise. Instead, this is when it’s time to reassess your policies and how you expect to deploy work as well as assign tasks. This is especially important if you’re working with a team on a project, or you’re dealing with an IT staff member that’s providing off-site support to a single company. Whatever the situation might be for you, the basic idea is that you need to adapt to the times. Sit down and have a look at all your written material, such as job descriptions and policies regarding management tiers, and adjust accordingly.

Every field has a certain level of human resources policies that need to be adjusted as the world evolves. This is because communication methods change, and hiring processes also shift from time to time. In the case of the IT sector, most professionals are already ahead of the game in some ways since the entire basis of the field is utilizing technology and understands the ins and outs of its potential. However, applying that knowledge to your own staff is a bit different, but absolutely essential. Whether you’re planning on conducting annual employee reviews via video or altering your hiring manual, the bottom line is that you need to make sure that your current policies are up to snuff so you can efficiently manage today’s workforce.