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Do you remember your first job? Things were simple, weren’t they?  You work, your boss pays you. No need for flexible work, wellbeing strategies, recognition plans. Today the equation is far more complex, and we all have to shift our thinking.

While technically, employment is based on an employment agreement, it is also very much centred around a psychological contract.

A psychological contract refers to the unwritten mutual expectations and obligations between an employer and an employee. It is based on the perceptions of what each party owes the other in terms of contributions, rewards, work commitment and delivery, as well as attitude and shared values. It is much more than what is in the job description.

The psychological contract is essentially the progeny of the organisational culture. It reflects the behavioural and attitudinal vibe that exists within the organisation. Whilst it is linked to the expectations established in the employment agreement, it operates at a much deeper level, is organisationally unique, is more nuanced and really aims to establish a hand in glove fit between employee and organisation.

To have a truly successful employment relationship, both parties need to understand, agree and be aligned on the expectations that arise from the psychological contract.  

The needs of employees and their expectations of work have evolved significantly in the past few years. We have seen the increase in flexibility, the need for meaningful work, and the increased importance and protection of personal time and space. Generation Z has also entered the workforce, and this generation has never known a time without a smartphone, social media or an airpod in their ear.

However, to be successful, and irrespective of the way the world of work changes, you and your employees still need to share common values.

You might need to shift your expectations as much as your employees need to shift theirs. If you are to get what you need from them, they also need to get what they want from you.

So how do you do this?

Starting at the beginning of the employment relationship is essential and will set things up for success from day 1.

1. Ensure that your organisational culture is well articulated and outlines the organisational vibe and expectations beyond what the employment documentation does – A Company-wide commitment to the organisational culture gives it credibility, so be prepared to involve your team in fine-tuning what it is. It should reflect a win-win outcome. This will ensure the commitment endures and underpins everyone’s success.

2. Build the psychological contract into the recruitment process – Most job ads have a list of what you require, and what your business will provide to the new employee. Does anyone read this? Are these just words for attraction’s sake? Make sure these are meaningful and relevant statements and discuss this at interview stage. Having a real two-way conversation about the Company culture at the recruitment stage will help establish fit and commitment. Ask what flexibility means to the candidate. Does this align with your organisation’s view on it? Discuss your organisational values and ask candidates what their values are and what they mean in real work related terms. Let them tell you. This will help you to work out whether a psychological contract could be formed with a candidate.

3. Discuss again during the on-boarding phase – At the recruitment stage these discussions are theoretical. The on-boarding is where the practical elements of the psychological contract start. For example, if you have work from home options that also includes attendance at a Monday morning meeting every week, tell them and start this from day 1. This builds habits and reinforces the employee’s part of the bargain.

4. Make sure you always meet your organisational promises – It is very easy to list what you expect from your team. But what about the promises you have made to them? If you don’t follow through with your own organisational commitments, you have broken the psychological contract. Why should they keep their promises if you don’t?

5. Reinforce the psychological contract – Too often we let unacceptable behaviour occur multiple times before the issue is addressed. By this time it can have become a habit and through your acceptance of the behaviour it can become the norm. Early intervention and a reminder of the commitments they have made is the easiest way to correct things before they become a big problem and the relationship breaks down.

6. Be consistent – As leaders, on some days we are well prepared to discuss matters with our team and on others we are not. Not addressing issues in a timely way creates uncertainty in the employment relationship and can muddy expectations of each other. To be successful consistency is key.

A successful employment relationship is interdependent, is built on trust, involves common understanding and requires good communication.

As leaders, recognising the shifting employment landscape, adapting to it and being clear with your team on your expectations will go a long way towards helping your business get the best from your people. Deliberately building a psychological contract is a critical element of this.

Positive People have over 25 years helping businesses establish positive and productive teams. Call us now on 09 445 1077. We are here to help.

As we have thankfully advanced towards the Covid exit gate, it has become clear to perceptive leaders that things have changed in their relationships with employees. The hybrid working model has become almost the norm and working hours, working patterns and work locations are, in many organisations, up for negotiation. Some Companies have resolved these easily, some not so.

As a leader and manager, it requires you to stand back and take some time to assess how well are you managing the people in your organisation in the current employment climate. Have you just picked up where you left off and are you carrying on as before? Or have you done some deep thinking as to what your team now need from you to perform at top levels?

A quantum leap in thinking on leadership and management skills is required.

This entails re-evaluating what have traditionally been known as hard and soft skills. Hard skills have historically been the skills most valued as they are relatively easy to teach and are strongly focused on the job at hand. So-called soft skills have historically been grudgingly acknowledged as a requirement for managers to have, but really existing as a side show to supplement technical skills. If there was a choice to be made, hard skills won every time.

This is no longer the best paradigm to use to guide both the recruitment, and predict the success, of leaders and managers.

The reality of today’s working world is that the so-called soft skills have come out on top and emerged as the most critical for any manager to have. They are now rightfully referred to as Power Skills and are the essential skills that any manager needs to create a top performing team that can successfully drive an organisation forward.

In the past, the use of the word “soft” has in fact discredited their value and has been a real barrier to their adoption within organisations.

If creating the right working environment for employees to flourish and prosper in an organisation is seen as key, then ensuring that leaders and managers have Power Skills is essential.

Companies find their biggest challenges not so much in the technology space, but in the values, strategy, innovation, change, ethics, culture, diversity and growth arenas.

What are Power Skills?

Power skills are basically behavioural skills:

• Communication style
• Creating and promoting a Vision
• Negotiation ability
• Team building
• Reading a room and responding appropriately
• Innovation and creativity
• Changing to accommodate different circumstances
• Understanding non-verbal cues
• Successful collaboration

Power skills are complex and are difficult to acquire.

They require emotional intelligence and the ability to be aware and mindful of what is right in front of you, rather than hinged to pre-conceived notions. They are closely linked to life skills but in a work environment also have a commercial slant. They require an element of wisdom to successfully apply. They also require a deeper understanding of what makes people behave the way they do.

Because they are behavioural, Power Skills require leaders to lead by example in both what they do and, importantly, how they do it.

Hard skills still, of course, have a critical role to play in determining success. Employees and customers alike expect a leader to have a wide and deep understanding of the technical details and workings of the products or services on offer. However, there is now a real acceptance that Power Skills are such a huge determinant of organisational success that they have been elevated to the front row.

So, how can Power skills be learned?

A commitment by the Senior Leadership Team to the central importance of Power Skills is the starting point. This will usually translate into Leadership Development programs that encourage collaborative learning. Collaborative apps can also have a part to play here.

Commit to elevating Power Skills in your organisation and reap the benefits.

Have the discussions around the benefits of having Power Skills elevated to be a non-negotiable and central management and leadership skill. Then fashion and deliver a leadership development program, one step at time, to train and grow your senior team.

We can guide and support you to have the important discussions and develop a customised Leadership Development program that moves your organisation’s thinking and implementation of Power Skills forward.

Call us on 09 445 1077 or email info@positivepeople.co.nz

Right now some of the biggest concerns facing the country are about the massive cost of living increases we are all experiencing, the mortgage rate rises and the pessimistic economic predictions, not to mention the crazy weather patterns.

A tough environment in which to successfully run a business!

This last year has shown us how difficult it is to find the right talent to drive your organisation forward. This has led to a close and careful scrutiny of what is motivating employees to join, to stay or to leave.

Standing at the centre of every business’s success are it’s people, and the need for management to attract and retain it’s top performers. Your people will not be immune from the winds of worry sweeping across the country.

These concerns, which are mainly about money, are parachuting into the employment field.

When Covid was at it’s peak and was pretty much all that anybody spoke about, the employment focus was very strongly on employee wellbeing, and on the flexibility that was needed to successfully run an organisation. As the intense concentration on Covid has eased, the flexibility that was required then has become embedded in most organisations as a primary employee requirement for happy employment. The Government’s tardy rejigging of the Immigration settings helped usher in and exacerbate a period of labour and skill shortages that is still with us today. It has meant that employees have been, and still are, in a strong position to dictate employment terms.

Wellbeing continues to stand as a work in progress in many organisations, and still demands attention. However, flexibility is now predominantly a given and was really more last year’s news.

Flexibility has mainstreamed.

Employees are being hard hit with a weekly grocery reality check and believe that a worrying picture of what their personal financial situation is likely to look like going forward is clearly emerging for them.

Flexibility has now been overtaken by PAY as a primary consideration challenging employers.

Pay is now becoming top of mind for employees.

So, what can you as an employer do to ensure that you can attract top performers, and also retain your best people?

1. Review your remuneration policy to see that it realistically addresses the 2023 employment situation and talent shortage
2. Review your organisation chart and identify the top/key people that you cannot afford to lose. Also identify key roles in your organisation.
3. Conduct a market check to ensure that you are paying at the correct level for identified people/roles
4. Make sure that you are having regular catch ups with your people, and ask them how they are going at these sessions. If you understand their thinking you may be in a position to accommodate their needs and prevent them leaving. There is nothing worse than a resignation surprise
5. Look to see how you can stretch your salary/wage budget
6. Do some innovative thinking to see how you can pro-actively retain these key people. This may require some different solutions fashioned for each key person
7. Make sure that your flexibility offering really is up there to meet employee needs
8. Keep working hard at developing an organisational culture that is attractive to be in

The overall message is that things have moved along quickly from Covid’s big days, and that pay has edged flexibility as the big front of mind issue for most employees – although flexibility is still right up there as a must have element. As employers, it is imperative to assess the situation within your own organisation. Give deep thought to what influence you believe the pay you offer will affect the recruitment and retention of the talent you need in the next year.

Positive People have over 25 year’s experience working with organisations to ensure that their pay offering hits the mark. Call us on 09 445 1077 or email info@positivepeople.co.nz

Hasn’t it been some start to the year??!!

After a seemingly never ending 2022, and the slow but apparent disappearance of the nasty Covid experience, most of us were looking forward to a long, relaxing, sunny Christmas break. However, the challenges just keep coming!

Being well prepared for whatever the year might throw at us is of paramount importance in 2023, as we look to settle back into the work routine and set our goals for the year.

With 2023 being an election year, we predict more uncertainty in both the labour market and with employment legislation. There may be changes to immigration settings, Fair Pay agreements may be halted, and we still haven’t seen how much change our new Prime Minister will make to current policies.

Operating in an environment where the future is unpredictable can be a challenge. The key to successfully navigating through this will be knowing what is important to your team, focusing on what you can control and doing it well.

Our predictions for what will be important in 2023 in the HR space are:

1. Wellbeing and resilience

A Wellbeing strategy is no longer a “nice to have”. With all the challenges and uncertainty in the environment, it is a critical focus area. The success of your business will rely heavily on your team’s ability to cope with change, external economic pressures, and the stress this can cause. Having a well-planned and executed Wellbeing plan will help your team navigate through this period personally and ensure it doesn’t impact their performance.

2. The talent shortage will continue.

While the labour market has cooled slightly, and even with changes to the immigration settings in some sectors, the talent shortage looks set to continue. We anticipate that the massive pay offers we saw last year won’t be repeated, as businesses start to realise the long-term impact of these, but it will still be competitive. Your employer branding and offering must be enticing and unique if you want to ensure top quality people join you and stay.

3. Culture as a priority

The ‘talent disaster’ sparked by the great resignation has highlighted how important it is for people to be aligned with the Company’s mission and values. A positive and strong Company culture is essential to attract and retain top talent. Toxic workplace behaviours have been exposed and are no longer tolerated by staff. Having a real understanding of your Company culture and what needs to change is essential.

4. Employee Experience

The recent staff shortages have turned the tables and meant a strong focus needs to be placed on what you can offer your staff. Recognition, growth, career opportunities, rewards and flexibility have become “non- negotiables” for employees. More and more staff are looking for a Company that genuinely values them and offers them what they need at work.

5. Learning and Development

Much of the personal and skill development of staff has been on hold over the past few years, and motivated team members will be keen to move forward, learn and progress their career. Continuous learning supports change readiness, and staff are more open to trying new things and moving forward. It also is a key motivator for most people. Reassessing your development programs to ensure they are hitting the mark, and that you have options across all your team will pay dividends for you as your business moves forward this year.

Now is the time to truly reflect on your HR practices, culture and employee experience.

• Do you have it right for 2023?
• Is what you offer enough?
• What do your team think?

Create a strong HR Plan

Creating a strong HR plan, which develops these aspects of HR and ensures you and your team are ready for success in 2023 will have you well placed to weather any other storms which come our way this year.

We can help with the development of your HR Plan. Working with you, Positive People have over 25 years of HR knowledge and experience. 

Call us on 09 445 1077 or email info@positivepeople.co.nz

Change is inevitable, and as businesses adapt to rapidly changing markets it is more certain and more frequent than ever before. But how do you effectively lead your team through a restructure, relocation or major system or process change? Almost as certain as the need for change itself is the likelihood that you will encounter some form of resistance.

We embrace many massive personal changes in life like moving homes, marriage and new jobs. But these are elective changes that we’ve chosen for ourselves. Imposed change can bring about quite a different reaction.

This might be due to:

• Loss of control
• Fear of losing our job, status or responsibilities
• Having to deal with ambiguity and additional workload during the transition
• Being pushed out of our comfort zone resulting in concerns about whether we have the right skills or experience to be successful in the new environment
• Loss of things that are valued

These are some of the reasons that people even with relatively minor changes proposed to their job can strongly resist.

To successfully negotiate change as a leader you must seek to understand and address the different emotional impact on each person in your team.

Most of us will move through a cycle of denial, resistance, exploration of options and information and finally commitment or acceptance of the change. Recognising where each member of your team is at will help you to move them through the process.

• Denial – allow people time and space to let things sink in, provide as much information as possible and clarify why you are making the change
• Resistance – encourage involvement, provide channels for feedback, keep communicating and reinforcing your key messages
• Exploration – share the progress that has been made and what needs to happen next
• Commitment / Acceptance – measure and celebrate successes, set short and long-term goals and focus on embedding the change and continuing to make improvements

If you’re still facing negativity and resistance, encourage your team to focus their energy only on what they can change or influence and then take action. Set up a session to discuss their concerns and divide these concerns into three groups:

• What they can change or control themselves
• What they can influence
• What is outside of their control or influence

Follow this up by brainstorming what actions they can take to change or influence the issues from these categories. You can also talk about strategies for letting go or moving on from what cannot be controlled or influenced.

Lastly – look after people impacted by change, and look after yourself!

In restructuring processes, it’s important to check in with your team regularly. Offer them support and encourage them to seek support from others in their network. This could include family, friends, a counselor, careers counselor or financial adviser. There are a number of government-funded organisations and resources available as well as services your company can access to assist and support your employees.

Remember to:

• Acknowledge and celebrate the wins – big or small
• Accept people’s actions and behaviours as their responses to change and don’t take them personally
• Take care with your own responses
• Vent when you need to – but to the right person
• Take care of yourself by eating well, getting enough sleep and making time for exercise and relaxation

In any change or restructuring process, it is essential that you follow proper HR processes.

Here at Positive People we have a proven track record in managing successful change processes that meet legislative obligations and support you to help your team feel respected, supported, involved and informed throughout the process. If we can help you with a change process, please call us on 09 445-1077.

A secure job, fair pay and good working conditions?

That would have been the most common answer some time ago. Today it is way more complex. While these may still hold true for some employees, in this changed environment there are now a variety of considerations.

Top of the list is what the employee experience within your organisation is like for each individual employee.

Does your Company satisfy the workplace needs of each and every one of your employees? Do you explore with your employees to find out what these are?

Whatever their individual workplace needs may be, the solution to satisfying these needs and therefore promoting high motivation, lies in aligning employee experience with engagement and the organisational environment in which they work.

Enhance the employee experience

From the moment a potential employee casts their eye over the job advertisement the employee experience begins. When they go through the application process, receive communication about the role, the interview, the remuneration and conditions negotiation, the offer or the regret letter, the discussion about the start date, the on-boarding process and the induction, and then the day-to-day working, the employee experience is being established and burned in for that employee. It will also establish your true employment brand and indicate to an employee if working for your business truly gives them what they want.

Lift engagement

Engagement is one of the key priorities for any employer to focus on. Not only is it about providing meaningful work that is understood and enjoyed by every employee, but it also embraces the whole culture of your organisation and how it feels to be part of it.

Creating an environment where employees WANT to be involved and committed is the key to high motivation. This responsibility rests with you – the employer. What can you do?

• Find out what your employees want from their workplace
• Find out what they think and feel about working for you

Do this through a combination of short sharp engagement surveys and discussion groups.

• Put in place some fixes that address any of their concerns
• Embrace their suggestions and improvements
• Measure their thoughts and feelings again

In these ways you will gain some understanding of how engaged your whole team is with your business. And then you will be able to take steps to enhance their engagement.

Promote a great culture

Review all your systems, processes and people initiatives to see if they truly do enhance the employee experience. You may have to introduce new or fine-tune current systems. You may have to make some big changes.

Ideally you would tie all this together as part of your People Strategy driven by a practical HR Plan.

In order to implement a program that enhances the employee experience and lifts morale and motivation, draw up an HR Plan. This sets out what you have decided to do to improve your organisational culture in a straight-forward and practical way. It gives you targets, deadlines and a way of measuring your progress.

Here at Positive People we have been assisting businesses optimize their people contribution for over 25 years.

Call us on 09-445 1077 or email us at info@positivepeople.co.nz to talk about how we can help.

It’s not that long ago when we were confronted with the conundrum of how to manage COVID-19 vaccinations at work. At the time we did our best to deal with challenging scenarios, differing views, the impact on working relationships and team culture.

We had difficult conversations with people who had to change their roles and others who lost jobs. Now we’ve come full circle. As the COVID-19 landscape changes, employment vaccination policies are once again under scrutiny.

While each situation will need to be managed carefully to reflect the unique individual, role and circumstances, here are some general pointers to consider.

• Avoid creating a perception that management are dealing with this behind closed doors. This could create a climate of mistrust and further exacerbate matters.
• Don’t make hasty decisions. There may be unintended consequences that damage your reputation and create animosity.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Consult and communicate with your team about potential changes. Genuinely consider and respond to feedback. Some may have concerns about their own health or how clients may feel about changes. Others may believe that relationships were irreparably damaged and that resurrecting the subject will be destructive.
2. Undertake another risk assessment. WorkSafe guidance indicates that a mandatory vaccination policy could be justified ‘where the nature of the work itself raises the risk of COVID-19 infection and transmission above the risk faced outside work’. Engage an expert who can support you through this process.
3. Ensure you have a reasonable COVID19 policy in place, covering health and safety protocols e.g. hygiene measures, testing, sickness absence management. You could still encourage vaccination as one potential safeguard.
4. If you change your organisation’s vaccination stance, establish how you want to manage vacancies for those who lost their jobs and could, in theory, come back on board. Do you want people to find out directly from you, or through the grapevine? Both approaches have pros and cons.
5. Put in place a fair transparent selection process with clear criteria e.g. tenure, if you have more interest than roles available. You may need to make unpopular decisions so open communication with the team will be key, even if their desired outcome is not the result.
6. Be certain about the uncertainty. None of us know what twists and turns the pandemic may take and it would be prudent to talk about potential future vaccination policies should the situation change.

In short, take your time to reflect on the situation, different viewpoints, potential implications and consider the needs of all your key stakeholders. Use the opportunity to re-establish trust and build a positive, consultative culture. Together, you will find the right approach.