Tag Archive for: Human Resource Management

From owner dependence to staff empowerment and accountability

When you start a business, it is natural to be very hands-on and want to be across everything. But, as the business establishes and grows, if this approach continues you begin to disempower and demotivate your staff. While perhaps not the intent, you start to heavily micromanage your team. While this management style is typically disliked by staff, it is also a style that creates a lot of problems for the manager. If you always need to oversee all the details and sign off on everything with limited delegation, you end up working a lot more than you’d like. More importantly, time that could be spent on the wider picture – company strategy, direction, and vision – must be set aside, to make space for the day-to-day. Never a good plan for a business to succeed.

This was very much the case for a client of ours. A small manufacturing company that initially came to us with issues involving a poor company culture, and succession – the owner was keen to step back from the business. With a turnover of $2.5 million in sales with a 15% Earnings Before Interest and Tax, from a financial standpoint, the company was doing well. But staff morale was low, and the owner saw no possibility where he would be able to reduce his involvement in the business.

As is often the case, we may be called upon to address a particular challenge with a company, but when we take a closer look, other issues become apparent. Certainly, there was a lack of opportunity for succession and company culture issues, but we also found significant micromanagement in place to maintain efficiency, quality, and service levels. Understandably this was not helping the low morale which was prevalent throughout the workplace. There was an extreme reliance on the owner who as a result had a very poor work/life balance. Systems were under-utilised and human resource processes very lacking. Moderate to high levels of supervision were required because of the skill levels within the company.

Over a 2-year period we worked with this company to address the need for human resource processes, structures, and staff development that were required to overturn a poor company culture and too much reliance on the owner. We defined and sourced a General Manager for the organisation. The owner wanted (and needed) to become less hands-on and this would only be achieved with a highly skilled and experienced General Manager to take over a lot of the tasks the owner had acquired. A suitable reporting structure with the General Manager was enabled to ensure that the owner remained appropriately informed.

We established human resource processes and provided training as appropriate to support this. Staff were restructured in line with appropriate skill levels and cultural fit with the organisation. Training processes and procedures were set up to ensure skill fit with role and upskilling as required. Training reviews and retraining were included within this along with processes for non-conformance. To support staff engagement and to improve morale, human resource engagement and recognition tools were determined and initiated.

As a result of our work, there were significant improvements in quality, efficiency, and throughput across the business with less support from the owner required. Staff morale has substantially increased, the company culture is much improved, and the owner is mostly stepped back from the business. Having the support of Gibsons provided the focus and expertise to work through the solutions needed. Often this can be difficult when you are too close to the problem, or do not even see all the issues in place.

The benefit of having a Gibsons Consultant support your business is having an expert with extensive, hands-on business experience. Not an academic or theorist, but a realist who can provide practical advice and assistance that will deliver increased productivity, greater efficiency, and improved profitability to your business. Find out more about the services we offer and how we can help you reach your business goals.

Let us take the following tasks off your list:

  • Strategic analysis and business plans.
  • Becoming an Employer of Choice.
  • Marketing and sales plans.
  • Brand development and promotion.
  • Business process modelling.
  • Improving systems and workflows.
  • Optimising organisational structure.
  • Pinpointing skills gaps and implementing training.
  • Reviewing financial performance.
  • Profitability improvement programs.
  • Managing organisational change.
  • Mentoring to develop executive leadership.
  • Business process modelling.
  • Mergers and acquisitions.
  • Technology strategy and implementation.

We wish you a Merry Christmas…

…and a Happy New Year.

As 2023 starts to draw to a close, we would like to extend our seasons’ greetings. We hope you get to enjoy some relaxation and fun during the festive time. To all our clients, present and former, it has as always, been our privilege to support your businesses to reach and extend their potential. Our intention is always to work collaboratively with you to meet the goals and objectives for your specific business. We look forward to continuing our work with you in 2024. If you have not engaged our services this year, please know that the door is always open if you are keen to reinvigorate your business performance, as we enter 2024. We can be contacted at https://gibsons.com.au/contact/.

The Gibsons team.

Our services

As consultants each with a career lifetime of industry experience, there’s little we haven’t seen and little we haven’t dealt with in business. Each Gibsons business consultant, in addition to their personal area of career specialisation, has extensive, hands-on practical experience meeting challenges with solutions in a wide variety of scenarios, industry sectors and business model types. We are not theorists. We bring advice and assistance that has been “road tested” and known to deliver productivity increases, improved sales, and increased profitability in a business just like your own. We have a keen eye for the issues and opportunities that need actioning, and we’re here to help you build a stronger business right across the functions of people, marketing, processes and profit.

Let us take the following tasks off your list:

  • Strategic analysis and business plans.
  • Becoming an Employer of Choice
  • Marketing and sales plans.
  • Brand development and promotion.
  • Business process modelling.
  • Improving systems and workflows.
  • Optimising organisational structure.
  • Pinpointing skills gaps and implementing training.
  • Reviewing financial performance.
  • Profitability improvement programs.
  • Managing organisational change.
  • Mentoring to develop executive leadership.
  • Business process modelling.
  • Mergers and acquisitions.
  • Technology strategy and implementation.

Our business pillars

Map out a better business with Gibsons. The first step on the road to success for any business is a strategic analysis. Our analysis reviews your current position, develops a vision for the future, and evaluates the strategy options available to take your business from where it is now to where you want it to be.

Once we’ve determined the best strategy, we’re able to develop a strategic business plan with you. This plan provides the detail needed across those key business pillars we always come back to – People, Marketing, Process and Profit.

People – Empower the agents of your success. Many people say their people are their most important resource, but do they act that way? Gibsons Business Consulting offers a range of people management services and capabilities to help you build a team that will drive your business forward.

Marketing – build a market-focused operation. Gibsons offers expert, tailored solutions beyond the scope of most marketing agencies because we approach marketing through the business-strategic lens. Whilst Gibsons excels at coordinating the tactical marketing activities involved in marketing promotion, we’re well known for strategic marketing which is the foundation that effective advertising, public relations and sales promotions should be built on. Ensure that everything about your business is meeting needs and reinforcing why customers should buy from you and not your competitors.

Process – build practical processes for greater productivity, efficiency, and profit. The primary reason for implementing business systems is to build consistency and, therefore, predictability into the quality of outcomes. Better systems and processes also establish the means for day-to-day operational activities to manage themselves, leaving managers with the time they need to deal with exceptions and to work on business development.

Profit – maximise business profit and cash flow. The aim of any business is to generate sustainable profit and positive cash flows consistently. If a business is unprofitable or isn’t cash positive, it can’t survive. It isn’t a viable business. We make sure you have the right measures and review processes in place so you can take informed action when you need to and keep your business on track.

Structure and process change to turnaround business performance.

It’s rare that we are approached by a company requiring assistance where there is clarity about why business performance is not as expected, and what should be done to fix this. Often, there is an understanding of the problem – a drop in sales, financial targets not being met, limited growth and so on – but the ‘why?’ of the issue is not clear, nor are the actions required to turn things around. We may enter our work with a client having been given one brief, only to find that other issues come to light as we investigate the problems that are taking place.

A manufacturing and installation company supplying the construction sector reached out to us for support with cited business performance issues. Sales levels were falling, and the company was experiencing a sharp decline in their Earnings Before Interest and Tax from a level of over 10% to only 2.5% of sales. We conducted a thorough review of the business’ operations and in addition to the problems with sales levels and EBIT, identified an issue with their margins for quoting and pricing. The company simply were not running at a level of margin that was long-term sustainable. They had significant quality and warranty issues which were cutting into profit margins, and there was poor labour management and supervision in place.

Without the right business structure and processes in place, it becomes very difficult to identity the ‘why’ when things go wrong. Clarity is missing, and as such appropriate actions are unlikely to be taken to turn things around.

Our business review identified the key areas to address, and we initially focused on implementing management review practices and reporting within the business to build an understanding of why these difficulties were occurring. We provided training and coaching to the company’s accountant to better analyse and report issues as they arose, and to make appropriate and timely recommendations to the management team. Management and supervision practices were established within production and management teams, and training and coaching of key management staff was enabled. Project management processes were also set up for all new projects initiated. A thorough review of the sales team and sales processes was conducted, and we established a sales management program with a priority to refocus the sales team. Alongside this, pricing and quoting margins were reviewed with a new pricing and quoting policy agreed.

After 6 months of working with this organisation we saw sales return to their normal levels, and after 9 months of sustained implementation of our recommendations, profits returned to 12% of sales. No significant quality issues have occurred for 6 months, and margins are stronger than ever with labour efficiency dramatically improved. The company now has high accountability throughout the management team, reduced stress, and happier staff with more satisfied customers.

Business change takes time, and modifying structure and processes doesn’t immediately impact the bottom line. It is with consistency and perseverance that business transformation is possible.

The question we often get asked is “why can’t a company just do this for themselves – why do they need an external advisor?”. In the case of this company, the management structure and processes were not in place to support the company to prevent these issues occurring. Without a significant and appropriate change to company structure and ways of working, change was not possible. Often it takes someone outside of a business to identify the change required, and once initiated, it can be easier to align with business priorities to meet, and often exceed, performance goals and success indicators. It’s also never an easy and quick fix.

Find out more about our strategic approach to unearth the challenges within your business and set you on the right path for success. Reach out for a no obligation, informal chat with one of our Senior Consultants today to chat about how we could help you and your business, call us (07) 3025 3220 or email [email protected].

[Photo credit: Minku Kang]

What’s holding your business back?

When you’re looking to grow your company but it’s ‘stuck’ it is useful to conduct a full strategic analysis to determine what’s going on. It might not be what you think. Far too often, businesses will make assumptions on the issues preventing their company meeting goals and achieving desired outcomes. These assumptions are rarely based on anything substantial, or there’s a focus on one key issue at the exclusion of all others. To truly understand what’s holding your business back, an objective analysis of all the issues, and the company overall are essential. This can be tricky to conduct in-house, where objectivity can understandably be somewhat clouded. You may believe that you have the right structure in place and the right team to achieve the profit margins you’d like, but often this is not the case.

Take the example of one of our clients – a small manufacturing and installation company operating within the construction sector. Gibsons were approached to conduct a strategic and business plan, with the objective of determining the issues at play that were preventing sales and profit growth. As soon as the planning process was in full swing, we discovered key factors that were holding the company back. Primarily these centred around people and processes. Key staff were modelling poor values and performance, there were manufacturing and installation process inefficiencies, and there was the absence of clear and consistent communications across the business and the management team. People were unsure who was accountable for what, they were disengaged, and were struggling to see a distinct company direction.

Once you have the right people in the right place doing the right things, a business can tackle operational and process issues that might also be holding them back. But you must get the people bit right first.

In our experience, people issues are often the cause of the most serious business problems and can be the most challenging to resolve. However, if ignored they can significantly endanger a business, or at the very least, leave it with a performance and success level far below true capability and potential. We often see attempts to ‘fix’ staff issues which in turn create more problems as structure and processes are used to ‘work around’ people difficulties, which rarely resolves the concerns, and instead adds significant cost and time to the situation.

To address these challenges, Gibsons conducted a thorough review of management practices to build a culture of understanding and a process of consistent and regular review. Next, we helped the company to develop the right business structure to support continuous improvement and accountability throughout its personnel. Progressive review of performance of key personnel alongside the company’s management team enabled the rationalisation of staff via retraining, mentoring, role changes to better suited skill sets, and in some cases, retrenchment. A complete review of operational processes and factory layout was then enabled with confidence that the recommended changes could be acted on with best immediate effect.

Build an effective business structure that puts the right people with the right skills into roles that best suit them, is key to ensuring a business with long-term and enhanced profitability.

The results of Gibsons’ work speak for themselves. Over a 3-year period, working closely with Gibsons, this business increased its profit on sales by 8-10%, culture and customer engagement improved, and there was a $10m rise in turnover. Importantly, the owner is now in charge of a highly self-motivated team with an appropriate structure to support the continued growth of the business.

Find out more about the Gibsons’ approach to ensuring your business is on the right path and your team are focused on what matters, through our in-depth strategic review.

Business growth through sales culture change

It would be understandable to think that issues related to sales are down to the sales process, pricing and the overall sales strategy. This is after all what drives a business’ sales levels and its approach to selling in the marketplace. However, dig a little deeper, and you’ll see the massive impact the culture of your sales team has on the implementation of your strategy. Perhaps the sales strategy is strong and appropriate for your offering, but how is it being executed and how is this being managed?

We were engaged by a major player in the Australian construction landscape to implement changes to their sales process and pricing structure to optimise margins. Our client’s construction reinforcing product had been used in most of the iconic structures in Australia including the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne’s Westgate Bridge and freeway, and Brisbane’s Gateway bridges. The company was well known and well established (100 years).

It initially appeared that the issues impacting sales and ultimately margins were related to the sales strategy. However, after a period of discovery, it became clear that sales performance was impacted primarily by the people within the sales team. While dedicated and committed, the sales team were agreeing to meet every customer requirement. There’s nothing wrong with putting the customer first and focusing on customer needs, but in this case, it resulted in unclear accountabilities. If you agreed to everything, who is going to follow through with the requests, and importantly can / should they be met? Inefficiencies were the result, as the team lacked clarity on what to prioritise and how.

Develop an effective sales strategy that is fully understood by staff to ensure consistency and accountability, but that also supports an effective management of performance.

In this case, there was no ‘organisation’ behind the sales team effort. To address the culture and performance inequities, Gibsons worked to embed processes and practices designed to clarify accountabilities, and to manage sales performance both company wide, and for sales team personnel. In total, 6 improvement programs were established and implemented over a 6-month period. This phased roll out started with the company’s Queensland team and are being progressively implemented across the rest of the business.

No matter how astute a management team is, often there are issues that from the inside are easy to miss, or people are too ‘close’ to the challenges, to effectively manage them. A Gibsons Senior Consultant who lives and breathes business improvement, will quickly get a feel for your business and be able to identify areas for improvement.

With accountabilities now understood and aligned across the entire sales process, these improvement programs have enabled the sales team to be more focused. An ‘achievement’ sales culture that the company was seeking has been established and revenue targets are being exceeded. The business growth potential identified has been enabled through this sales team reinvigoration. As is often the case, it’s not always that a strategy is wrong for your business. Often, the processes in place for implementation and management are not there; or are misunderstood or inappropriately executed by your team. Ensure your people know what they are accountable for and set up ways to manage this. Support your business’ potential by providing clarity in roles and expectations, and transparency in how this aligns with your overall company objectives.

As with many projects Gibsons work on, the reason we are called in is not always the cause of the challenges being faced. A Gibsons consultant is accustomed to scanning operations from a more objective viewpoint, with the benefit of deep experience gained from scores of business improvement projects. They can almost immediately spot problem areas that you may not be aware of. Find out more about the services we offer to support businesses and let us take the following tasks off your list:

  • Strategic analysis and business plans
  • Becoming an Employer of Choice
  • Marketing and sales plans
  • Brand development and promotion
  • Business process modelling
  • Improving systems and workflows
  • Optimising organisational structure
  • Pinpointing skills gaps and implementing training.
  • Reviewing financial performance
  • Profitability improvement programs
  • Managing organisational change
  • Mentoring to develop executive leadership.
  • Business process modelling
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Technology strategy and implementation

Culture has a BIG influence on profits…

…and good culture starts with good management.

No matter how skilled and experienced your staff, without a sound management and accountability structure in place, you’re setting your business up for failure. It is commonly assumed that if a business is made up of a group of highly skilled, degree qualified professionals, that the operation and people should be able to self-manage. This is rarely the case.

Management is a skill and discipline in its own right that is essential for every high performing business.

Without good management practices in place, staff are unlikely to contribute equally, enthusiastically and consistently over a period of time. This can slowly chip away at a positive business culture creating dissatisfaction and disillusionment amongst your team and undermining even the best-laid plans.

As a business consultancy with years of experience and extensive expertise in strategic management, Gibsons is well placed to provide invaluable, objective insight into an appropriate management structure for your business. We provide the support needed to meet your business goals and align with your company values as well as setting up meaningful accountability processes and systems.

An effective management structure with appropriate decision-making mechanisms in place, will support the business structure needed to generate profit, accountability and a healthy company culture.

In demonstration of this, Gibsons was approached by a large and well-known firm in the Professional Services sector to help them deliver a Strategic and Business Plan. With no decision-making mechanisms in place, and little understanding of management as a separate area of expertise and skill, the business had started to develop an unhealthy culture.

It became clear during our engagement that a number of staff were underperforming in their roles, lowering the organisation’s efficiency. With the absence of performance measures and little management of expected standards, there was limited accountability throughout the company.

To overcome these challenges, Gibsons implemented its Employer of Choice program to engage staff, align them to business goals, and to build a culture of accountability based on core values. Personal leadership mentoring for the company’s CEO as well as the mentoring of supervisor staff took place. Select staff were provided with soft skills training around people management, personal performance and project management to upskill. An effective board structure and practice along with sales management practices, Key Performance Measures and a management reporting regime were all initiated.

Changes to management structure and processes can take place quite quickly whereas cultural change within an organisation is something that takes time to have positive influence in decision-making processes. The turnaround in this Professional Services company took 4 years and resulted in an EBIT improvement from 10% to 15%. For a Professional Services firm in its particularly sector, this was a significant increase. The improvements made in the company’s staff engagement, culture, human performance and morale which increased customer satisfaction were able to become entrenched in the business and sustainable.

Never underestimate the importance of having all your people working towards the same goals to shared and agreed standards. People and their synchronised alignment with business goals is at the core of business success.

Get your business fit for retirement

How we helped this business owner double his revenue and retire with confidence

It is possible to exit or sell your business and gain a strong retirement income. For so many businesses, succession planning is an overlooked “nice to have” element of business management; an activity to “get to” when the more pressing matters of day to day management, sales, and business execution are in play.

But, without addressing succession, you can put yourself under too much pressure when things are “down to the wire” with retirement in sight. Your team can be left feeling uncertain about the longevity of their roles and the future success of the business.

As a business owner, keen to retire, sell or otherwise leave the business in a good condition, succession planning is crucial.

One of the key services offered by Gibsons is helping businesses to do just this, and we have many case studies to share. Our experienced consultants can support you throughout implementation and ensure increased business value and success,  helping you exit on the best possible terms.

Over a 4-year succession planning program, we did exactly this. We supported one of our manufacturing sector clients move from an $8m to $18m turnover business, with the transition to a new management structure and clear succession of key management and the owner. This business has since doubled that size, and with a great General Manager and team in place, continues to provide its owner a very healthy income in retirement.

Succession planning can take many pathways and raise many different issues and this business was no different.

The issues were weighing so heavily on the owner, he had begun to doubt he could ever retire and extract the value that his family had spent three generations building.

Working closely with him, we created a business plan to identify key strategies to revitalise the business and introduce succession preparedness activities, like management team structures and formalisation of processes. Mentoring of key management staff commenced. Operations were reviewed and rationalised, and transition plans implemented. Human resource processes and an accountability structure was set in motion.

A future for the business was mapped out, with career paths for younger members of the team and exit strategies for the older members of the team.  A Customer Relationship Management and sales management process were also established, and key management roles were transitioned.

3 years into the plan, the owner/Chief Executive Officer was in a position to semi-retire.

The final year of our succession planning saw a marketing program enacted, to grow attractive markets and position the company as the leading Australian manufacturer in those sectors.

A much larger and more profitable business was created, and Gibsons are still relied on to this day by the owner, to ensure the business remains on track with growth and success into the future. Placing Gibsons in this kind of role can bridge the gap between business owner vision and new management, allowing them to retire with peace of mind.

 

Engage Your Staff and Improve Your Bottom Line

Organisational leaders who exhibit a committed focus to people practices not only increase their chances of having a more engaged workforce but can also drive profit growth.

Recent studies by Real World Group and others have found that organisations with a highly engaged workforce have significantly better profit growth than those that do not.

There is no doubt that there is a high correlation between profit growth and employee engagement.

What do we mean by employee engagement?

Some people see it as being ‘job satisfaction’ but this can be a transactional relationship that is only as good as the organisation’s last round of perks or bonuses. Other people gauge employee engagement by employees’ emotional commitment to their organisation. While this is an important element it is only part of the engagement equation.

From our extensive experience in business consulting and human resource management, we take the view that employee engagement focuses on the:

  • Contribution of individuals to the organisation’s success
  • Personal satisfaction of individuals in their role.

We believe that aligning employees’ values, goals, and aspirations with those of the organisation is the best method for delivering the sustainable employee engagement required for an organisation to thrive and increase profits.

Full employee engagement represents an alignment of:

  • maximum job satisfaction – “I like my work and do it well”, with
  • maximum contribution – “I help achieve the goals of the organisation”.

Leadership commitment is one of the key features of organisations that rank highly in relation to employee engagement and effective human resource practices.

There is a very strong correlation between leadership commitment and employee engagement.

While the need to build employee engagement within a workforce may seem clearly obvious to many employers and HR managers, some businesses still fail to understand the importance of effective human resource practices to develop and engage your people.

While leadership commitment needs to come from the top of the organisation it is important to understand the key role played by line managers who are critical to the building and maintaining of high employee engagement.

Building employee engagement includes:

  • Recruiting staff who are aligned with the organisation’s values
  • Promoting flexible workplace options for employees
  • Creating succession plans for key staff
  • Providing opportunities for continued employee growth

It requires managers to build their leadership skills and not just focus on their management skills and theories of human resource management.

Practical steps you can take to help encourage higher levels of employee engagement:

  1. Set a positive tone of partnership. This is not a performance appraisal (not that we are suggesting performance appraisals should be adversarial).
  2. Talk about the importance of the employee’s job and how it fits with the organisation’s larger goals.
  3. Discuss your employee’s top priorities. Many managers find gaps in perception which can have a negative impact on engagement.
  4. Ask ‘What support do you need from me?’ and ‘What kind of feedback is most useful to you?’
  5. Talk about ways to use the employee’s talents (the ones that this person enjoys using).
  6. Ask about job conditions: What gets in the way of great accomplishments? What gets in the way of a great day at work? What does the employee enjoy most?
  7. Discuss how you work together. It is not enough to agree you should meet regularly. Clarify what that term means to you both.
  8. Agree to meet again. You can’t have one discussion and check off the box that you have addressed your employee’s engagement successfully. Engagement levels are dynamic. Things change. The conversation lays a foundation for specific HR-related discussions about performance, development, or career management. It also establishes a common language you can use to check in quickly – and regularly – about engagement issues.

Employee engagement is an integral part of managing the human resources in your business which can transform unknown ‘resources’ into people who will engage with their work, engage with your business and drive profit growth.

 

The Importance of Cultural Resilience in a Downturn

If there is one thing that companies learn in an economic downturn, it is the importance of resilience – the ability of an organisation to withstand shocks and remain sustainable under prolonged periods of duress.

The most resilient companies display the following characteristics:

  • A high level of staff engagement
  • A low level of cultural entropy
  • A vision of the future shared by all employees
  • A set of values shared by all employees
  • A focus on adaptability and innovation

Not only do these qualities create resilience, they also lead to internal cohesion, a key component in building a strong internal community that can drive the goals and performance of the organisation. The current economic climate shows us that organisations that are strong on the inside are also strong on the outside.

Being strong on the inside means having a values-driven culture, a highly aligned, cohesive and effective leadership team, a low level of cultural entropy, and a high level of staff engagement. It means effective human resource management practices / people management to develop your people and develop leadership.

Cultural entropy is the degree of dysfunction in an organisation. It is the amount of energy consumed in unproductive work and is therefore unavailable for useful work. Cultural entropy arises from the presence of limiting values such as bureaucracy, internal competition, blame and fire fighting rather than an environment of promoting positive values.

The experience of our business consultants shows that low levels of cultural entropy are accompanied by high levels of financial performance and high staff engagement. Companies with these attributes are able to grow their incomes significantly faster than companies with high entropy.

The following checklist of actions will help you to build your organisation’s resilience, support you in traversing economic downturns, and place you in a strong position for success when growth rates pick up.

This checklist is based on the core principles of a ‘values’ driven organisational culture. Each of the six items on the checklist represents a critical step in building a sustainable organisation.

How to build your organisation’s resilience:

Step One: Be clear on your direction. Re-energise your vision, mission and values to build internal cohesion.

Step Two: Communicate with staff and customers: confidence is important. Ensure everyone knows what you are doing to get through when times are tough.

Step Three: Focus on your core business. Get lean. Streamline your systems and processes to reduce costs and increase agility.

Step Four: Learn to adapt to a changing environment. Eliminate activities that don’t add value.

Step Five: Build strategic alliances. Align with your customers and suppliers to create mutually supportive and beneficial relationships.

Step Six: Keep the long term in mind. Ensure your short-term plans do not compromise your long-term viability.

It all sounds fairly basic, but remember that successful organisations – both in boom times and downturns – are generally those that harness positive energy to consistently do the basics well. That includes consistent and effective human resource practices that develop and support staff and leadership to build and maintain a culture of resilience in your business.

 

 

Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 3

To finish off our ‘Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting’ series, we provide some practical tips and ground rules to keep in mind when conducting a toolbox meeting.

With a little preparation, the right attitude, a simple process to follow and a bit of practice, business managers/supervisors can run effective toolbox meetings that produce useful results, engage employees, facilitate human resource management and assist in your day-to-day business operations.

1. Knowing How to Do it

Most people don’t enjoy speaking in public (remember the wedding speech) and this shows. However, you can learn how to run good toolbox meetings, because like a lot of other things, it is mostly experience and knowing a few ‘tricks of the trade’.

Here are a few tips, and after some practice you can get over being nervous, relax a little and run a really effective toolbox meeting.

Preparation
  • Don’t try to run a toolbox meeting with too many people.
  • Preparation is critical so make sure you set aside preparation time.
  • Employees won’t remember a lot of detail so pick out the important things.
  • Carefully think out just what it is you want to say, and sound confident.
Presentation, attitude and body language
  • Remember people can talk faster than they can listen, so don’t go too fast.
  • 85% of all communication is non-verbal, so watch the body language.
  • Don’t put yourself down by pretending you haven’t got anything important to say.
  • Position yourself so you can see everyone and they can see you.
  • Look them in the eye and make them listen to you.
  • Use some notes to make sure you don’t forget things.
  • Don’t be too self-conscious for no one will be as critical of you as you are of yourself.
  • Remember, you have called this meeting and it is very important to everyone.
Produce useful results
  • Ask open questions that will encourage people to speak up.
  • Don’t get defensive when people ask hard questions, or criticise you or the company.
  • Don’t get sucked into arguments in the toolbox meeting in front of all the others – take individual gripes offline and handle one-on-one.
  • The first couple of toolbox meetings might be ‘bitch’ sessions but persevere.
  • Don’t try to cover too much in each meeting and put a time limit on the meeting.
  • Make sure you keep notes of what has been done – this is particularly important in relation to discussion about and initiatives taken on safety. (Refer to the meeting template below.)

2. Are Employees Really Interested in Toolbox Meetings?

Yes they can be, but they don’t like boring meetings that waste their time and don’t tell them anything about how they are doing at work, what might be happening to their job and what their prospects are for earnings, promotions, training etc.

 

Where supervisors have persevered with toolbox meetings, they have quickly found that their employees, the company and the supervisors are better off as a consequence of being involved in toolbox meetings.

3. Some Basic Ground Rules for a Toolbox Meeting

  • One speaker at a time – be an active listener
  • No personal attacks/comments
  • Everyone participates, no one dominates
  • Work to understand each other’s view as well as communicating your own view to the group
  • Keep an open mind
  • Work together for solutions and agree to the action plan
  • Keep a record of the meeting (the toolbox meeting template can help you with this).

To help keep your toolbox meetings on track and to assist you to record important information from your meeting, download our Toolbox Meeting Template.

Try out these simple toolbox meetings in your business and keep an eye out for the positive results that will follow.

And if you need advice or assistance with any HR / people management issues or in managing your day-to-day business operations, talk to an experienced business consultant.

 

Employer of Choice – Becoming a Learning Organisation

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

Is your business successful and profitable?

Are your people productive? Are your employees costing you money?

If you missed the earlier parts of our Employer of Choice series, you may wish to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

Our people management series kicks off by looking at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners. It then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

Subsequent articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; then Rewards and Recognition; Selling the Value to Employees; and Building Leadership and Succession into your Business.

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?

Become a Learning Organisation:

Monitoring, Measuring, Understanding and Working on Your People and Your Business

Understanding Your Organisation – Monitoring and Evaluating Success

There are many tools that enable you to see deep into your organisation. In skilled hands a range of these diagnostic tools provides an objective window into the human health of your organisation. There are clear steps to this very fundamental process:

  • Regularly assess the key barometers of human success
  • Review and understand the key drivers
  • Objectively measure and analyse those drivers
  • Review the results in a team environment
  • Develop a course of action to improve and and/or maintain a strong human culture within your business

Then, TAKE ACTION.

Act on what you see and understand by implementing actions that continue to build and maintain strong engagement and alignment, the essence of a strong team.

You can then fine tune and continually learn how to improve employee engagement and alignment and ultimately the human and business health of your organisation.

Human health does not eventuate via a once off feel good employee survey. It is a continuous process.

Become a learning organisation. And become an Employer of Choice.

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.

VERY IMPORTANT – It is never too late to act.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need advice or assistance with people management issues or business planning, talk to an experienced business consultant.

 

Employer of Choice – Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 5 of 6)

If you missed the introduction to this people management series, how about starting with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

Our Employer of Choice series starts with a look at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners, and then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

Subsequent articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; then Rewards and Recognition; and Selling the Value to Employees.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business

Knowledge, Skills and Attribute Development – Set your people up for success

Stage 1 – Build success in your team in their current roles

  • Understand and establish role criteria – What defines success for each role in your business?
  • Knowledge – What are the knowledge requirements for each role within your organisation?
  • Skills – What are the skill requirements for each role within your organisation?
  • Attributes – What are the key attributes, qualities or values required for each role within your organisation?

Define and document each role in the organisation clearly and thoroughly to provide a blueprint for success.

  • Assess your team against their roles – How well do they meet the criteria for their respective roles in your organisation?

Assessments often reveal human weaknesses in your organisation which may require difficult decisions to be made. For example, there may be a need for an organisational restructure.

  • Take ACTION
Human Resource Case Study: Assessment of suitability of employees for their role

For an SME that Gibsons Business Consulting recently provided human resource management consulting services, using the above process it was found that 14 out of 26 key people employed in the business were deemed not suitable for their roles.

The result:

  • Some staff moved on,
  • Some staff changed roles, and
  • Some staff stepped up and met their role criteria.

The bottom line is that all of the employees of this business now meet the criteria set for their role, and business performance has improved measurably as a result.

For those employees who stepped up with the aim to meeting their role criteria, the following human resources management approach was undertaken:

  • Train staff where their knowledge or skills do not meet the criteria for their role.
  • Mentor staff where their attributes are inconsistent with the criteria for the role.
  • Revise or change role definition while the development process takes place to allow time for staff to transition effectively into their new role.
  • Regularly review staff against the criteria set for their role and provide feedback supported by action and support.

The above human resources management approach should be followed for every role in your organisation to ensure every member of your team meets her or his role criteria. This is the blueprint for individual, team and ultimately, business success.

Stage 2 – Build succession in your team in their future roles – become a learning organisation

These assessments become the blueprints for future leaders. Rising stars become obvious through this process as does their development into their next career move. Actions can be taken well in advance to train and mentor people into their next career move before it happens. Intentional leadership development and succession planning as part of your human resource management and business planning sets the business and staff up for ongoing future success and development.

Your employees will thank you for it and you will not only build a strong team, you will create the basis for true succession in your business by developing your future leaders in a dynamic and pro-active way.

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.

It is never too late to act.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need a hand with any people management issues or human resource management initiatives, talk to an experienced business consultant.

The next blog and final blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Becoming a Learning Organisation‘.

Employer of Choice – Selling the Value to Employees

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 4 of 6)

Is your business successful and profitable?

Are your people productive? Are your employees costing you money?

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

This first article in this series builds the foundations to becoming an employer of choice by looking at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners; and then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

The others articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; and Rewards and Recognition to engage and align staff.

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

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

Why would someone want to work for your business?

Why would an employee or prospective employee consider you to be an employer of choice?

Selling the Value to Your Employees

Employees’ Value Proposition – Understanding and Respecting the Individual’s Path to Success

Selling Products and Services to current and prospective customers is all about understanding the Value Proposition of those customers. When we know what represents value to our customers then we can develop clear sales and marketing plans built around communicating and delivering that value to them.

Not only do we need to communicate that value to customers, we also need to communicate that value to employees.

One of the keys to attracting and retaining quality staff is based around understanding their Value Proposition, that is, understanding what drives your current and prospective employees to want to work for you.

The key first step is to Understand the Employees Value Proposition. What are the key factors that your employees use to determine the value in working for you?

VERY IMPORTANT: if you don’t know the key factors behind your employees’ value proposition then find out.

Then, build the right messages into your communication processes in all areas of your human resource management:

  • Recruitment and Selection
  • Induction
  • Performance Management
  • Skills Development and
  • Rewards and Recognition.

Remember, you must communicate that value to current employees as well as to prospective employees.

So, train your Managers and Supervisors to do it right. Then, sell it to current and prospective employees, and not only once – over and over again – and keep reviewing and refining the message because the Value Proposition will change over time.

It is never too late to act.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business‘.

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?