The Latest from Kristy-Lee

It’s simple maths that you can’t continue to grow a business and achieve greater results year on year, quarter on quarter and week on week without a great team. But once you have that team, the challenge can be how to keep them motivated.

Motivated employees are our most engaged employees, and we know that an engaged team can be 17% more productive and lead to a whopping 21% increase in business profitability, according to a study conducted by Gallup.

So keeping motivation high, and ultimately increasing engagement is like your secret weapon that can really differentiate you from your competitors. Motivated and engaged teams attract the best and brightest, and foster environments which encourage productivity, creativity and best practice at every level.

So what can we as employers proactively do to maintain and improve our teams motivation at work?

• Operate from a Place of Purpose
  Employees thrive in businesses which are driven towards a clear purpose. Be clear on...

As a business owner or manager, you may think you have a million more important things to do than write a position description for every role in your company.

Particularly in small business, where there is a need for flexibility within the scope and responsibility and daily duties of each individual, to meet the fluctuating needs and demands of a fluid business structure, these ‘structured’ documents can often seem limiting and unnecessary.

However, accurate and detailed Position Descriptions, in my opinion, are the most important document to have in your business, when it comes to managing staff, and here is why:

• They create structure – as we all know, where there are no rules people instinctively will make up their own. Position descriptions which are clear, appropriately detailed and cover the nature, scope, and duties of the role, as well as the expectations around behaviour and performance standards create a working ‘rule...

1. Values Alignment
2. Flexibility
3. Reliability
4. Honesty
5. Adaptability;
6. Coachability;
7. Loyalty;
8. Motivation

What exactly is 'Employee Engagement'?

Like many others you may think it is a bit of the HR buzzword and a fluffy concept made up by someone trying to create work for themselves in a big corporation.
There is a popular misconception that it's about keeping people happy, making sure they're having fun at work, giving employees everything they want, beanbags in the staff room, chocolate biscuits in the kitchen and all of those perks. Keeping staff happy and making sure they are looked after is important, and forms part of it, but employee engagement is actually a far deeper concept, and it's important no matter how big or small your business is.

One thing is for sure and that is that businesses of any size who can get this right and really dedicate the right amount of thought, intention and commitment to nurturing this particular aspect of managing and leading staff can really see the benefits. Benefits including reduced staff turnover, a decline in absenteeism rates, higher...

Let me ask you a question. As the business owner, leader, manager, the head honcho, how important is 'self-care' to you? In fact, what does self-care even mean to you?

Why am I asking you this? And what on earth does this have to do with your team, your HR compliance, and your business success?

Well I wanted to let you in on a little background and share my experience in realising just how important this is to our success as business owners. I wanted to share this with you because I was there, I was doing all of the things, all of the time and thought I was smashing it! I had it totally under control and was moving forward and building my empire (yes literally that was my mantra, I'm not even joking).

But do you know what, I was on the fast train  towards burnout and I couldn't see it, and in fact it took one of my team to not so subtly let me know that I wasn't being the best leader, manager or business owner I could be.

Was my business successful...

• Having regular and powerful team meetings;
• Having an annual planning day;
• Listen, hear, understand and action.

In the world of HR we are always ruminating on the skills v’s fit tension when hiring new staff for organisations. Commonly these days, the cultural and team fit far outweighs the skills requirements, but obviously new hires still need to have the fundamental and foundational skills to get the job done – otherwise what’s the point in hiring anyone? In saying that, my advice to business owners, leaders and managers over and over again is this: you can hire the most technically competent and brilliant employee the market has to offer – but if their values don’t align with those of the business, they ultimately won’t be a great fit and they won’t last – meaning any benefits you gained by having their brilliance in your business will be eroded by the lack of alignment and fit, under engagement and ultimately the turnover of the role.

So if fit is going to trump raw skills, and ultimately you will hire someone who fits into your team...