Do your new employees have to sink or swim?

 

 

Recruiting a new member of staff can be time-consuming and costly – so you want them to settle in and start working productively as soon as possible.

But frequently people complain that their start in a new job left them overwhelmed and confused, or bored witless, or abandoned to sink or swim on their own. The result is a demotivated new employee who takes a long time to become productive, or who quickly starts looking for another job. 14% of employees leave in their first year.

How can you make sure that each new recruit settles into the team and turns into a real investment in the future for your growing business?

 

1.   Involve the team

 

Before your new recruit starts work, tell the team about it face-to-face.  Explain the role and how it fits into the bigger picture.  Be prepared to answer questions about how the change could impact on existing roles.

Involve the team in providing a good welcome, to demonstrate that everyone has an important role to play.  For example you could ask what their own first impressions were when they joined and what was missing for them.  Brainstorm together and come up with improvements.

Consider asking a more experienced member of staff to take care of the new person coming on board over the first few weeks– buddying up by showing them around, taking them to lunch, making introductions and offering support.

 

2.   Have the workspace ready

 

If your new employee shows up bright eyed and bushy tailed on day one and discovers that the company isn't technically ready, it doesn’t exactly make them feel valued.

 

The new area should be organised, clean and equipped with everything they'll need to do their job. Make sure everything works – a disconnected PC will only embarrass everyone.

Give one of the team responsibility for organising the workspace and for assembling a welcome pack for new employees.

 

3.   Being sociable

Ideally whoever recruited the new person - as a familiar face - should greet them on arrival on their first day and then introduce the immediate co-workers.

Lunch can be a critical moment for an impressionable newcomer – plan so that new employees never eat their lunch alone on day one. 

Making sure that someone in the team invites them to lunch will make them feel immediately included and help in the first steps toward building new relationships. This could be a great time for a team lunch, giving your employees time to get to know one another informally.

4.   Provide job training

Some jobs can be learned “sitting next to Nellie” – by observing part of the job being done as it’s explained, then practising under supervision, then moving onto another task.  For other jobs, training may need to start by painting the bigger picture before moving on to the detail. 

Give the new person plenty of time to do practical and constructive tasks in between absorbing new material, to allow time for the knowledge to sink in and to start building self confidence.

The better structured the job training is, the more quickly the new person will be able to make a real contribution: and that’s motivating for them.

          5.  Check-in regularly with your new employee

Getting to grips with a new role can be a big challenge and your new employee will have a lot to learn over the coming weeks and months.   Support the newcomer through this with regular check-in conversations and listen to their thoughts and concerns.  Develop an action plan together so that, over time, they’re able to do what the company needs them to do. 

Companies that handle onboarding well bring new people up to speed faster, have better alignment between what new people do and what the company needs them to do, have happier employees, and have less people leaving. 

We can help you get these things right and build an engaged and productive workforce: give us a call today on 07884 475303 or email enquiries@thehr.co.uk.

Continuous performance management: how to do it

Work is speeding up: most business owners are navigating through a fluid and ever-changing world adapting to evolving business needs. 

To be successful and able to pivot in times of change, a more agile alternative to the traditional once-a-year annual appraisal is needed.  How can you introduce more immediacy and make sure there’s a strong  alignment between your company, its managers and its employees? How do you create a more continuous performance management process in your company?

It depends on your priorities as business leader.

1.   Improvement? –i.e. helping both the employee and organisation to get better results. 

Defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes is one of the best things you can do to make sure employees and the organisation achieve better results.  Most importantly, it connects the work of employees into the company’s strategic plan. 

Set up a process to roll this out from the top down. It fits better with the pace of business life for progress with objectives to be reviewed and reset quarterly instead of annually at review time. 

2.   Coaching & Guidance? -  i.e. a framework for coaching, counselling, and motivating employees.

Frequent 1:1 conversations between managers and employees are much better than having coaching discussions once a year during an annual review. You can empower your employees to prepare for their 1:1s and do most of the talking, so they're more effective.

3.   Feedback & Communication? - i.e. enhancing both upward and downward communication

Employees now expect real-time feedback to help them achieve their objectives and to improve their performance.  Relying on an annual conversation for feedback doesn’t work in this fast moving world. 

A better alternative is to make feedback readily available by the company culture you create, where giving and asking for feedback is normal and expected.

You can enable social networking or online feedback tools that both employees and managers can use. 

Employee recognition programmes based on values can be created to help employees get the positive feedback they need in order to keep doing great work. For example, you could give special awards to a few people every year for extraordinary technical accomplishment.

4.   Pay? -  i.e. tying individual performance into salary increases &       bonus calculations.

Ratings at the annual performance review were often used to decide on salary increases and bonus allocations.  Unfortunately performance reviews tied to compensation discourage straight talking and asking for help, undermine collegiality, create a blame-oriented culture, work against co-operative problem solving and easily become politicised. They’re self-defeating and demoralizing for all concerned.

So, many companies have moved away from this direct linkage. You can make salary adjustments based on market rates, new responsibilities and team/company performance, with perhaps a broad element for individual performance at the extremes.

5.   Development Planning? - i.e. training & development for high and low performers.

Traditional performance reviews were often used to identify high and low performers and then plan their development in the future. While this process is important, doing it once a year is not frequent enough as it’s already too late to correct or reinforce.  

Instead, use the information from 1:1 discussions and progress with objectives to identify high performing employees or the employees who need further coaching or training.

6.   Preparing the way for dismissal? -  i.e. documenting poor performance extremes in case of later dismissal.

Occasionally annual performance reviews were misused as a way of creating a paper trail of negative feedback on poor performers in case the company later needed to dismiss and defend itself against an unfair dismissal claim. Unfortunately once this has happened within an organisation, it’s very hard to convince any employees in future that an appraisal discussion is for their benefit!

The sensible way to deal with poor performance is to follow a disciplinary process that deals with these situations separately, and properly documents everything based on the ACAS Code of Practice on Discipline.  

The Human Resource supports you with the changes you need to make in order to manage performance continually throughout the year, so that you make the very best of the people you have.  We help you to be prepared, in control and confident that you’re doing the right thing.   

Email The Human Resource on enquiries@thehr.co.uk or call on 07884 475303 to arrange a no-obligation chat. 

Managing poor performance

Sooner or later any manager will realise they have an under-performing employee in the team.  It's inevitable. Not everyone can do the job they’re in – maybe their life outside work changes, or they were a recruitment mistake, or the demands of the job become too much for their abilities.  Or they simply need more knowledge or information or understanding.

It’s said that in jazz bands, the band is only as good as the worst player; no matter how great some members may be, everyone hears the worst player. The same goes for a company. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially your top performers. If you turn a blind eye and hope the person will go away, things will only get a whole lot worse.  Here’s how to tackle it:

Act promptly

As soon as any actual or potential problem in the way an individual is working becomes apparent, deal with it promptly - don’t wait until the next performance review or the end of probation.

Identify what isn’t working

Be clear about the parts of the job the employee isn’t performing well enough. What sort of things are happening – or not happening?  Gather clear examples and facts.

Talk to the employee informally

Arrange one-to-one time with the under-performing employee.  State the issue, give specific examples and clarify what changes are required. 

Listen, express concern, ask about external factors, their own views about their performance, and what they think the expectations of them are. Ask them about training and skill sets.

Agree with the employee on specific action to improve.  Be clear about the timescale you require the performance to improve within: 2 or 3 months is reasonable depending on the level of job. Write down the action plan or objectives and give the employee a copy.

Be kind. The majority of people want to do well at work and it can be a nightmare experience for them if for some reason their performance isn’t up to scratch. Genuinely wish them well and hope that they succeed.

Training and coaching

There’s an obligation on all employers to give their employees reasonable support, guidance and training in performing their job.  When you’re managing underperformance, the more structured and documented this is the better. One day you might have to prove that it happened!

Follow up

As the action plan is followed up, give the employee the support they might need.  Meet regularly after the initial discussion and provide feedback about their progress. Stick to your agreed timescale unless there are exceptional circumstances.

The next stage

In most cases this informal approach is enough to bring about the necessary improvement.  If it doesn’t you will need to progress to something more formal using your company’s disciplinary procedure. 

Ultimately, if each stage in the procedure is followed correctly and the employee fails to improve to the required standard in the timescale you’ve set, this means you can fairly dismiss.  An advantage in the short term is that the employee realises it’s serious, focuses more and tries harder to improve.

Effect on the team

If you fail to address poor performance, your team will probably become less than enchanted with you as their manager, even when the impact isn’t extreme. One of the most frustrating experiences for a team is when they feel they’re carrying someone who isn’t pulling their weight, and frustration can turn to stress when the manager simply does nothing about it.

It’s important to keep whatever you’re doing confidential.  Your team might not know when poor performance is being tackled. But they certainly do know if it is not being addressed at all.

If you manage poor performance well and manage to raise performance, then this not only instills a sense of achievement for the employee in question, it also gives a great message out to other staff that you are fair and tuned in to what is happening.

You don’t have to put up with poor performance.  But tackling it can be tricky and sometimes stressful. 

The The Human Resource takes the headaches away and supports you in managing individual cases, helping you to be prepared, in control and confident that you’re doing the right thing.  

 

Email The Human Resource on enquiries@thehr.co.uk or call on 07884 475303 to arrange a no-obligation chat. A free E-book on Managing Poor Performance is available on our website www.thehr.co.uk.

Private use of the internet during work time

A common employment problem is the suspicion that an employee is spending huge amounts of working time on private online messages.  It’s one of those frustrations that you might think you can’t do anything about as the employer.  Maybe you feel uneasy that, were you to look at what the person is doing online while at work, you’d be breaching their human rights to privacy in some way....

What if you find that the employee (an engineer as it happens) has been using Yahoo Messenger to chat not just with his professional contacts but also with his family.  You monitor his communications and are able to present him with a 45-page transcript of his messages, including exchanges with his fiancee and his brother about his health and sex life.

And what if your company’s internal regulations state that it’s strictly forbidden to use computers, photocopiers, telephones, telex and fax machines for personal purposes.

And what if, after you’ve dismissed him, the engineer brings a claim that the company has breached his right to confidential correspondence by accessing his messages, and should have excluded all evidence of his personal communications on the grounds it infringed his rights to privacy.

In fact, this is a case that the European Court of Human Rights ruled on last week. 

The judges said that the employer has the right to check that an employee is completing their work and that the engineer had breached the company’s rules by sending personal messages on its time.  It ruled that the employer was within its rights in monitoring and reading the employee’s Yahoo Messenger chats that he sent while he was at work - it was not “unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours”.

However, the ECHR also made clear in its judgment that it’s not acceptable to carry out unregulated snooping of staff’s private messages.  In this case the employer had a clear, absolute ban on using its IT resources for personal matters: when the employee denied doing so, the employer could only properly investigate by reading his emails.  Many employers allow, or at least tolerate, some personal email use at work, but this wasn’t the case here.  If an employer reads personal emails without justification and has no clear policy allowing them to do so, they could easily find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

So providing it’s reasonable and proportional, employers can monitor internet usage to check that employees are working during their working hours.  The Human Resource can develop a clear policy for your employee handbook about internal rules on internet usage while at work and any monitoring.  This will set expectations and provide a sound framework if there are ever any issues.

If it’s an extreme example as this one, it’s important to follow a proper disciplinary process too, giving the employee the information from the monitoring and the opportunity to respond.

For HR advice on employment problems such as private use of the internet during work time, as well as clear policies about IT and Internet Usage for your employee handbook, contact The Human Resource on enquiries@thehr.co.uk or 07884 475303.

Are you going to lose a third of your workforce this year?

The beginning of a New Year is a natural point for people to start thinking about their future job prospects – but not usually quite as many of them as this year.  Research this week from the Institute of Leadership and Management suggests that in 2016, one third of UK employees plan to change jobs. 

What would happen to your business if a third of your workforce left in 2016? – think about the time and costs of recruiting to replace them and training the new people up, as well as the impact on business continuity. 

Although you might be quietly relieved if one or two people decided to go, it’s sensible to do everything you can to hold on to the best people in your business and head off the chances of them getting itchy feet.  A good starting point is to take a look at the reasons that the one in three people gave for wanting to move on.

According to the ILM research, lack of progression and opportunity is the number one reason, with just over a quarter of saying it’s why they want to move on.  On the other hand financial reward is less important, with only 15% of people wanting to move for a better salary.  It appears that it’s the opportunity to progress and not the desire for a bigger pay packet that’s the main motivation in looking for a new job.

These are the top five reasons why UK workers are looking for a new job right now according to the research:

1. Better opportunities for progression (26%)

2. More appreciation (17%)

3. To change careers (17%)

4. Better salary (15%)

5. More enjoyment (12%)

If you want to keep the people you’ve got, it will help if you can figure out, honestly, how far your organisation is delivering in these top five areas and improve. You don’t have to be the best, just good enough – after all, you’re balancing the realities of your business world and working with the resources that you have available.  But maybe there are opportunities that you aren’t taking?

For example:

·        Thinking more creatively and pro-actively about the progression opportunities you can offer such as extra responsibilities, developing skills, project work, secondments and job shadowing.   Where promotions aren’t feasible, look for sideways moves that vary experience and make the work more interesting.

·        Taking advantage of the positives and expressing appreciation when people do good work, recognising achievements.

·        Creating an upbeat atmosphere at work so that people are more likely to enjoy it!

For practical advice about improving retention in your company, saving you a lot of time, money and hassle, contact The Human Resource on enquiries@thehr.co.uk or phone 07884 475303.  We’ll be pleased to help.

Preparing for January’s challenges

January: New year, new challenges, time to get back to business and start creating your 2016 success story.

It's a month that can present business owners with sudden hiccups as well as great opportunities. To help you hit the ground running, here are some important considerations for you to factor into your thinking over the next couple of weeks, to make sure you're really prepared for the challenges that the month will bring. These are your January-critical questions:

How can you wake everyone up again?

Head off that post-holiday slump by re-energising your workforce – and yourself – as soon as you have everyone back at work in the New Year. Some tips:

·         Start with yourself. If you can project yourself with extra energy and confidence no matter how you feel inside, it will be infectious. Being the boss means you have the responsibility of kick-starting the year by communicating the next set of targets – in such a way that your employees see and believe they are achievable, and buy into them. 

·         The New Year’s resolution approach motivates because it helps people to disconnect from past failures and promotes a big-picture view of life. Simply by giving yourself a fresh start to things, you give yourself a fresh burst of energy. So encourage those around you to identify how they can make a fresh start so things are better in the future - and don’t forget to lead by example!

·         Celebrate business successes. You might be raring to go towards those new targets, but before you move on, take time to review last year’s successes with everyone. Employees like to be valued and given recognition for their commitment and hard work– often some basic acknowledgement is all it takes.

Can you harness that fresh start feeling to improve profits?

How can you harness that fresh start feeling to give the business a real boost? Could you roll out new projects that you’ve had on the back burner for a little while? Or maybe there are easy wins you haven’t yet tapped into, that could have a fantastic impact?

The freshness of a new year can work to your advantage in getting the ball rolling again after what may have been a sluggish or stressful holiday season. Sometimes, clean slate and new goals (either for the company or an individual employee) can be powerful motivators.  This is the time when many people are eager to get stuck into new challenges and make fresh resolutions for the future, and it makes sense to embrace this energy as a manager.

It’s a good time to set some attainable goals to remind your workforce how good it feels to accomplish tasks and tick off a to-do list. 

Your employees might be keen to develop their skills, and savvy managers know that this needs to be harnessed. Just asking each person simple questions like “where do you want to be one year from now?” or "where could we most improve our service to customers?" can get people motivated and looking at the bigger picture.

Are your staff looking for another job?

It's very likely that at least some of them will be - many people find themselves thinking about a job change at this time of year. If they’ve been stagnating for a while or they feel unappreciated and unchallenged, January is the peak time of year when people decide to do something about it.

Making sure that your employees are happy in their roles is important. If they decide to leave for pastures new, it can create serious problems.

·         What’s the current climate amongst your workers? Are they happy and engaged? And how do you know?

·         Are there any external factors that could have an impact on retention, such as new businesses opening in the area?

·         Do you have contingency plans in place so productivity won’t take a hit if someone does leave? 

This would be a good time to put more focus on developing your staff and encouraging them to take on new, value-adding tasks and challenges. Career development is an excellent way of retaining good people.

If people are starting to look outside your business for better conditions and pay, work out your plan of action. Head off the possibility of being forced into offering a salary increase just because one of your good people gets a higher offer elsewhere.

Are you ready for legislative changes?

Employment law is changing all the time: staying on top of it keeps your practices up-to-date, and helps you to create a business with a strong reputation when it comes to handling and developing its workforce.

We can help you to pinpoint any new legislation that will apply to your business, and start planning your approach to make sure you will be compliant. You may need to update your policies, and organise consultation and communication with your staff.

First off will be the introduction of the National Living Wage on 1st April (more here). Several other developments are in the pipeline that will have an impact on your policies over the next 12 months: more here key employment law changes for 2016. 

If 2016 could be the year when you decide to get help with ensuring that your business is geared up for a successful year – also retaining your best people and fully compliant with legal responsibilities - we’re there for you. Get in touch today on 07884 475303 or enquiries@thehr.co.uk for an initial consultation.

£7.20 an hour: planning how to pay the National Living Wage

If you don’t employ people age 25 and older who are paid below £7.20 an hour, you can stop reading now. But for everyone else, read on!

“The government’s new National Living Wage will provide a direct boost to over two-and-a-half million workers in the UK – rewarding and providing security for working people. I am urging businesses to get ready now to pay the new £7.20 rate from 1 April 2016. With just under 4 months left, there are some easy steps employers can take to make sure they are ready. By taking these measures, companies will be able to properly reward their staff and avoid falling foul of the law when it takes effect.” Business Minister Nick Boles, December 2015.

Here are our recommendations for the easy steps you can take as an employer to make sure you’re ready:

Find out who in your business will need to receive an hourly rate increase to bring their pay to £7.20 an hour. This will involve analysing the age profile as well as current hourly rates - the legal requirement to pay £7.20 an hour only applies to people age 25 and older.

Identify whether the increase to £7.20 an hour will give enough of a wage gap between the lowest paid and the more skilled people. It could prove problematic where, for example, there is a 21-year-old supervisor in a team earning less than their more junior colleagues. Look carefully at rates just above the lowest level, as well as the distribution of pay across the organisation as a whole.

Make a policy decision about whether your company will ignore the age banding and pay everyone at or above the National Living Wage. Perhaps you think it’s too complicated to have people doing the same job paid different rates just because of their age. Or you're reluctant to create a two-tier workforce. There's a possibility that the age banding will be challenged as a breach of European law on age discrimination further down the line– although so far this hasn't happened.

If you use agency temps whose take-home pay is the National Living Wage, the 25 year olds and over will have to be paid more too. Take this into account in your costings.

Quantify the increase in your total employment costs. Plan ahead for it rising to £9 an hour by 2020.  

Consider the different ways your company could offset the increased wage bill and plan ahead. Some decisions you take will need action starting well in advance to produce the necessary cost saving.

This is what other employers are considering to offset the extra costs, starting with the most popular plan:

·         improve efficiency and staff productivity 

·         cut overtime and bonuses, or reduce allowances or out-of-hours payments

·         reduce profits to absorb the outlay

·         raise prices 

·         reduce the number of employees via redundancies or slowing down recruitment 

·         plan to take on more workers under the age of 25 in future

This is an opportunity to step back, consider your strategy and take a long-term view. Do you need to reskill people, to switch roles around? Consolidate some roles so there will be fewer people on the bottom rate and more with higher skills and higher pay? Giving low-paid staff more responsibility will also be beneficial in the long term by improving retention and productivity. 

Communicate the upcoming changes to staff affected. Send terms of employment change letters to everyone receiving an increase by the end of March.

Ensure the company payroll is updated with pay changes in time for 1 April.

Ensure your record systems are able to track each employee’s age and pay the right legal minimum after 1st April.

If you would like help and advice with calculating your additional costs, with planning to offset them and with the policy implications, plus communicating the change to your employees, contact The Human Resource on 07884 475303 or enquiries@thehr.co.uk