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Recently I met with a team member who had just returned from an extended break, and the first thing she said was “I’ve got some ideas I’d like discuss with you”. She then proceeded to talk me through a list of exciting, innovative suggestions to tackle long held problems.
So what happened? Was I a slave driver that expected her to be working, even on vacation? No. She summed it up perfectly:
” I wasn’t working, I was thinking.”
And this got me thinking. Where has our thinking space gone, and shouldn’t we always be thinking at work?
If you look at most of your team’s day I would guarantee that it’s filled with meetings, scheduled tasks and a list of urgent actions to implement. What this means is that they address issues and solve problems with immediate ideas and easy solutions. Do they get the chance or have the time to think deeply to offer longer term solutions?

Thinking through pros and cons, options and consequences is an essential part of innovating and producing solutions which go beyond day-to-day operational business problem solving. Are we creating the space and environment for this to happen?
If we want innovation, we have to allow room for our people to think!
How might we do this when the lists are long and the priorities urgent? Here are a few ideas:
1. Schedule time for innovation or process improvement each week – let every team member have some downtime in which to reflect on their work and free-wheel solutions
2. Encourage them to think big – make sure your team knows that no idea is a silly idea, and all ideas are welcome, no matter how big, small or off the wall they seem
3. Let team members choose a personal work project as well as the business ones you set
– they still have to complete the business project but working on something they are passionate about can produce great results and really energise them for their other tasks
4. Create a reading area and invest in some great books that will inspire your team – learning can inspire creativity and help to produce fresh ideas
5. Schedule an innovation day for the team – let them spend some time working on their own ideas and present this to you at the end of the day.

These are just a few ideas and you will no doubt have a few of your own. We would be keen to hear from you. Remember innovation needs inspiration, engagement and support to flourish, so make sure you give your team room to think and you will see the benefits!

The winter weather has arrived, and we know it is getting harder and harder to get going in the mornings, especially on a Monday. The thought of getting up early out of your cosy bed, standing at bus stations, sitting in cold workplaces – it’s enough to give you a serious case of the Monday blues!

But, did you know that Mondays are generally the most productive day of your working week?

Having a great Monday can put you on the right track for a satisfying, successful week of work, so it’s a day we should all look forward to and utilise to its fullest.

We suggest:
1. Enjoying your Sunday night. Monday seems worse if you start dreading it early. Go for dinner, enjoy some time with a friend or get outside and do some exercise. Make sure you have an early-ish night. All of these things will help put you in a motivated mind-set for the morning.
2. Have your morning things ready on Sunday night. There is nothing more stressful than a game of “where did I leave my keys?” on a Monday morning. Be organised and ready to go, and you will feel happier when you walk out the door.
3. Start your morning by preparing a “to-do’ list for the week, and set calendar times to complete each item. This helps to keep the motivation high throughout the week, and stops procrastination kicking in.
4. Think about the “wins” or “goals” you want for the week and make sure you have a plan in place in achieve these (both personal and professional). Nothing is more satisfying at the end of the week than looking back and being proud of yourself, so take time to make sure you are working on the right actions to achieve your priorities.

Today could be the day which sets you up for success, helps you achieve your goals, and makes you feel good about your achievements. Mondays are an opportunity. Make the most of it.

Happy Monday everyone!

Leadership is essential to the success of any business, and this is especially true of medium sized businesses. Team members have direct and daily contact with the whole leadership team, from CEO to Senior Managers to Team Leaders, and these interactions can both inspire and motivate them, or cause confusion, negativity and a drop in morale.

The core features of a medium sized business that make them great – their nimbleness, urgency, commitment and flexibility, and the variety of the work experience, can also be the undoing of the organisation unless you have leaders with the right set of skills to navigate this territory.

So, what skills are essential to be a successful leader in a medium sized businesses?
First and foremost great communication skills are key. Every day Managers and Team Leaders have to communicate across a wide range of topics and with a variety people at all different levels. They could be dealing with a customer, a factory team member, a supplier and the CEO, all within an hour. Each of these interactions must be meaningful, clear, and pitched at the right level to ensure the communication results in positive action.

Successful leaders also need to possess the ability to plan and prioritise well. Medium sized business leaders wear many different hats. On any given day Managers and Team Leaders could be helping develop the strategic plan, solving a product problem, making marketing decisions, dealing with a difficult team member, running a team meeting, pacifying a customer, negotiating with a supplier and then rolling their sleeves up to pack boxes to ensure an important order gets out on time. Knowing what the priorities are, and fine-tuning where they put their effort in is essential to the business’s success. Having the ability to create a clear plan, prioritise tasks and time allocation, and then exercising the self discipline to push on with team goals is what keeps the business going forward.

It is impossible to be a leader who only wants to work on the high level tasks when working in a medium sized business. Managers and Supervisors have to be flexible and prepared to work across all levels of the business. They must be able to dive into detail one minute and then put their mind to the future the next. Knowing the difference, and having the ability to do both is crucial to making sure that the requirements of the organisation are met.

And, right up there, leaders have to be exceptional at motivating and inspiring their team with every interaction. Being right up close with the team is challenging. For example, the on-site support of a communication expert to plan their presentations isn’t there. They have to get involved and do a lot of the functional work themselves, unlike in a larger organisation. Every time the leaders interact with a team member it is an opportunity to gain their commitment and improve performance. Using these opportunities wisely can make a real difference to your business.

Managers and Team Leaders need to be excellent problem solvers. There are daily challenges and the medium sized businesses who have the leaders to meet these challenges head on and turn problems around with innovative solutions are the ones that survive and prosper. Do your leaders possess the problem solving skills that your business needs?
Knowing the importance of having trained, skilled and committed leaders in your organisation is a key strategy that advances your business.

Being clear on what your leaders need to do well, and giving them the necessary support is an essential requirement for a successful business. A positive by-product is increased motivation and retention of your leaders within your organisation. Excellent leaders who flourish in the medium sized business environment are hard to find so looking after the leaders you have and nurturing and developing their personal and professional development is essential.

Positive People have 21 years of experience helping medium sized business get the best from their leadership teams. Call us, we can help.

1 April will see the introduction of important changes to New Zealand’s employment legislation. With the date just around the corner, it’s time to think about what this means to your business, and what changes you need to put in place to ensure you are legally compliant.

What you need to know – the key changes:

Minimum wage – The minimum wage will increase by 50c to $15.25 on 1 April. If you have any team members who are on, or near, the current minimum wage then you will need to ensure you make any increase required on or before 1 April.

Maternity leave – From 1 April the period of paid parental leave will be increasing from 16 weeks to 18 weeks, allowing for parents to spend more time with their new bundle of joy, while still being able to pay the bills. The criteria for parental leave stays the same, as do the other parts of this legislation. If you have anyone who is due to take parental leave after 1 April it would be worth checking the length of time they have applied for to see if it should be extended or changed.

Changes to zero hour agreements – In response to recent concerns about the prevalence of zero hour employment agreements the Act will be changed to provide greater protection to casual workers. This is a big one for those of you with casual employees, so it is important you check your employment agreements and current practices to see what changes, if any, you need to make.

In future:

• 1. When a set number of hours are agreed upon by the employee and employer, these must be included in an employment agreement
• 2. When employees are required to be available for work outside their set hours the employer must provide compensation for this
• 3. If an employer sends an employee home part way through their shift or cancels a shift without reasonable notice they must provide the employee with compensation

The changes also specify that an employer may not put unreasonable restrictions on an employee regarding secondary employment or make unreasonable deductions from their wages. Tougher sanctions are introduced for employers who don’t comply with the legislation. Also, the requirement for record keeping is tightened and streamlined so it is consistent across all legislation and employers.

All of this adds up to the need to have a thorough review of your current employment practices, and to ensure you are complying.

For more information about the changes check the MBIE website at http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/employment-skills/legislation-reviews/employment-standards-legislation-bill/strengthening-enforcement-of-employment-standards, or contact us at Positive People to discuss further.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, continuous improvement has become an essential process for organisations to master if they are to keep pace with competitors and secure a competitive advantage. We all know the importance of staff suggestion schemes, innovation days and process improvement, and most businesses today will have various programs implemented to drive the improvement of products, services and delivery, but what about the continuous improvement of your people?

For continuous improvement to become truly part of your business culture, and part of the everyday psyche for each employee, continuous improvement of self must also be discussed and recognised. Often it is too easy to think about the widgets we make and the environment we work in, and far too confronting to look at our own performance and skills, or ask our teams to look at theirs.

It sounds easy. However we all know that asking team members to look in the mirror and identify improvements can be challenging, so creating an environment where this is recognised, celebrated and comfortable is a key skill for leaders to master. Creating a culture where feedback is sought and valued is the most effective path to self improvement. Most team members find it hard to self-evaluate (if they knew how to do things better they usually would), so providing on-going positive and constructive feedback provides your team with a set of objective eyes to develop their skills and performance. This helps the team to develop and improve their skills on a day to day basis, and sits alongside your formal performance review system.

If your team isn’t used to receiving regular day-to-day feedback we recommend starting small, ask their permission and make a suggestion on an improvement area you have noticed. Keep it specific and focused so your team members know exactly what you mean, and how they can improve.

By being positive and developmental focused your team members will be more open to your feedback. Keep your feedback specific and make sure they know exactly what they did well, and what impact this had on the business. Focus the conversation on development, use open positive body language and encourage them to view feedback as an opportunity for growth. Constructive feedback is best done in private, and the best time for honest and open reflection is as soon as possible after an event has occurred.

You know you’ve got it right when your team start to ask for feedback. This is when they really have embraced continuous improvement and development as a key philosophy.

We know this can be a difficult part of a Managers role, so don’t expect it to fall into place overnight. Providing day-to-day feedback which is effective and helps to grow your team and business takes practice. There is no better time to start than today.

Positive People have 21 years of experience helping leaders to provide effective feedback and create high performing cultures. Call us on 445-1077.

Recruitment costs within an organisation can be expensive.

Over and above the essential outcome that a really good person is employed, it is important for managers and business owners to have a clear understanding of what they are paying for and whether they are receiving value for money. To understand what is the best and most effective recruitment approach is an important question for every business to answer before they start on the recruitment journey.

There are a number of different recruitment approaches.

1. The traditional approach is where the business develops the job description and person profile, writes its own advertisements, places the ads, screens the applications and applicants, interviews, short lists and then reference checks the preferred candidate. This approach relies completely on in-house expertise in the recruitment field and works best where you have an internal HR resource.
2. The recruitment agency approach which more or less hands the front-end of the complete assignment over to the recruitment agency and relies on them to find the “right person”, to reference check and “guarantee” the selected candidate. The view taken here is that recruitment is extremely time consuming, the recruitment agencies are the experts and the tedious screening work is contracted out. Some recruitment agencies potentially have a data base of suitable candidates ready for interview which can help to speed up the process. This can be a good option for saving time, but is usually the most expensive.
3. The head hunting approach which is where an agency is contracted to go out, find and target a specific individual for a role. This is mostly used to fill more senior roles and can be effective where you have a very specific need.
4. The 50/50 shared recruitment approach consists of a combination of some of the work being done by the organisation itself and some by an HR/Recruitment specialist who is available to assist with both some of the time consuming work and work requiring specific recruitment expertise. This approach can flex in and out and can be adjusted to suit your budget.
5. Then there is word of mouth, friends, networking and social media which are more opportunistic than planned, and sit over and above a planned approach. They can be effectively used to recruit good employees and should be used in addition to other approaches.

Across all of these approaches are different pricing models ranging from in-house cost absorption to percentage of annual remuneration fees to fixed price options to hourly rates.

Which approach is the best and most cost effective option for your organisation?

This depends to a great extent on the size of the organisation, the expertise and time they have at their disposal as well as the budget they have. The non-negotiable in all of this is that the best person who is an excellent candidate and who fits the organisation’s requirements and culture is the one who actually is employed. Of course, what managers and business owners are looking for is the employment of the ideal candidate for least cost.

Are the two mutually exclusive?

Not necessarily.

It depends, to a great extent, on the quality of the person employed. If they prove to be an asset then the cost is usually justified. If they prove to be less than that then the cost rears its head and is well remembered. Based on this it could then be argued that cost is not a factor, but of course we know that cost always is.

So, what is the best approach for you?

Realistically, if you are attracting and employing good candidates into your business, then you are likely to continue with the approach that you currently take. However if you have some budgetary pressure or feel that costs are too high, time available to you has changed, the resourcing available is different, or you have had some recruitment disappointments, then you may wish to consider a change of approach. Consideration of all the options makes good business sense.

Each approach has its merits so it is worth thinking carefully about what might work best for you and also be the most cost effective.

Positive People have over 21 years of experience working with businesses in a flexible way to best serve their HR and recruitment needs, and would be pleased to help and discuss your needs and recruitment strategy. Give us a call the next time you have a recruitment need.