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They say people are known for the company they keep. Well, the reverse is also true: companies are known for the people they keep. All too often companies let the really good ones slip through their fingers. Perhaps even more troubling is that they can’t, or won’t, admit the reasons. Good, highly-motivated people are the key to running your business. You spend a lot of time and energy recruiting, training and developing your staff. If and when they leave, you lose that investment and, more importantly, the promise of their future contribution to your success.
Whether someone is leaving for more money, more challenge, or just to sail around the world, you need to fully understand their reasons. That is, assuming you are interested in improving your company, your department and your own personal management style. And assuming you want to keep other employees leaving too. Exit interviews are designed to elicit that information. Properly done, picking the mind of a departing employee will reveal a gold mine of insights about your corporate environment, working relationships and how your business could improve. You wouldn’t pay a consultant to analyze your operation and then send them on their merry way without listening to their advice. Don’t do it with your employees either. The goal of the exit interview is to shine a light on any specific work, performance or morale issues that you should target for improvement. But odds are you won’t get that far unless your corporate culture has encouraged free, honest and open communication from the first day of employment until the last. Trying to start that dialogue on someone’s final day will not work. Although being their final day, they may be more apt to open up. Also, don’t start asking questions if you’re not prepared to hear the answers or to do something about them. For instance, don’t be surprised when you hear the number one reason people leave is poor management and lack of challenge or excitement. Too many companies ask a few obligatory questions when a worker leaves and then do nothing with the information. Don’t waste your time if that’s the case. You should have a system to communicate the results to managers and key employees and use the information to influence job content, policies and training. Interview every person who leaves, not just the good employees. Everyone has insights that may prove valuable to running your business. Keep perspective and avoid overreacting. One exit interview does not the truth make. There will always be personality clashes that occur between the manager and the managed. But if you see a trend in why people are leaving, then don’t bury your head in the sand. Look for patterns. For instance, if a number of people have left the same department, that could indicate you have the wrong manager in place and you need to take some action. Remember, don’t take it personally. In today’s mobile job environment, employees come and employees go through no fault of your own. Still, anyone that has worked for you has some ideas about how you can improve. Develop forms aimed at uncovering good information. Ask open-ended questions that drill down beyond the obvious and give you honest feedback you can work with. Make sure the employee is aware that anything said during the interview will not be used against them in future references.
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 The normal staff meeting has become a colossal waste of time. No surprise, but a staff meeting is boring and even a dreaded part of the “9 to 5” world. Many consider staff meetings (or team meetings) a practical alternative to work. They feign interest and look at the gatherings as a place to jot down their grocery list or refine their drawing skills. All because there is too little thought invested in the planning or the execution of the meeting.
You can spot the signs of poor meeting management right up front. People turn off their brains; they arrive late or find excuses to skip the meeting. Meetings are held infrequently or are often cancelled or postponed. An effective staff meeting is more than a collection of bodies breathing the same stale air in the same room. It’s about a meeting of minds, full engagement and unlocking the door to self and team improvement. Turn the staff meeting around and fully engage your team and it can help you boost productivity, reduce the number of problems for you and your team and create a smoother running, more profitable operation. Following are some steps to breathe new life into your staff meeting: Link the agenda with your mission. Your company’s mission statement sets out your key business objectives and strategies. It ought to feed directly into your meeting agenda. For instance, if one of your strategies is to drive increased sales, then list “Sales” as an item on your agenda. Underneath that topic you could list one-on-one sales calls, telemarketing, follow-ups, trade shows etc. Then discuss each of those individual items. This gives you a yardstick by which to measure progress and to continue to chart your course. The same agenda should flow from week to week. Create synergy. What is the purpose of bringing your team together? Most people overlook the primary purpose: to inspire the group to achieve mission-based results faster, higher and better. When the feeling in the group is warm and supportive, it’s easier to see that everyone is in it together and the success of the team is linked directly to the success of each individual. Establish rapport. Effective two-way communication, shared in an environment of trust, is the cornerstone of a great meeting. No strategy or management edict - even yours - should go unchallenged, provided the goal is improvement. Brainstorm new ideas to find ways around potential roadblocks. Encouraging such communication leaves all participants feeling connected and important. The staff should learn from you and you should learn from them. Think outside the box. Another overlooked objective of effective staff meetings is training. Properly conducted meetings are a forum for continuous improvement. Always look for ways to improve performance by carving out time on the agenda to discuss books, articles and videos aimed at sparking new ideas or improving processes. Hold meetings regularly. The more frequently meetings are held, the better. In certain business situations, daily meetings are appropriate. In others, weekly meetings will do. Let too many days slip by and you risk sending the wrong message to your team. People will never take a meeting seriously if you don’t. if you’re constantly postponing meetings, canceling them or calling them at the last minute - that shows a tremendous lack of respect for your team. What could be more important than keeping your team informed, involved and engaged? The ideal time for a staff meeting is Friday afternoon. The workweek is almost done; phone calls and other interruptions dissipate. It’s a natural time to put all the actions of that week into perspective. Thus armed, it allows you to set an agenda for the coming week. Alternately, a Monday morning meeting works well to set the agenda for the week. Choose any other day and you risk losing momentum and effectiveness. Get in and get out. To achieve its objectives, an effective meeting should last just about an hour. No more or the sense of dread starts to sink in. No less because you won’t be able to devote the time to accomplish your objectives. Timeliness is critical to running an effective meeting. Start it on time and end when you say you will. That honors the schedules of other members of the team. To enforce timeliness, put a cookie jar in the middle of the table. Start the meeting on time. Anyone who is late by one minute puts in a dollar. Two minutes late and the charge is two dollars and so on. Same on ending time; If you run over one hour, it is one dollar per minute charge for you. When the kitty will support a pizza or sundae party, throw one. A little bit of fun never hurt anybody. Write up the minutes. The minutes provide the foundation for the next meeting’s agenda. At the beginning of the meeting, make sure someone is assigned to write up what happened and what you’re planning to make happen; in other words, who’s going to do what by when. This role should rotate from team member to team member to enhance participation in the meetings and underscore their responsibility to the team. Open the books. Always provide people a good fundamental understanding of where the business is going. Don’t just provide a cursory statement like, “Business is good” or “Profits are down.” Go into detail. The better informed your staff, the better decisions they’ll make. Avoid the temptation to launch into long diatribes or sermons that are insulting and patronizing to your team members. Following some of these simple steps will help you and your team hold more productive meetings and hopefully accomplish your goals together. In my business, with social media being an integral part of marketing and business development, I am often questioned on the role it plays when employees have access to social media while working.
Certain aspects of marketing often overlap with human resources and many policies need to be integrated into an employee handbook, which are essential to the development of the business. Do you really know what your employees are posting on the Internet? The increased use of social media sites can create some questions and concerns within the workplace. The expansion of the Internet and sites where individuals can post information have been a great asset for business, particularly small businesses. Your business might even have a Facebook page and you can use this as a communication tool to reach existing customers and potential customers. However, there are also some challenges that come along with this increased technology, particularly when it comes to employee privacy rights. The key concern that enters the picture is the employees' use of time on social media sites while they are supposed to be working, thus, creating loss of productivity. When can an employee use social media, and what are employees allowed to post? The more challenging aspect of social media sites for employers is the actual information that an employee may post on a site. Is it potentially harassing behavior toward another employee? Is the employee posting information about the company that could violate any nondisclosure policies or agreements? In order for companies to gain a better handle on these situations, it is recommended that organizations have clear Internet usage and social media policies written into their employee handbooks. A good policy should provide the following: • Instructions to employees on what is and is not permissible with regard to using the Internet at work; • Clear information about the employer's right to monitor employee computers within the workplace and require employees to acknowledge in writing that they should not have an expectation of privacy for anything that is sent, received or stored on the company's computer systems; • Restrictions on the use of personal phones and other electronic devices while on company time; • Consequences for employees if they are in violation of the Internet Usage and Social Media policies.
Researchers at NCSU tested 175 study participants to measure the personality traits that companies look for in job candidates, including "conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion." The participants were then surveyed on their Facebook behavior, allowing researchers to see which Facebook behaviors were linked to specific personality traits.
But the researchers found no significant correlation between conscientiousness and an individual's willingness to post content on Facebook about alcohol or social drug use. Companies that are looking for extroverts, such as those hiring for sales or marketing positions may be doing themselves an even worse disservice. This same study found that extroverts were significantly more likely to post about drugs or alcohol on Facebook. So companies weeding out those applicants are likely to significantly limit the pool of job candidates who are extroverts. However, the researchers did find one online indicator strongly correlated to the personality traits that employers look for: Study participants who rated high on both agreeableness and conscientiousness were also very unlikely to insult other people on Facebook. Conclusion: If employers plan to keep using social media to screen job applicants, this study indicates they may want to focus on eliminating candidates who "badmouth" others or share generally negative posts and strong opinions and not necessarily those who post about drinking beer or socializing on the weekends. An employee handbook lays the groundwork for how a business runs from day to day. If your handbook isn’t used or updated consistently, your business may not be running as efficiently as possible and be at high risk for costly employee relations issues.
Your handbook needs to reflect compliance with applicable federal, state and local laws. This does not mean that every law needs to be specifically addressed and reiterated in detail in the handbook. Rather, the handbook should not conflict with any applicable law and should contain a clear statement that the company intends to comply with all applicable laws. Your handbook should be tailored to your company and should clearly reflect how your company does business. Copying another company’s handbook or just adopting a handbook you find online, even from a very reputable source, may do more harm than good. Benefits of a Good Employee Handbook:
A well-written, lawful employee handbook has no downsides and provides an employer with all the flexibility necessary to address the myriad of possibilities when it comes to employee actions and inactions. Even though employees won’t always follow the rules, they do like to know the rules. Employees like to know what conduct is expected by the company and what punishment they might expect if they fail to follow the rules. An employee handbook is primarily a rule book. Written correctly, the handbook allows a company to address a wide variety of rule violations without limiting the company’s ability to respond on a case-by-case basis as necessary. For this reason, it is suggested that most employers avoid a formal progressive discipline policy wherein a list of rule violations is associated with a particular “punishment.” Most companies are much better off training managers to respond appropriately and timely to employee rule violations and/or poor performance. You want employees to behave in a certain way: Your company handbook should tell employees what your company expects not only to avoid disciplinary action, but also to tell them how they can succeed. For example, the employee handbook should tell an employee how to: request time off, inform the appropriate manager about possible harassment or discrimination, keep a time record, report possible theft, dress in an appropriate manner, refrain from drug and alcohol use, maintain confidential information, interact via social media, use various electronic resources, comply with applicable laws, etc. You want your employees treated in a consistent manner: While a handbook should not be an “instruction book” on how to manage or deal with every conceivable problem or issue, it should provide a framework for managers to follow in dealing with various circumstances. You want to win unemployment claims: In most states, winning an unemployment claim for a terminated employee requires proof that the terminated employee was on notice of a certain rule (or rules) and had been warned that violating the rule would lead to disciplinary action up to and including immediate termination. A well-written employee handbook is the beginning of a successful defense. The page of the handbook containing the applicable policy, as well as the signed acknowledgement page, should be the first step of any unemployment paperwork submission for a rule violation or poor performance termination. Many employment-based lawsuits hinge on consistent treatment of employees and/or ensuring that employees were on notice of important company policies and procedures. A well-written employee handbook that reflects a company’s actual practices serves both of these purposes. The employee handbook and the employee’s signed acknowledgement form are nearly always exhibits in a lawsuit and can help a company win a lawsuit. Imagine a jury looking at your employee handbook: What does your current employee handbook say about your company? Is it out of date? Does it contain unlawful provisions? Does it contain inconsistencies? Could it be a better reflection of your company? If you don’t think a jury would be impressed with the quality of your handbook, consider revising and updating your handbook right away. |
Boost Your BusinessMaria NovakI have over 35 years' experience in Marketing Small Businesses. Categories
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