Retention – The Biggest Challenge

Employee friendly policies and practices
Young people are more mobile and less committed to individual organisations. The baby boomers are approaching retirement age.

To retain staff, organisations have to be more flexible, ensuring that work/life balance is possible.

When we talk about work/life balance, we tend to picture in our mind couples with young children. It actually applies to all employees. Work/life balance applies to young, single people and older people seeking shorter working hours.

People want to experience life. They want to travel. They want flexibility and because of the skills shortage, they can seek out organisations that cater for these aspirations.

So organisations need to have supportive policies like sabbaticals (12 months leave of absence without pay) and flexible working hours.

Once the policies are in place, managers and team leaders need to implement them correctly. Workplace flexibility is much harder to manage. Sometimes it hard to meet operational demands when everyone wants Friday off to make it a four day weekend (eg. Queens Birthday public holiday on the Monday). But it has to be managed. The good intent behind the flexibility policy is lost if it is too much hassle to get the time off you need. There has to be a match between reality and expectations.

These things are about the interaction between work and private time.

What about the time actually spent at work?

Work environment and culture
‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’

Confucius (551-479 BC), Chinese philosopher

Employee retention is about the nature of the work itself and the work environment/culture.

What can you do?

Firstly, you have to get the basics right – good pay, appropriate conditions, etc.

Secondly, you have to remove the fear of uncertainty – employees should feel safe and secure in their employment. They should not be concerned about your employment practices. They should not picture you ‘with a whip’.

Thirdly, you have to work hard to create and maintain a good work culture and climate.

I define culture as ‘the way we do things around here’ and climate as ‘how things are around here’.

The culture should be friendly, work focussed but not obsessed. People should have fun when the pressure is off and work hard when the pressure is on.

At the time I worked in the health insurance industry, the federal government kept changing the system, meaning major system changes every 12 months or so.

I was actively involved in change management (policies, systems and the like), so I found the work very challenging and motivating. But all the staff ‘got a buzz’ from the peak workload as many customers made contact simultaneously. For about four weeks every year, work was extremely busy, and then workloads would return to normal levels. It was serious. It was fun. It would have been impossible to work at that pace all year, but the ‘positive feeling’ of a job well done lasted a long time.

The organisational culture and climate supported staff in this peak workload. It was appropriate. It worked.

Conclusion
There are many facets to employee retention. It is much more than having appropriate organisational policies. It involves successfully implementing good policies and creating a positive work culture and climate. It requires positive action by team leaders and managers.

Personal reflection
1) Do you like your job?
2) In line with the Confucius quote, do you love your job?
3) Do your team members like their jobs?
4) Do you work in an organisation with a positive culture and climate?
5) What did you do this week to actually help achieve the best climate and  culture possible?

Source: BRW

Top Five Mistakes Leaders Make in These Troubled Times

Eileen McDargh

January 21 2009 – Even Joe the Pipefitter must look askance at some of the moves made in corporate America when faced with a string of bad news. (Sorry… I just can’t use “Joe the Plumber”, a guy who didn’t pay his taxes, isn’t certified as a plumber, and has tried to cash in on his 15 seconds of fame which – amazingly McGraw Hill has turned into a book while making great authors wait for a contract.)

Mistake #1: Become reactive and reactionary

There is truth in the old saying “Respond in haste. Regret in sorrow.” This is also known as the “ready, fire, aim” approach of leadership. When leaders fail to gather the information and critically assess the long-term impact of decisions, severe errors are made. Consider the Big Three auto executives who knee-jerked their way on private planes to ask for a handout without ever having a plan. Now that’s a bonehead mistake.

First, stop any action and breathe. Think long-term strategy. Be cautious. Be proactive. Test out the decisions by saying, “If this… then this…” so you can try it on for size.

Mistake #2: Huddle with only the corporate folks

First, answers are often found at the floor level, not at the ceiling. Involve everyone in the search for efficiencies and innovations. Engage everyone in a common vision and mission. Besides, if managers tell employees what to do, you’ve taken away all sense of responsibility and ownership. How refreshing to have the Obama team now posting discussions on the internet and seeking input from a variety of people with differing viewpoints. Building transparency goes a long way for building trust and making us all feel we are part of the solution.

Mistake #3: Cut. Cut. Cut.

No one EVER downsized their way to greatness. Wholesale termination of employees without thinking about the cost of underserved customers and too much work done by too few people or canceling the meeting without realizing that this is the time TO GATHER and candidly talk are just two examples of cuts that could have been done with a scalpel instead of a hacksaw. Substitute Jello for Jamoca Fudge and Two Buck Chuck for Dom Perignon but bring people together.

As for layoffs, if your organization or department can handle this-bring everyone together and spread out the facts. One very smart leader found that employees were willing to reduce work schedules, work half-time, and job share rather than have members of their team terminated. For more ideas, read Responsible Restructuring: Creative and Profitable Alternatives to Layoffs by Wayne Cascio, professor of management at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School.

Mistake #4: Go after new clients and customers

Unless your current customers have vanished because of poor quality or service, these can be your best source of new revenue. Ask how you can turn them into champions of what you provide. Make them feel special and valuable. I’ve noticed that my bank is now making every effort to thank me for my business, to call me by name, to answer any request with a “no problem” attitude. Sure, they should have been doing that all along but-better late than never. Besides, they’ve already got all my money in the safe. I think they’d like to keep it.

Mistake #5: Do more with less

We’ve been hearing this for years. In my consulting practice, I have often found that much of the “more” is work that provides no value at the end of the day. Scrutinize every process; get rid of the sacred cows and the egos. Translate every action into a dollar value. In one organization, we found that senior executives were tripping over each other to put their two cents into every PowerPoint presentation that was made. It was a waste of executive talent, made each project longer than necessary, disempowered the employee creating the presentation, and actually used up some $15,000 worth of senior management time!

BONUS Mistake: Buy into pessimism

It’s a huge mistake we ALL make when we let the news of the day finds us hiding under the covers, chopping up the furniture for kindling and searching for recipes made with bread and water. What we have here is an opportunity to really consider what is most important, to spend time at work that is meaningful, and to nurture relationships that matter. We have an opportunity to reclaim our reputation, our integrity, and our future. Not to do this would be our biggest mistake.

To condense the wisdom of a Hopi Elder, “This is the Eleventh Hour…and we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

© 2009, McDargh Communications. Publication rights granted to all venues so long as article and by-line are reprinted intact and all links are made live.

Known as a powerful presenter and facilitator, Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE has been creating conversations that matter and connections that count since 1980. Executive Excellence ranks her among the top 100 thought-leaders in leadership development. Her newest book, Gifts from the Mountain, received the 2008 Ben Franklin book award. To hire Eileen as a speaker, coach or retreat leader visit http://www.eileenmcdargh.com.

Six bullets to kill Recession

 

Business owners get awake!!!!! Here is the solution to achieve success during recession. Recession made plenty of damage to many industries are we still waiting for more damage or are we ready to face it with courage. This article is for those, who think they can beat the recession. Below mentioned tips will help you to attract new clients and to overcome recession.

 

1. Don’t lower your prices due to the recession fear.

 

Most of the business firm thinks cutting down price of the product or service is only the solution to overcome recession but its wrong. Buy doing this your profit level will reduce to a large extent; henceforth you will be the victim of recession.

During recession you need to add value to your services rather than cutting down the price.

 

2. Don’t cut on hiring cost

Recession is the time wherein you need some of the experts to add value to your products. Hiring the right talent pool to your existing workforce can help you to add value to the product or service. By cutting down the existing workforce will reduce your strength in providing quality service to the client. Human Resource department should play extraordinary role during recession. Outsourcing Staffing needs to expert talent sourcing parties will bring down the cost of HR during recession.

 

3. Don’t cut on marketing cost

 

There’s a fictional story doing the email rounds at the moment about a   businessman who uses lots of different marketing techniques for his shop, which is performing really well. Then he hears that a recession is on the way, so decides to cut back his marketing to prepare his business for the storm ahead. As he cuts back on his marketing he notices the shop gets quieter and quieter. “Thank goodness I cut back my costs,” says the man, “the recession is here”. Marketing is always an upfront solution to survive in the business. Buy a list of prospecting emails from list building or database organizations and try to reach as many clients as possible. Come up with unique mailing tricks to attract the prospects and convince them, why they have to use marketing during recession.

 

4. Don’t cut on Training Cost

 

Here once again HR will come in to picture. Make your existing teams well aware of the present business environment and need for multi skilled abilities. Give them excessive training to acquire new skills. These training activities will increase the confidence as well as the skill level of the employees. This will result in high level of positive energy and Greater profit margin.

 

 5.  Don’t forget the past success

Most of the business firms forgot their success of building biggest enterprise. Ups and down in the economy and business are quiet common. Present failure will not remain for a long time. We need to think positively to achieve success in  recession.

 

 6.  Don’t Relay on same old business tactics.

To increase sales, it is important to spread information about your product. Meeting people and joining social circles is one way to go about this. Find qualified sources, distributors and intermediaries. You should monitor the competition and learn from their handling of the market. This will also help you to gain knowledge of their weaknesses and shortcomings in dealing with clients, which you could turn into your strength.

 

     Value for client needs, hiring and retaining talent, training, positive energy will make the business to grow during recession. We took around 60 years to build number “ONE” nation in the world, can we afford to lose the position just because of recession. Join hands to beat the recession.

 

 

Source: This article is compilation of my thoughts on recession and few strong articles I came across in net.

 

John kotes

I’m planning to kote everything I read… would that be interesting…

Well, the time shall answer it all.