As a business owner you will understand the importance of clear goals, but will have also learnt that you need the help of your team to be successful. Staff are an essential resource in helping you achieve business success, and there are a few golden rules to convincing your team of the authenticity, importance and relevance of your strategic goals.

One of your most important tasks as an employer is to evaluate, support, motivate and influence the performance of your team.

Below are five approaches that will help you communicate with your team and encourage behaviours that advance your business strategy.

Keep it simple

Most businesses have a deeper meaning or purpose to why they exist. This influences strategy and decision-making by employers, but often isn’t communicated effectively to employees. It’s important that your purpose is simple, inspiring and at the core of all your communications, this will help your team understand how their day-to-day activities are linked to the aspiration and success of the company.

Communicate your goals

The timing and process you use to communicate your goals are vital. Focus on the people working for your business and make sure you have the right people in place. Consider everyone who’s going to play a part in assisting you, if you have team leaders, get them involved in this process early, ask for constructive feedback and make adjustments to your plan if necessary. Remember to provide managers with easy-to-implement formats for bringing their teams together, with toolkits that include all the materials they will need.

Tell a story

If you want your plans to capture the imagination and support of your team, you need to consider the delivery and the audience when announcing your goal. Facts and figures won’t be remembered, so tell a story. Think about the benefits, but once you’ve captured their imagination it’s time to discuss financials. Your team will want to know why the goal is important and how what they do makes a difference to the health of your business.

If you are asking your team to put extra effort into a project, they need to understand why they are doing it. Once your team takes ownership of your business goals, they will get real satisfaction from achieving effective solutions.

If your staff doesn’t have the same level of passion for a project, ask yourself:

• Do they have a clear and simple understanding of what’s required of them to sustain the business?
• What are they passionate about?
• Can you utilise these passions to support your goal?

Have a consistent communication framework

Not all messages are created equal, so it’s important to develop a consistent framework for presenting your business goals.

• Inspire your team by demonstrating their progress against your business goals, your message will have more impact and create a lasting memory if you energise your team by with an inspiring message
• Educate your team by explaining the reasons behind the companies strategic goals, make sure you provide job-specific tools that employees can apply to their day-to-day responsibilities
• Reinforce the connection between the strategy and it’s execution by connecting them with effective performance management tools. This will help you recognise and reward people who come up with smart solutions and positive change.

Invest where it counts

As an employer you will understand how important your employees are, they are often your largest expense and they communicate directly with your customers. If you are aiming for shifts in behaviour and performance, you need to decide what you are willing to invest per employee to help them understand your business goals.

Finally, reassess your plan regularly, identify specific business triggers or ‘moments in time’ that would signal the need to review and possibly revise your plan and schedule these into your annual goal-setting workshops.

Subscribe to HRtoolkit for all the legislation and advice you need to help your team work smarter.

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Having a clear understanding of your responsibilities as a business owner will help reduce risk, so here are a five quick tips.

Be safe
Ensure your staff have arranged safe transport home from the event. As a business owner, you have a ‘duty of care’ to all staff. This includes promoting responsible drinking and sober drivers.

• Encourage staff to arrange to be picked up after the event
• Provide the phone number of a taxi firm and encourage pre-booking at this busy time of year

Be clear about expected behaviours
All staff should be aware that during the Christmas party they are still representing the company and the companies brand.

Be inclusive
When you plan your Christmas party, take into account the different cultures, religions and orientations of your team. Given that Christmas is a christian tradition, be mindful that some members of your team may not wish to attend.

• You may want to consider renaming the gathering an ‘end of year staff party’
• Ensure you have a range of non-alcoholic beverages and consult staff on suitable food choices

Remember workers not based in the office, or out on maternity leave
Ensure that people who work away from the office are given an invitation, or given an alternative event at another time. If your invitation extends to the partners of your employees, please remember to avoid sexual orientation discrimination by extending the invitation to staff with same-sex partners.

Warn your team about the consequences of unauthorised absence from work the day after the party
Remember to state your intentions clearly – hangovers are not a legitimate reason for absence from work and could potentially result in disciplinary action.

• One recent study highlighted that workers drink an average of 5.5 units of alcohol at their office Christmas party, with ‘morning after sickies’ costing the economy about 39 million worker-hours.
• An easy solution to this problem is to plan your event for a Friday, or the day after the office closes down so employees can recover in their own time.

Finally, having planned and communicated well to staff, enjoy the party!

P.S. We advise to all treatment centres use hight quality SEO for rehabs, so more people in need could find the help very fast and easy.

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So, do you have your goals for next year clearly defined? Whatever your goals, from going global to spending more time with the people you care about, you need to know how to achieve them. This involves resource planning both internally and externally, and managing communications and processes to support your plan.

Plan the timing and process of communicating you goals

The timing of introducing your goal, and the process you use to communicate your goal are vital. Focus on the people working for your business and make sure you have the right people in place. Consider everyone who’s going to play a part in assisting you, if you have team leaders, get them involved in this process early, ask for constructive feedback and make adjustments to you plan if necessary. Ask your team leaders for clear responses on the following:

• What is staff moral like?
• Can you envisage any road-blocks to the plan?
• What extra resourcing will we need?

Creatively communicate your goals

If you want your plans to capture the imagination and support of your team, you need to consider the delivery and the audience when announcing your goal. Think about the benefits, and don’t be afraid to discuss financials. Your team will want to know why the goal is important and how what they do makes a difference to the health of your business.

Understand WIIFM (what’s in it for me)

If you are asking your team to put extra effort into a project, they need to understand why they are doing it. Once your team takes ownership of your business goals, they will get real satisfaction from achieving effective solutions.

If your staff doesn’t have the same level of passion for a project, ask yourself:

• Do they have a clear and simple understanding of what’s required of them to sustain the business?
• What are they passionate about? Can you utilise your staff’s passions to support your goal?

One of your most important tasks as an employer is to evaluate, support, motivate and influence the performance of your team. Subscribe to our Performance Toolkit for all the legislation and advice you need to help your team work smarter.

The post Are your business goals top secret? appeared first on HRtoolkit.

Many people gain such satisfaction from doing a great job, that they will think nothing of working an extra 30 minutes a day. That’s the equivalent of 120 extra hours a year, just because they are committed to the success of your business. 

Having an effective performance management programme goes a long way to motivating staff to do their job well. It also creates an open forum for you to discuss potential problems with employees before they become issues large enough to cost you time and money to resolve.  

One of your most important tasks as an employer is to evaluate, support, motivate and influence the performance of your team. Subscribe to our Performance Toolkit for all the legislation and advice you need to help your team work smarter.

The post How valuable is your team? appeared first on HRtoolkit.

How to get the best out of your team

To answer this question you need to understand where your business is at, then consider how to improve performance. Companies regularly measure profit, turnover, debtor days and delivery times – this is easily accessible data. But are these really the numbers you should be watching?

If you look at what drives these numbers, you can influence future results. Your staff, and how they behave ultimately drive pretty much every number in your business. You can have the best processes and procedures in place, but if your staff aren’t using the systems, or are focusing on the wrong behaviours, then business growth will be affected.

Understanding the key competencies that drive performance, and giving your staff clear feedback about what this means is critical for performance improvement.

Let HRtoolkit show you how to drive competitive advantage.

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The Department of Labour has highlighted the benefits of good human resource management by including six people-related business drivers among seven key ways to improve productivity.

SEVEN KEY DRIVERS TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

Building leadership and management capability

Focus your management team on what adds value to the business, then give them the time and skills they need to achieve your business goals.

Creating productive workplace cultures

Poor performers are often inadvertently rewarded by being given less work, and conversely, good performing staff are sometimes punished by being given more work. Motivate your teams by using performance management tools to reward good behaviour.

Encouraging innovation and the use of technology

Effective use of cloud-based systems not only makes a business more efficient, it can reduce overheads and allow for a flexible or distributed workforce.

Investing in people and skills

Investing time in the training and support of your team and their skills is critical to the long-term success of all businesses.

Organising work

Clearly defined roles and structures ensure that people understand the tasks which add value to your business. On the contrary, poorly defined roles and responsibilities result in wasted time and duplication of effort.

Networking and collaboration

Relevant knowledge and ideas exist at every level of your business. successful organisations understand how to encourage staff to speak up, share knowledge and collaborate to achieve business goals.

Measuring what matters

Key performance Indicators (KPIs) such as gross profit and turnover tell us what has happened in the past. But successful businesses focus on competencies such as customer focus and attention to detail in an effort to increase KPIs.

Engaged employees drive competitive advantage. Let HRtookit show you how to motivate your team with our Performance Toolkit.

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“I’m being bullied”, it’s a catch cry which strikes fear into the hearts of all employers. And with good reason. In New Zealand, an employee only has to show one instance of bullying to make a successful claim against you, and it is the feelings of the victim that matter.

In our case study, the employer had an employee who made some major mistakes, resulting in the company being audited by the tax department and being put at risk of having their trading licences revoked. For the employee, this was not the first time these type of mistakes had occurred, but it was the first time the consequences had been quite so bad for the company.

At every instance, the company manager had discussed the mistake with the employee, and individual blame had not been accepted. The employee was aggressive and it was easier to for everyone on the team to ‘avoid the confrontation. Over time the employees learnt behaviour was ‘if I shout loud enough then they will back off’.

Using the HRtoolkit Quick guide to courageous conversations, the manager was able to handle the situation and push back on the inevitable ‘you are bullying me’ claim.

At HRtoolkit, we see this as an all too common picture. The victim of bullying was the manager, not the employee, but employee behaviour has not been identified as bullying. Over time inappropriate behaviour became accepted and began to escalate.

Are you allowing your staff to be bullied, or are you being bullied? Let HRtoolkit show you how to nip it in the bud.

The post Are you a bully or are you being bullied? appeared first on HRtoolkit.

And the boss might equally be thinking, ‘Do I want to give a bonus this year? How much do I give so I don’t look really stingy? How much can I afford without breaking the company?’

Money is not always a motivator
Lack of money is a de-motivator, but your staff will not suddenly work hard just because you gave them a cheque for $500 at Christmas.

So how do you use money as a motivator?
Tell your staff what they have to do to get their bonus, and reward them if they succeed.

Who can I offer a bonus to?
The most common bonus schemes are applied to sales roles, but these schemes can be applied to any role using an Assessment criteria matrix as your benchmark. For example, an administrator may have a bonus based on achievement against the following criteria:

• Teamwork
• Attention to detail
• Professionalism
• Customer focus

The HRtoolkit Bonus scheme with quick guide can be used in its present form, or with specific values relevant to your organisation inserted and can be easily adapted to suit any employee.

No profit, no payment
Bonus schemes should include a ‘no profit – no payment’ clause. If the company has already lost money, the last thing you want to do is increase that loss through having to pay out bonuses. This was probably the mistake that Lehman Brothers made, and why they ended up paying huge bonuses after the company had been declared bankrupt. Contractually, they had no get-out clause.

Employees will do what you tell them to do
The criterion you include in a bonus scheme will be the things that your employee concentrates on. It’s important that you make sure the criterion are things that make your business successful. For example, if you include a bonus criterion ‘revenue generated’ the employee will go out and get lots of sales, but this needs to be balanced with the bonus criterion ‘profit generated’.  Otherwise there is a risk that the employee will discount sales in order to generate revenue, sacrificing profit.

To minimise the risk of this happening, it’s a good idea to add a clause that if employees have low scores in any one criterion in two consecutive quarters, then no bonus will be payable. Having one bad quarter is understandable, but employees need to immediately rectify the problem. This clause also ensures that they don’t focus purely on achieving a high score for revenue at the expense of profit.

Are there alternatives to money?
Yes,  and these are often of higher perceived value to the employee. Offering employees the opportunity to ‘pick their bonus’ from a pre-determined list of benefits can be hugely motivational, particularly if the options are things which they may not otherwise spend money on. For example:

• A pamper day at a local spa
• A day’s fishing trip on the harbour
• Private healthcare for  staff and/or their family members

And you can, of course, offer money as an alternative for those who want it.

Need some help getting the best out of your bonus scheme?
Give us a call on 0800 HRtoolkit (0800 47 86 65) and we will be happy to provide you with support and advice to help you customise a bonus scheme to suit your needs.

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