Tag Archive for: People Management

Employer of Choice – Rewards and Recognition

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 3 of 6)

If you missed part 1 of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

The first two articles in our series build the foundations to becoming an employer of choice. Part 1 looks at the various human resource management issues that worry SME business owners; and covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures. Part 2 discusses Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

What other human resource management strategies can you use to ensure your business becomes an employer of choice?

Rewards and Recognition

Rewards and Recognition – Value the Individual’s Contribution to Team Success

Reward and recognise positive performance by employees. The term ‘reward’ will often bring to mind the idea of a financial bonus and, yes, no doubt monetary rewards would be welcomed by your employees but remember there are many ways to reward staff without paying them more money:

  • Up-to-date tools and equipment, for example, software
  • Office facilities and décor
  • Flexible salary packaging
  • Flexible hours
  • Celebrating business success, and
  • Recognition!!

A regular audit of the tools, equipment, workstations, software, computer equipment, office décor, factory layout, safety and cleanliness is strongly recommended for every business to assess the workplace in terms of what it offers its employees. All too often this is overlooked and can become significant in how the employee views you as an employer.

Flexibility in hours and location also provides a positive environment for staff.

Business success should be celebrated with the team in various ways. Success breeds a positive environment in which to work.

Recognition is often forgotten in workplaces today. Personal feedback is built into the performance management framework above. However, other more personal and public forms of feedback or recognition should be utilised in the workplace to acknowledge and affirm employee performance and ultimately build powerful staff loyalty. This is a powerful lever for engaging and aligning staff in the workplace.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

REMEMBER, it is never too late to act.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Selling the Value to Employees‘.

Employer of Choice – Expanding on the Basics

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 2 of 6)

If you missed part 1 of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

The various human resource management issues detailed in part 1 of our HRM series for employers are consistently found throughout businesses in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sector. Business owners are rightly concerned about the impacts upon their business as they are very serious.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

EMPLOYER OF CHOICE – Expanding on the Basics

An Employer of Choice is an organisation that outperforms its competitors in attracting, developing and retaining talent through innovative human resource management initiatives.

As noted in the previous article, the foundations to becoming an employer of choice are Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures. But, there is much more!

The Second Step – Expanding on the Basics

Effective Communications – Create Pathways to Success

Good communication creates engaged and aligned employees who work effectively and efficiently together. The human resource management processes listed above (and described in part 1 of this series) provide a framework of communication between the manager and his or her team, so necessary for human success in any business. However, communication can’t stop there.

Effective Meetings – Aligning Individuals and Teams

Meetings can burn resources and waste money like nothing else on planet Earth. Managed well, they can be very effective.

  • Meetings must have a clear purpose that is clearly understood.
  • Meetings must be two-way, everyone has input.
  • Meetings must be effective and professionally run:
    • Set agenda.
    • Minutes taken and reviewed.
    • Meeting chaired.
  • Meetings must have accountable outcomes where action results.

If a meeting fulfils the above criteria, it can serve a practical purpose and engage and align staff in the process. They can also strengthen and build relationships within teams and across teams.

Meetings are necessary for a number of reasons:

  • Toolbox/Team Meetings to mutually understand and address team issues.
  • Safety/Environmental/Quality Meetings to mutually understand and address safety, environmental and quality issues.
  • Interdepartmental Meetings to mutually understand and address interdepartmental issues.
  • Vision meetings where the company vison is shared with staff.
  • Sales Meetings to review and strategise business development.
  • Management Meetings to review performance and strategise and implement the strategic direction of the business.

Meetings are an essential and effective way to communicate and ensure that teams are engaged and aligned in specific areas of the business which are relevant to individual and team roles in the organisation.

Effective Day-to-Day Goal Setting and Feedback – Fine Tuning for Success

Performance Management in human resource management provides a framework for managing goals and expectations based around personal objectives of employees and business objectives. However, business is dynamic and ever changing. Supervisors and managers must practice setting, reinforcing and correcting performance to short-term objectives to reinforce and/or modify behaviour and consistently develop individual and team performance. These simple people management skills applied diligently, skillfully and consistently, will help build high performance teams in your business.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need a hand, talk to an experienced business consultant.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Rewards and Recognition‘.

Become an Employer of Choice

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 1 of 6)

Is your business successful and profitable?

Are your people productive? Or are they costing you money?

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

The Human Issue

Human resource management issues are consistently found throughout businesses in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sector. Owners are worried about, even afraid of, the impacts upon their business. The signs are always there and, in many cases, the impacts upon the business are very serious.

What are the signs that point to possible people issues or human resource management issues?

Business owners or managers will often make statements like:

  • If only my staff would do their job.
  • I need to manage tasks; otherwise I get problems.
  • If I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done properly.
  • If only they cared as much as I do.

Staff, meanwhile, often make statements like:

  • I am not happy working here. They don’t care about me.
  • This could be a great place to work, if only management would listen.
  • I don’t understand what is required of me.
  • I want to work in a dynamic team environment.

All too often these statements, and others unspoken, never get addressed, with inevitable results:

  • Overworked owners and managers
  • Disengaged and unproductive staff
  • Good staff leave and poor staff stay

This leads to serious issues within the business:

  • Poor customer service
  • Poor quality products and services
  • Safety issues and incidents
  • Unhappy customers
  • Poor sales
  • Unproductive staff
  • Waste across all areas of the business
  • Conflict in the workplace
  • Poor profit performance
  • And, at worst, business failure.

But it is never too late to act.

BECOME AN EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

An Employer of Choice is an organisation that outperforms its competitors in attracting, developing and retaining talent through innovative human resource management initiatives.

This is more than just creating an attractive place for employees to work, it needs to be an integral part of the corporate strategy that can result in a higher level of performance and productivity in the workplace, greater stability, stronger customer loyalty, high employee satisfaction and loyalty and ultimately, higher profits.
The key question is HOW?

The first step is to implement effective human resource systems and processes in your business.

Effective Selection – The Raw Material for Success

Set the core values and behaviours that you expect in your employees, and the core skills, the must haves, for each role. Develop recruiting standards based around those core skills, core values and behaviours. Then develop recruiting processes that ensure you bring people into your business people who reflect those core values and possess the necessary core skills. Use interview techniques and adhere to an unrelenting policy that you will not hire anyone who does not possess your core values or the necessary core skills.

Effective Induction – Start the Journey to Success

Induction is not just about Health and Safety briefings and introductions. It is also important to set the tone for the new employee and develop induction processes that ensure new staff understand your business, your expectations of them and that they feel a part of your team. Defining roles and responsibilities and building expectations within a role is often forgotten as new staff enter your business. This is pivotal to setting standards and activities for every new employee in your business.

Effective Performance Management – Maintain the Journey to Success

Invest in an effective Performance Management System and ensure your employees are clear about what is expected of them. Link your expectations to the goals and objectives in your business plan to make your business vision more relevant to your people and help them understand why it is important, and keep everyone accountable to those goals and objectives. Review performance against these agreed objectives and revise these objectives regularly. This process provides a two-way feedback framework for every employee and ensures that issues and resources are reviewed and addressed and each staff member is engaged and aligned by positive interaction with his/her manager or supervisor.

The techniques are simple but very effective and, remember, great people love performance management processes. They provide focus and feedback which engages your employees and aligns their performance to business objectives. Great people will thrive in that sort of environment.

Effective Exit Procedures – Refine the Path to Success and Become a Learning Organisation

Constructive feedback from exit interviews can clearly define any problems that you face in attracting and retaining the right people. Effective exit processes are essential to learning how to improve the management of your most important resource – your human resources, your people. If people leave then find out why and act to improve the organisation from the knowledge you gain from the process. This is the essence of a learning organisation.

Skills Development and Training – Provide the Tools for Success

Skills are an integral part of any role within your business. Unfortunately, skills are not always defined clearly for each role within the business. Defining and then assessing skills regularly with each employee provides a framework for the business to evaluate skill needs across the business, within departments and importantly for each individual. This provides the structure to build people development into the business culture and engages staff with a commitment to developing their skill levels with obvious improvements in business performance emanating from that process. Of course, for this to be successful, there must be a commitment to staff training.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult businesses all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need a hand, talk to an experienced business consultant.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Expanding on the Basics‘.

The Value of Mentoring

How do you know you are doing well in your role? How do you know you are leading and managing your business in the best possible way to achieve your goals? Who do you turn to when you are having trouble making a decision or don’t know how to solve a problem?

If major problems arise in your business that you cannot address on your own, or you wish to take your business in a new direction and need a hand then consider seeking out the management expertise of business consultant. But what about the day-to-day issues of leading and managing, who do you turn to?

For many managers, and especially the business owners, the answer is normally no one. You forge ahead doing the best you can with the information, experience and know how you have. Again, we go back to those questions above. How do you know you’ve made the right decision for the best result?

Investing in the development of your employees and yourself is beneficial for both the individual and the organisation. One of the simplest methods to provide employee development is through the concept of mentoring. Mentoring can be both formal and informal and is often a learning exercise for both the mentor and mentee.

Investing in the development of your employees and yourself is beneficial for both the individual and the organisation.

Could mentoring have a place in the human resource management of your business?

The process of mentoring usually involves a more experienced person discussing issues and circumstances with a less experienced person to help them find techniques and practices to address their problems and opportunities. The caveat is that the mentor does not ‘tell’ the mentee what they should do. Instead, the mentor asks the mentee the right questions to enable them to find the answers or remedies themselves to successfully address the problems they may be facing, thus increasing knowledge and confidence.

In essence, a successful mentoring relationship is based upon trust and the understanding that the mentor will support the mentee whilst also challenging the mentee to learn and grow. The mentor shares with the mentee their experiences and know how for the purpose of this growth.

Now, if you don’t have a mentor, is it time for you to find one?