Unique yet? Think again!

In Greg's last last blog he touched on the WHS structures and processes now rolled out routinely in large organisations (200+ employees). In this blog, we continue by encouraging SME’s to emulate their large business counterparts and suggest some immediate practical steps that will see your business well on the road to safety and compliance…

Unique yet? Think again!

Think how overwhelmed SME’s felt in 2011, when safety culture antagonists such as the WHS Act - Regulation and Codes of Practice come into effect.... ouch...

We need to discover creative ways to integrate safe practice into overall business conduct. Where it’s done really well, the big guys consult with the employees to define and document policy relating to work health and safety. Done effectively, health and safety outcomes are achieved in accordance with defined plans.

 Ideally, this is measurable; in ways shown to be consistent with activities:

·         consideration of legal requirements

·         standards, codes and guidelines

·         health and safety hazards and risks, etc.

Work health and safety management in SME’s should be approached with the same objectives in mind:

 ·         effective SME safety governance - insisting that workers routinely demonstrate practices that reflect the commitment of the safety policy across every system of the business

Don’t forget that failure to exercise such due diligence may result in criminal conviction and/or significant financial penalty (yes, even for an SME). Due diligence is a new duty that requires SME owners/operators to not only have an understanding of their health and safety risk profile, but also to take positive steps to put in place ongoing safety governance and management arrangements.

How can SME’s meet their due diligence obligations?

 You can start by bringing it to life with practical, bite-size steps such as:

·         promoting workers' knowledge and health and safety matters through effective consultation and training

·         ensuring everyone understands the nature of the business, as well as the workplace risks and hazards

·         insisting on a timely, documented response to incidents and issues

·         providing reasonable resources that are appropriate to the degree and extent of organisational risk identified

 If the due diligence process is built progressively, it will naturally lead to the capture of real-time ‘people data’, on the go. When this happens you will see that WHS, done well, can improve safety, prevent hazards and provide measurable improvement in adaptation and alignment within your business plan and overarching company strategy.

These are the must-do steps to ensure you comply with your work health and safety responsibilities:

 

·         effectively implement your health and safety policy

 

·         establish focussed health and safety training - for all officers and workers

 

·         facilitate a consultative approach to all health and safety matter - ensuring all workers are a part of the decision-making processes that affect workplace health and safety

 

·         identify quantitative and qualitative safety targets - with the aim of driving ongoing hazard and risk data collection and analysis

 

·         implement agreed controls in response to identified risks and hazards

 

·         broadcast regular health and safety information - to all workers and visitors to the workplace

 If you are doing these things, you are well on the way to establishing a positive and effective safety culture!

 If your SME needs help to grow a healthy safety culture, call Employee Matters ….

 

 

Are your Work Health and Safety needs unique? No Way!

I though that you might like a change from me, so I have asked a WH&S expert from our team to write this blog.

 

In 2010/11 - 374 people died due to work-related traumatic injuries.

Australia’s Lost-time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) paints an unsettling work health and safety scenario - one week or more was lost per million hours worked.

Worse still, we are only now up to March - 30 lives have been lost in Australian workplaces so far ...

But how could these statistics be of any possible relevance to SMEs? We're not the same as the big gun industries - we don't hazard the same risks! They have agriculture, mining, forestry and construction - that's sowing, tree felling, mine blasting - the big stuff!

The truth is that SME workers frequently face very real workplace risks - given that 99% of Australian businesses are SMEs - this situation cannot be ignored.

Why?

OK, natural protective mechanisms, typically built into the culture of large (200+ employees) organisations by natural evolution - think how higher staff volume might equate to greater information capacity and, therefore, to greater necessity in supervising  work practices:

·         think about the complex safety management systems - the policies and safe operating procedures

·         the hierarchy of control, the complexity of infrastructure - the representatives - the systematic ways of controlling or eliminating risk, and their continuous development

·         the huge diversity of Safety Employees; advisors, managers, coordinators, analysts, strategy and risk professionals; there are many more

Now think of the barriers to building a safety culture for SMEs...

• the typical capital-raising constraints that so often result in low investment in safety practice
• the severe time constraints on business owner/operators, who often take the view that ‘our safety management system will just have to wait’

Think of how the post-GFC economic conditions severely dampened SME business confidence - we couldn’t help but focus on the bottom line, just to stay in business- and we still can’t!

Greg Baynie is one of our HR Partners and our resident expert in W&HS, call him today for an obligation free discussion to understand your risk and exposure.

 

Behind every great woman there is a great man

 

Whilst we are celebrating International Women's Day today I wanted to remember that good business partnerships are often founded on couples going into business together whose strengths lie in diverse, but complimentary, areas. So often we hear the catchcry “Behind every good man there is a great woman”, as if his success depends on this support. It has often been, to my chagrin, and I am sure to most feminists as well, that the female role is seen as one of support and often played out in the background. I would also speculate that to see the roles reversed may not sit particularly well with many men; think of Dennis Thatcher and Tim Mathieson. Remember the scramble, when Julia Gillard became PM, to craft a suitable role for the first ‘new man’ of The Lodge.

The reality is just that though, I could not have started Employee Matters without Mark’s expertise and his encouragement, support and confidence that he had in me; that firstly, we could do it and secondly, that it would be successful. Part of the reason for this is that we have complimentary skill sets; I am apt to jump in and not be buried in detail for long, but I’m great with developing and maintaining relationships. Mark writes like a poet and is a wordsmith and I certainly lack great skills in this area. Mark is focused on the finance, IT, editing and the risk & compliance side of the business, enabling me to get on with what I do best. This is often the struggle faced by SMEs; trying to be an expert in all areas of running a business. We don’t always agree on everything, but we have trust and respect in our relationship that enables us to work through issues to find or create a solution. All employee relationships need these ingredients to be successful but, sadly, they are often lacking to the detriment of the relationship and the business. The employer needs to let their employees know that they matter.

So I guess I am one of the lucky ones to have a ‘great man’ behind me.

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at www.employeematters.com.au

A flexible future

When I was working as a recruitment consultant in the early 90's, the temporary desk was responsible for about 10% of the split between temporary recruitment and permanent recruitment. My MD who had been in the game for about 30 years predicted that within the next 30 years the temporary workforce would make up 30% of the total workforce.

A recent survey conducted by Adecco Group has found that 28.1% of the total workforces are temporary employees. So his prediction has come true but ten years earlier than he had anticipated. Of these temporary workers 25.2% are part time and a whopping 74.8% are full time. So why do companies use temps? A variety of reasons, but over a third use temps to manage demand fluctuations for products or services. Almost 30% use temps to manage their workforce more efficiently and 26% to cover workforce shortages.

The Adecco survey also confirms that size of the business will affect the use of temps. For example, 44.8% of firms with over 1000 employees will use temporary employees versus only 19% of businesses with a headcount under 65.

Now here is the problem - SMEs are behind the curve here and productivity is suffering as a result.  For the vast majority of businesses, payroll costs are one of their highest expenses, yet I am concerned that this expense is not being effectively managed. When I have suggested getting a temp or looking at creating a more flexible workforce I often receive the response 'by the time I get them up and running I may as well do it myself'. My thinking is that this is a very short term view, considering that temps we are hiring today are experienced individuals and not trainees. The organisations have tapped into a talent pool that gives flexibility and allows temps to pop in and out of their businesses as they need them.

My view is that my MD was not only right, but that this trend is going to continue to the point where it will be the exception rather than the norm to have a full time permanent role. The time of having the same job from hire to retire has gone; just think about the increase in redundancies - how many people have multiple experiences of their job being made redundant throughout their careers? The businesses that are able to transform their workforce mix to their advantage and tap into the right skills in the right place and the right time will get ahead. Remember it is all about employee matters!

Please share us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter

http://www.facebook.com/#!/natasha.hawker
https://twitter.com/#!/NatashaHawker
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=76111694&trk=tab_pro
http://employeematters.blogspot.com/
 

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management. – find them at www.employeematters.com.au

It’s coming……….

So over the past two weeks you may have heard some rumblings about some potential changes to FWA, particularly around flexible working and rostering. If you haven’t, as an SME, you need to get across this as soon as possible. There are more details to follow and timings are vague, but things may move quickly - especially with an election date confirmed.
 

So what is the current situation? Well, currently, if you have a child under school age (up to 6 years old) or a child with a disability you can request flexible working.

 

What does this mean in reality? It means that an employee can request a change to start times & finishing times, job-share or part time arrangements, working more hours over fewer days or working additional hours to make up for time taken off.

 So what’s changing?

 

·         all parents of school age children or carers of elderly parents can request the right to flexible working

·         mothers returning from parental leave can request part-time work

·         employers cannot make late changes to rosters

·         employees potentially also have the ‘right to request’ working-from-home arrangements

 

So what are the impacts for businesses, if this change goes through?

 

·         further, fiscal pressure on businesses which are already stretched

·         less flexibility; the beauty of casuals is the flexibility and the potential to extend a shift if your business is particularly busy

·         another change to workplace employee relations which will impact structure, policy and practices - all that paperwork!

 As an employer, you have the ‘right of refusal’ to this request - but don’t get too excited - you would be expected to actively compromise to get a solution and to refuse you need to be able to show financial hardship would be the end result for your business. Just a tip here - there is a defined legal process that needs to be followed if you receive one of these requests - around responding in writing within a specified timeframe.

At the moment, my sense is that employees are largely unaware of these rights but this is changing but, just wait until we have the election ads appealing to the worker vote...!

 On the upside, my view is those SMEs that can implement a flexible workplace and workforce will be able to ‘win the war for talent’ and retract and retain the best employees. I would like to see more businesses be a little more creative in their approach and use a combination of permanent, casuals, temps and independent contractors. We need to be focused on our employee matters to ensure the best result for all.

 

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at http://www.employeematters.com.au

Where did you go?

It hurts doesn’t it? When someone in your team decides to leave you after you have invested significant time and money in them. Just think about it - there was the recruitment drive, recruitment fees, onboarding, induction, on the job training, external training and time till they were fully functional. Plus the financial  ‘on costs’ which include superannuation, worker’s compensation and payroll tax etc adding up to an additional 22.5% on top of the base salary. Now you have to start the process all over again, taking a hit on productivity and profit in the interim.
 

It will hurt more if this person played a key role in your team or was one of your high performing employees. So why did they take the decision to leave, especially given the current market stability? Do you know? Do you care? What could you learn from asking?
 
Here are five things you can do to learn from the experience and ensure a smooth exit:

1.   Exit Process – we generally make a fuss when new hires choose to join our company and help us achieve our company goals but the same does not tend to happen at the Exit.  It is critical that we treat people professionally as they exit. This includes ensuing timely & appropriate communication, the return of security passes and keys and systems access ceases. Make them feel good about their contribution to the business, a thank you card and cake do wonders
 

2.  Handover – as soon as you are aware of the resignation, you need to plan for the exit. Who will be doing the role until the individual is replaced? Is this an opportunity to reduce headcount or split up the duties between other team members? Have the exiting team member write a detailed handover document covering off all aspects of their role
 

3.  Exit Interview & analysis – conduct an exit interview with all individuals who have resigned. This shows that you value their thoughts and inputs; they may be more inclined to share information now that it will not affect their promotion opportunities or salary. You will be amazed at what you will learn. It does not stop there, after a while you will capture trends and information that is extremely valuable to the growth of your business
 

4.  Alternatives to losing people – if you are managing your people effectively and closely and I don’t mean micro - managing them, resignations would not come as a surprise. I would recommend avoiding a counter offer situation but it is an option available to you if you desire. It may buy you more time develop a strategy to cross train team members to cover other roles or look to start the recruitment process again. Most counter offers tend to resign again within six months because either the promised changes do not occur or there is resentment harboured as it took them to resign before you paid them what they felt they were worth all along. Managers need to understand and know what drives and motivates their team and take responsibility for removing blockers

 

5.  Alumni – it is a small market our there and sometimes former employees become competitors or clients or they might discover that the’ grass was not greener’ and seek to return. This can be a real bonus but how can you pave the way for this to happen? A good idea is to develop an Alumni program. What does this involve, not a lot? Make sure that you have contact details for the terminating employee and send out a newsletter each quarter sharing what is happening in your business. They may become an advocate or source of new clients for you or even just a great friend.

I am still great friends with my first boss, she hired me at 18 years old when I knew nothing and then againat 21 when I am not sure I knew much more and then she became a client of mine. Now she is much more than that and was on that yacht in Croatia I talked about in a previous blog.
 
Losing people is inevitable but you can maximise the opportunity as it presents itself rather than make a bad situation worse.

 

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at www.employeematters.com.au

 

 

Coach your Team for Success – Maximum Performance!

It’s the biggest secret all managers want to know - the Holy Grail if you will. How do I get more out of my employees? An extra 10% effort on their part would make the world of difference and potentially add 19% to the bottom line - but how do I organise this?
 

Well let me share the secret ... ask them.

There is a reason you have the title Managing Director - a big part of your role is to manage; the problem is that there is, all too often, too little time assigned to this activity each week as other priorities get in the way.

Think about this - your poorest performers – look at them - why do they come to work? Do they see themselves as the weakest link? What would motivate them to increase their performance? Is it praise, flexibility, maybe an opportunity to be mentored or an opportunity to learn a new skill? More money, a change of team or a holiday? How do you find out what they are thinking?

 

Well let me share the secret ... ask them.

 

So you decide you’ve got to do it now. You are going to ask, but wait; you need to develop rapport and gain trust first. Remember that in their eyes - you have the power to fire at will. They need to know that you aren’t going to use this information against them. So take some time to build relationships - you need to talk to them and get to know them as much as you can.

Now what do you say? What do you ask?

You need a framework and I would recommend John Whitmore’s coaching model. The premise is that most of the time the employee can work out the problem and the solution, if you ask the right questions...

T – Topic - what are you going to talk about?

G – Goal - what do you want to achieve?

R – Reality - what is the situation at the moment? Reality check

O – Options - explore possibilities. Don’t discount anything. Consider the alternatives

W – Way forward - after exploring all the options, commit to a path to resolve

Some things to consider that might assist you to work through the framework:

Goal

·       what is one thing you would like to achieve in your current role?

·       what is the biggest challenge you face in your role today?

·       what blockages do you face in working across the business?

·       what would make it easier for you to increase your productivity or performance?

 Reality

·       so what is the current situation?

·       what do you do?

·       what do you find easy?

·       what do you find challenging?

·       what do you like - what don’t you like?

·       what takes up most of your time?

·       what are you meant to do?

·       what outcomes are critical to success?

Options

·       what are some other ways you could do this?

·       how could you get around that obstacle?

·       what would you do, if anything were possible?

·       what would you do, if money was no object?

·       what should I do to make this organisation work better?

·       what would you change?

·       how would you structure the business?

·       looking at “X”, what are the pros and cons?

·       how could we work around that?

·       what are the risks?

 

Way Forward

 So we have agreed to try “X” - great!

By when? What do you need from me? What will success look like now, in a month, in a year?

Arrange check points - status updates - empower your team members - encourage them

Communicate!

You need to continue to support, trust, encourage and build rapport with each team member - this can produce startling results. You as the leader need to be an enabler. You need to develop a business with people who are happy and content supported by innovation and considered change. Don’t forget to reward and support your team as they start to achieve their goals. Make them know they matter.

This will be how you beat your competition.

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management. – find them at www.employeematters.com.au