Category: Human Resource

Article Contributed by Lisa Michaels

Hiring the right people is tough, but it can be even tougher to maintain a reliable workforce. The average worker spends about four years at each of his or her job, while the average millennial only stays for two years. Turnover is expensive, time-consuming and disruptive to workflow; according to the AARP, you’ll spend about half of an experienced employee’s salary in turnover costs.

Why do employees leave? According to Leigh Branham, 89 percent of managers believe that workers are seeking better pay, while a separate study reported that 88 percent of employees actually quit for non-monetary reasons. With employee turnover rates on the rise, you’re probably looking for ways to keep your staff on target and on the payroll. If you’re wondering why quality employees look for opportunities elsewhere, here are five reasons and what to do about them. 

Work Overload

It’s tempting to give your best employees a greater share of the workload because that way you ensure that things get done properly. However, too much work over a longer period of time can lead to burnout. Worst of all, an employee who feels that he’s getting the brunt of the workload without any perks may look for a company that rewards hard effort.

Set realistic expectations based on experience and the data available. Use promotions, annual raises and other bonus opportunities to reward employees who work harder and get more done. Finding the balance between a challenging workload and employee burnout is the key to making sure that the work gets done while your employees don’t feel overburdened.

No Recognition or Acknowledgement

Good employees work hard out of their own sense of accomplishment and motivation to do well, but over time, it’s easy to take advantage of that work ethic by forgetting to reward their efforts. Employees are more likely to seek out different employment if they feel underappreciated.

You don’t need to give out a raise or bonus every time an employee goes above and beyond, but you should consider implementing a policy that rewards hard effort and solid contributions. Public recognition and acknowledgement also goes a long way, and don’t forget to ask for input to encourage motivation.

Nowhere to Grow

Human nature compels people to seek more from life, and this is true in the workplace as well. If an employee feels like there’s nowhere to go – and no way to grow – then she’s likely to look for a job that offers career advancement. It’s not always necessary to offer title changes in terms of career growth.

Simply offering professional development options would be enough to encourage employees to stay. Take advantage of today’s technology to promote personal and professional growth. Flexible and effective training practices can help people learn new, marketable skills. In turn, this process enables self-growth and gives your company a competitive edge.

Lack of True Transparency

If you’re promoting an open-door policy, then make sure your employees know that you mean it. Transparency plays a critical role in keeping successful businesses going, and employees who don’t believe in an open-door policy are more likely to seek employment with a more genuine company.

You don’t have to let everyone in on every single detail, but you should encourage people to ask questions while giving them truthful answers about the important matters. Being transparent will prompt your employees to get behind you. You’ll build better loyalty and trust if you’re honest with your staff. Plus, employees who are actively engaged in the workplace will stick around to see how the company grows over time.

Boxed-in Workplaces

Passion and creativity set top-notch employees apart from the rest, so do your best to foster an environment where these elements are not only encouraged but celebrated. You might be tempted to stifle freedom of expression at the workplace for fear of getting off track, but this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The tighter the leash and stricter the policies, the more likely you are to get lackluster work from everyone.

You’ll lose creative, passionate people to more open opportunities if you don’t allow employees to think outside the box on certain projects. Encourage your employees to pursue their passions within the workplace, and your company will benefit from creatively engaged workers.

You may have a business to run, but it won’t be a great place to work unless you put forth the effort to encourage employee morale. It’s easy to overlook your best employees because they can do the work without supervision, but take some time to assess their needs, listen to their concerns and ask for their input. Reward good behavior while making sure that everyone has a voice in some capacity. You can maintain a good, reliable workforce if you implement policies that respect your workers.

About the Author

Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a striving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in the business world. She spends her free time trying out new recipes or reading Scandinavian crime novels.

Article Contributed b Cameron Johnson

The modern economy is a complex and diverse ecosystem with infinite types of specialization. Forms of work, livelihood, and commodities themselves are so varied and numerous that it’s impossible for each individual to be well informed on every subject that is pertinent to their day-to-day. Sometimes it can difficult to know enough just deciding what to purchase. The confusion of it all drives most of us to make the occasional wrong decision, from the purchase of counterfeit or substandard products and services to bad decisions on bigger issues like career path.

Sometimes uninformed decision making results in significant losses for business organizations, and individuals alike. Everybody makes bad decisions once in awhile. They’re called mistakes. It’s part of being human, and it’s forgivable. But a bad decision repeated more than once can no longer be called a mistake. Those are called choices. And the worst choice anyone can make is to remain uninformed in area where they have an established record of mistakes. That’s just raw negligence. And when negligence is at the center of the formulation and implementation of bad policies, then accountability comes into play and heads roll. To repeating past mistakes, individuals and business organizations need to rely on consultants for professional advice. Here are five main types of consultants.

Strategy

Strategy consultants offer advisory services to clients on strategic issues, and their advice addresses fields such as corporate strategy, information technology strategy, policy, marketing, and sales and transactions. In addition, they assist clients analyze their reports and advise them on efficient implementation processes of the reports. However, a strategist in one discipline should not be treated as a general purpose think tank on legs. Sometimes it takes a team a specialized strategists. For final implementation, strategy consultants are often dependent on both the technology and business consultants.

Financial

Financial consultants specialize in offering personalized advice to clients on topics such as taxes, insurance and investments. The clients can be either individuals or companies. Also, they often direct their clients to buy and sell financial products such as bonds, stocks, and insurance policies.

They are also responsible for assessing a client’s financial situation and later present a financial plan. However, it should include both long and short-term financial goals. Along with this, the consultants assist clients make ample and sound financial planning decisions on a wide range of issues such as education, retirement, investments and daily expenditure.

Information Technology

IT consultants offer advice to clients specifically in the information technology field. They focus on advising their clients in the best manner in which they can use information technology to achieve their set targets and those of the business. Also, they administer, deploy, manage and implement information technology systems on behalf of their customers, what is known as “outsourcing.” As a global industry, information technology consultant services total approximately $48.2 billion in revenue.

IT consultants offer professional and expertise advice on issues such as choosing an ERP package, setting up an information technology service center and information technology strategy. However, the main services of these specialists include Big Data, application development, system integration, and IT management and maintenance.

Safety

Safety consultants specialize in providing support and advice on safety measures for businesses and industry where government regulations and insurance liability issues come to bear. They address topics such as workplace health and safety as well as protecting of one’s valuable assets in their business. Also, they advise on the best WHS services and safety programs.

In a bid to avoid construction risks, some safety consultants design company safety protocols that require the compliance of both workers and management. Safety consultants draft all the necessary documents on behalf of the client and implement the outlined policies in the field. They also participate in risk analysis associated with work environments to provide a health and safety management system that is both compliant with regulations, and user-friendly. The system is purposed for the office environment, and it covers all areas prone to risks in any working place.

Human Resource

Human resource consultants precisely handle any organization’s human capital issues. They focus on offering advisory services on best practices for improving the human resource performance of an organization. Some of the main topics that the professionals deal with include compensation and benefits, pensions, large transformations, and training and development. Jobs in the human resource consulting market have shown positive growth since 2011.

There you have it. Consultants of every stripe form the basis for achieving the set goals and objectives while avoiding the repeat of past mistakes. They offer professional advice, create and implement systems and methodologies as well as provide solutions for specific challenges and situations since they have the skills needed in this line of work.

Article contributed by Andrew Greenwood

Retaining good employees is essential for any company. But let’s face it without endless resources it is even more critical if you’re an SME. Lose someone and you will probably be feeling the impact for months. Retention rates are affected by getting your recruitment right and that recruitment pool is increasingly being filled by the millennial generation. By 2020 it is estimated millennials will account for over half the global workforce.

And just look at this research carried out recently by Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking showing 86% of SMEs believe their future growth will rely on millennials. It seems SMEs value the fresh thinking and new perspectives, as well as the digital skills millennials bring to the table. This means SMEs are prepared to invest heavily in finding the right people – and for some that means a staggering 15% of turnover is spent recruiting millennial talent.

The Lloyds bank research point towards the difficulties with hiring talented millennials, highlighting a generation who are likely to turn down jobs if the culture isn’t right – regardless of how good the salary is.

This a big problem for those SMEs owners and leaders who are fully aware their existing culture is unlikely to appeal. Most SMEs in the Lloyds research agree the balance of power now resides with a skilled millennial generation whose values and attitudes are influencing the employer/employee relationship like never before.

Getting your SME ready for millennials

So is your company culture millennial ready? The clues are in the report. Flexibility’s a priority, both in terms of working hours and location. Millennials want to develop their own skills and personal brand so regular training, development and certification matters along with regular mentoring support too. And all of this needs to be transferable; millennials are looking to build your future alongside their own. This is also a generation accustomed to constant feedback. That includes feedback about their performance, attitude, behaviour, effort and results. And not just once a year in a performance review. If your employee recognition programme is not multi-channel, social and hierarchy free, then you’ve some serious work to do to get your culture millennial-ready.

Social recognition gives SMEs the answer

Until now, SME employee recognition programmes have almost always been manager-led or centralised. Being taken to lunch by your manager, going on a company outing as a thank you for a project completed or a last minute dash for Christmas gift vouchers, there’s been a whole host of well-intentioned ways that SMEs have attempted to recognise people, all of which are usually ‘done’ to the employee, and have done little to bridge the gaps in performance reviews or boost the employee engagement.

This kind of passive recognition is not going to go down well with millennials. However the very technology embraced by millennials, and the social age they have helped create, has provided the answer through social and peer to peer recognition. Better still SME’s are able to access cutting edge cloud based employee recognition applications that were once the preserve of only enterprise business.

Social recognition is a new software approach to employee recognition, providing  a personalised online workplace community for everything positive, be it performance, value or behaviour driven. Recognition from peers creates greater cohesion and builds the support structure and workplace friendships millennials value. Whilst also providing managers with the tools and real time insight to ensure they can finally excel at recognising their people. This hierarchy neutral approach to recognition is combined with multiple reward gateways, providing full access to the latest digital reward technologies that fit seamlessly inside high frequency feedback communities such as social recognition.

As SME business culture evolves, many issues and obstacles are appearing, whilst many long standing problems such as employee recognition are being solved. Say good bye to gimmicks, competitions and “110%” programmes. Get you culture millennial ready with Social recognition, and start to encourage your employees to build a culture they can believe in.

About the Author

Article written by Andrew Greenwood, Director of Sales and Service at social employee recognition experts Workstars.

We all have tough days in the workplace. Whether you are making high-end business deals, hiring your first employees, or trying to break even as a small business, there is a good chance that you have experienced a day that was so stressful that it felt like a year. However, there is a difference between a little bit of stress every once in a while, and a job that is constantly keeping you at the end of your tether. Stress can be incredibly detrimental to a person’s health—both mental and physical—and subsequently, their overall performance in the workplace.

Stress Affects Every Aspect of a Business

Nothing helps breed a negative work environment like stress does. When left to build, stress can eat away at employees, and corrode a business like rust. Here are some of the specific ways in which stress can negatively affect your business:

Unity

When employees feel stressed, overworked, and underappreciated, it is not uncommon for them to feel bitter and harbor feelings of resentment towards their employers. You might think that one or two unhappy employees are not the end of the world, but on the contrary, a few unhappy employees can hinder overall employee training and development and create a poor feeling in the company as a whole. As a result you will not have the kind of unity that anyone looking to have a successful business should seek after.

Productivity

When your employees are happy, they are also likely to be more productive. A little bit of pressure can be a good way to motivate people, but if you apply too much, all you have are unhappy employees and no results. Research has proven that people work better when they are happy and relaxed, and in an environment that they enjoy. Furthermore, if they have better feelings towards a company, they are more likely to want to produce better work for that company.

Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can also be affected by stress levels in the office. Although high employee turnover is not a problem for some larger companies, and sometimes can be expected, it is a dangerous thing to let fly under the radar. You will limit your pool of prospective employees if there are constantly people leaving, and you could also run the risk of damaging your company’s brand. The best and most successful companies are usually the ones which have the best reputations, the good brands, and the employees who want to stay with them for life. If your employees do not like working for you, you might struggle to find any quality workers to promote when the time comes.

Streamline Process

Making your processes hassle free is a worthy investment. We often think about all the small details to create the most resistance free customer experience but how often do we give our employee experience the same treatment? Researching emerging technology in each aspect of your intern process may yield some impressive results. Sales Processes have benefited from technology as well as training programs to name a couple. But in every niche you can usually find someone who is leveraging technology to streamline the process. Take the time to nitpick your employee experience as much as your customer experience. You’ll end up preventing stress and moving the needle on the almighty bottom line.

So in order to have a well-functioning business, it is important to do what you can to create a happy, relaxed, yet productive, atmosphere. There are many tips to preventing stress within your atmosphere. Too many for this article. Combating stress on all fronts is an ongoing process and will never be complete. Knowing how stress is hurting you and your company along with ways to mitigate that damage is an essential skill for any business.