The Latest from Kristy-Lee

• Self care is not selfish;
• Communicate with your team and own it;
• Find things to do that lift your mood;
• Take the pressure off;
• Delegate and involve your team.

Small business and fast growing entrepreneurial organisations who are looking to service more clients and bigger projects faster and more efficiently have always been creative in how to manage this growth in their organisations.

One of the key strategies many small business use to facilitate growth in a low risk, cost effective way, is engaging contractors rather than employees to help meet their growing client demands. And there are lots of great arguments for why businesses should utilise this option.

However, with the prevalence of contract labour available, and the fact that this now seems to have become ‘common practice’ amongst small businesses, the line between what constitutes and employee and a contractor has become blurred in the eyes of many business owners. And those who don’t understand this are finding themselves caught in costly and potentially business destroying legal battles, purely because the right structure has not been put in...

• Get the team together
• Reflect
• Show gratitude
• Re establish the vision
• Create goals and milestones
• Seek input from the team/

Today is the end of the financial year, and for many businesses the plans, goals, strategies and projects they put in place at the beginning of the year may be just gradually moving along, or in some cases (thanks COVID) things may have been upended more than once.

At the beginning of the year we are typically all bright eyed and bushy tailed. We are refreshed from our traditional Christmas close down and break, we are motivated by our vision for the year ahead and excited to share it with our team.

For many of you that may have looked like a team planning and strategy day, where you got the whole team together, virtually or in person, to share the vision, get them excited and communicate clearly their role in making that happen.

That results in a great spike in engagement, as our teams all want to be part of something bigger, and when we can clearly articulate their roles in achieving that, and they can see what we’re working towards, they naturally get...

At the time of writing this particular article, the Fair Work Commission has handed down its decision following the Annual Minimum Wage Review process. The process involves the Commission reviewing submissions from various interested parties, including employer and employee representative groups, as well as analysing data relating to wages, such as changes to cost of living and alike.

Essentially, they are looking to ensure that the minimum wages set out in the Fair Work Act, including the National Minimum Wage, as well as al Award minimum rates of pay, is set at an appropriate level for our economic conditions.

What we typically see is that each year the National Minimum Wage, and all Award minimum rates of pay, will increase by a fixed percentage, and this increase has always taken place 1 July that year.

However, COVID-19 last year gave rise to ‘exceptional circumstances’ which allowed the Commission to make the determination, but alter how this...

In a recent report our of Swinburne University, entitled “The Peak Human Workplace Report”, it was revealed that 3 in 4 Australian workers surveyed were wanting to learn new skills in the workplace in the next 12 months, yet currently more than half of those surveyed participate in less than an hour of learning at work on any given week.

Based on this, amongst other researching finding similar statistics, it seems clear that the majority of workplaces across a broad cross section of our economy, are failing to deliver the level of training, skills acquisition and learning that our workforce is craving.

So why this thirst for knowledge, and why now? And perhaps more front centred for many business owners, when did the responsibility for learning shift from being individual and employee driven, to be the responsibility of the employer? The Swinburne University report helps us understand this a little better, as they found that three in five workers are...

No less than once a week I’ll get a call, or question online, that goes a little like “I have a problem with a staff member, they are getting their job done but they aren’t being a great team member, I can’t quite put my finger on it but every time I raise an issue with them they have an excuse, there is always some reason things haven’t gone to plan”. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you had someone like this on your team before?

Sure enough, after a few questions my typical conclusion is – you have someone who is below the line. What line? Great question!

I first became aware of this framework probably about 10-15 years ago, I’d heard about it conceptually but when I really noticed this as a powerful framework for teams when I worked with a business who really embraced the concept so much that their team used the language in their day to day operations – this is when I really started to pay attention to this...