What to do when you are staring down the barrel of staffing challenges and this is just one of your starting points?

In a previous article I looked at What Staff Want. It gives some interesting insights, but how do you figure out how to deliver the things they want or need and get to that point effectively.

Let’s go for the easy option, Brainstorm…

If you already know what they want and or need to do their job effectively, then facilitating a session with them will assist them to at least understand you want to assist them, and give  you an idea of if they want to be assisted.

The real aim is to use the “Collective Intelligence” to get information happening and ideas explored.

You could start out with the list of what people want, then jot down some ideas in advance  of things you believe might match to the job, tasks, attitudes and beliefs. Then you have a chance of connecting with them when the discussion starts and they are scrambling to find ideas. You would probably use your information to enhance their thinking processes if they get stuck, you might add in a pointer relating to an obvious task to spur them on.

Brainstorming can be easy – Set some guidelines and go from there.

• All ideas are good ideas – We can focus on the good ideas later
• Feel free to share – Let people freely add in and occasionally encourage the stragglers to also put in. Invite them to help make things better
• Our aim – To explore ideas on improving this business unit – “We have challenges what will improve things?”
• Work to a time frame so they don’t just lounge about for ages, aim to get ideas on to paper fast.
• Pose some questions to be answered – Perhaps this is the initial brainstorming, getting the issues out as THEY see them, then getting them to provide ideas to answer them
• Write fast, and prod for more ideas – Actively explore concepts as they arise
• Consider a mind map – Do an internet search on the basics of this, it can be a very visual way of getting the thought processes working.
• Collate the main ideas and share them once they are typed up – This can then lead to a plan of action or an attitude shift to some degree.

A brainstorming session should be positive and free flowing. The team should not feel like they are working under duress to come up with ideas. Hopefully after doing this session you will be able to find some excellent starting points to work from. Chances are the team had all the ideas and answers and you were able to positively, openly and honestly listen to them work through the challenges.

Now notice how all of this leads to you being the coach… working with people to get the best from them, without having to hit them over the head and force them to do things. Trust me it’s better that way. Want to be a better workplace coach, try this…

Keeping people happy is one part of the whole business matrix… customers or staff, the common denominator is that they are all people.

To keep one person happy you might find their definition is built on getting a reasonable amount of work done in a standard working day, churning through mountains of meaningless paperwork. Meanwhile the next person is kept happy by having variety and not just being stuck in an office.

So what are the core things they want and how can you provide these for them?

Here’s my list.

• A sense of belonging – Being valued by others, even in minor ways can help to build and maintain their workplace sense of esteem
• A sense of achievement – Some will want to work their way up the corporate ladder, set goals and achieve them
• Contributing and adding value – Beyond their basic agreement, work targets etc, they feel as though they have contributed to the whole business machine
• A sense of purpose – It’s not a meaningless job, it has a role to play and they can clearly sense that
• Organisational integrity – It’s about security, if they know the organisation has integrity they then have a foundation they can believe in and stand by. No integrity, the foundation can give way at anytime this leads to insecurity and can be a reason for staff turnover
• Control – For some this can mean the security that comes from having some measure of control over their situation, it might be minor. For others they want the chance to take control of a department, or a division depending on their level of drive or motivation
• They like be challenged – In ways which suit them, not you. For some it will be big challenges for others it will be meeting a small quota. It comes down to brain stimulus
• They have a suitable work environment – Where it can be controlled, think about it you spend 8 or so hours a day in the business, do you want to spend 8 hours in a hovel or 8 hours in paradise… The choice is a no brainer right? So what’s your environment like? Sure paradise is a BIG step but making it better might only take a few tweaks and a small amount of cash. For those out on the road for instance in a company vehicle, is it clean neat and tidy, new, old, in good repair or a rust bucket. Oh and the Lunch room, a place to relax and unwind, or a stinking cesspool of yuck… (broken chairs etc.)
• They have the right tools – Newish computer – Quiet keyboard – Suitable work chair – Effective other tools

Are there others? Probably, it’s up to you to find out. But armed with this as your starting point you can soon see the sorts of core things staff want. Go and chat with your staff and find out what their wants are.

Now you know what staff what, here’s an article on how you might explore this further.

There’s lots of other talk too, less Entrepreneurs entering the market place with big ideas. Then there’s people losing jobs left right and centre as businesses close up and walk away, or go offshore to chase cheaper ways to manufacture.

With all this I can sense bitterness in the air, people in business cursing those that don’t buy, (or by online…) cursing the idea of having to set up a business in a down economy, cursing the thought of having to think creatively to overcome challenges and create anew. The list goes on.

Things change, get used to that.

It’s up to you what you end up doing about it, in business there are options, generally the more cash you have the more options you have.

But wait the “bootstrap-ocracy” will tell us you don’t need money, you need ideas, followed by a great pitch to the right people and before you know it a business has emerged from nothing.

I heard a conversation the other day that suggested all business ideas are bootstrapped, even if you put a few Million into the start up phase you then have to pay that back at some stage so  you are possibly worse off than if you started with zero $$ it just seems easier.

What will make a business thrive through 2012 and on into the future. Lots of things, the ability to handle change, be creative with their ideas and explore ways to make those ideas become reality so the zero start up can become a heroic organism which can stride forward with confidence. In a word nimble.

Go on get nimble, get creative and make hay before the weather changes and the hay goes sour. The wider community is waiting for the right people to do the right things and keep things moving. “Tag… you’re it!”

Therefore make your site work on a mobile, as MILLIONS are now using their phones to browse, and the figure is building daily.

What you need is a way to test your site, the good people over at Google have come up with a fairly elegant solution… http://www.howtogomo.com/

A simple yet highly effective way to test your webpage/s to see if you can cut through when you need to! Now call your web people and make changes.

I have a question however, what will they do with it?

Suggestion, for a whole bunch of people who can’t afford to buy the solar panels on their roofs use the $$ to give low income earners a way to reduce their utility costs, this will then mean less coal gets dug up as well. Makes sense to me. However I won’t be holding my breathe waiting for things to happen.

In your business are there similar opportunities? Are you missing out because of lack of thinking, risk taking etc… look closer you might find some powerful opportunities right under your noses.

Firstly a business that works.

• Great products
• Great service
• Good profit margins
• Great systems – policies – procedures – plans – vision
• Great team
• An entrepreneurial spirit – some risks – great rewards

Now say to yourself, “What do I want at the end of it all?”

A retirement income

An enjoyable, sustainable and profitable company to work in forever (some people don’t want to retire)

So how much is the retirement income going to be and when?

• Will it maintain your current lifestyle needs?
• Will it offer you the chance to live a greater lifestyle than you currently do?
• Will it provide you with the chance to do more things in the wider community
• Will I semi retire early…

All great questions but now what.

• Think about your income levels, where they have been and where they are headed, when you reach a std retirement age of 65, what will the income be?
• Then think about it being able to build further as time goes on, if you are retired for 30 years what would your final ‘wage’ be.

So how will you do it?

By now you may have realised the level of income you want, and now you have to ensure your business can create the level of turnover to pay for your ‘vision of the future’.

I think it’s time to get cracking on making your business more profitable and seeing how it will run without you, because some day in the future your asset will either fade or thrive. Take action now!

You’re in business, not just a job but business. That means you work, take risks, plan, implement and reap rewards (yes rewards) if you get things right.

I have heard many people say many different things about what they want from business.

• I’m the boss.
• I call the shots
• I can’t be sacked
• I get paid more than the other guys

Follow that with…

• I am creating an asset I can sell and retire on the proceeds
• I have an asset my kids can take over
• I have an asset where I will install a manager to do all the things I currently do and I will live off a % of the profits and occasionally consult back to the business when I want to.
• I have multiple assets run by others and I get a part of the income from each and I seek out more ways to make $$ from each

The last one is the one I like the most, it’s the one that makes the most sense to me, it’s a risk to reward ratio. I get rewarded for the risks I take and can create more businesses so that if one is not doing well, another one is. (Good diversification can do that.)

Here’s the challenge however, most people don’t seem to think like that in fact they often only think in the terms of the first set of points. What that amounts to is Just Over Broke. Rarely getting ahead and when they do it seems to disappear FAST.

Sure there is the argument of live now, because you don’t know how long you will live. But being that it’s an unmeasurable ‘thing’ I would prefer see a longer term plan (or vision) than some short sighted live now and “oh no we’re broke honey, but we had a great time…”

All this is loosely called succession planning and making sure you set up your business to be all it can be so you can reap positive rewards now and in the future is vital.

Like a lot of people I didn’t worry much about retirement, putting cash away and anyway I keep hearing stories of people losing money overnight on the stock market and their portfolio value plummets again…

The reminder for this post, listening to people in business chatter away about how things have gone, what they will do when the time comes to retire, how they might sell their asset and in one case a lady who had sold her business, watched it fade fast into obscurity so she bought it back and is building it up again.

So what will you do, sell the business, put a Manager in to run it, expand it, resize it etc? All with the aim of having a nest egg to retire on.

If you do sell, will what you have the cash ‘invested’ in provide for your needs in retirement? How much will you need?

If you build up the business and put in a Manager how will that work out? Will the amount you need to take out hurt the business? Will it be run as you set it up or better? Will things fall in a heap and you need to rescue it… will you want to rescue it!

Lots of great questions in need of great answers. Hopefully your Accountant can set you straight, or at worst your own figures will project a rosy future for you. Lets face it, in the current economic situation there is little to smile about when the notion of retirement looms large in our thoughts. Unless of course you have an asset which keeps on giving.

What does it cost your business and how should you handle it?

Being a service nut I like the way it can make your business stand out from the crowd, compliance or not… so handling guarantees becomes a major issue you solidly stand behind, giving every customer ‘peace of mind’ in knowing you will be there with them if ANY issue arises.

Over the period of a year or three it can be easy to look at the cost of supplying services to fulfill your guarantee obligations to keep your ‘customers happy and fulfill your legal obligations. In the intervening ‘learning phase’ it may be a case of  guessing how much guarantees might cost. Here are a few points you might consider in the process.

• Is there a consistent percentage of sales which you can attribute to guarantees?
• What is the time taken by staff in providing guarantees?
• What is the cost of providing the staff to do these tasks?
• Is this time significant enough to impact on other aspects of  your business… e.g. making profits from std sales.
• How much will the cost eat into your profit margin?
• What will you need to add to your operating costs to take into account this ‘cost of doing business’?
• How will the cost variation affect your average dollar sale and will that still make your business competitive?

I’m sure there will be other questions to ask in the process as you explore guarantees and their impacts further. The main thing is to be very mindful that guarantees have a cost, learn to live with that and allow for it in your forward planning.

In some organisations they seem to have no idea how much value their people add to the organisation, so lets have a think about the issue.

Let’s look at a range of costs and how it all adds up (their wages while they are on holidays and wages for a person who may replace them, as well as superannuation, insurance etc).

How much?

If we work on a figure of $800 per week that’s nearly $42,000 pa. Here are the ‘hidden costs’.

- 4 weeks wages for a fill in employee while the other is on holidays    $6,400

- 1 week personal leave                                                                    $800

- Superannuation @ 9% pa                                                               $3,700

- Workers compensation Insurance                                                    $300

- Payroll tax @ 5%                                                                           $2,100

- Training and development or uniforms and ‘tools’                               $2,500

- Incentives and bonuses                                                                   $1,500

- Accumulated P/A savings to cover 10 yr long service leave                 $960

- Accumulated P/A savings to cover the other worker on 10 yr leave       $960

TOTAL:                                                                                         $19,220

That’s just under half of the annual wage so they need to be earning the organisation a total of AT LEAST $61,200 to pay their way and cover their costs.

Let’s break it down further, on average it’s suggested out of a whole year people only work 220 days so that makes it $324 per day or $40.45 per hour. If you take into account ‘slack or down time’ (it’s raining, they are waiting for supplies, not feeling too well, angry at the boss for spending time reading business articles.) then that figure could readily go up.

For some of our readers they will know this hourly figure intimately and they will have their employees earning solidly above the basic level so they know they can cover longer term costs and thrive readily.

The thing is though, now you have some starting points to work with how will you change things in your business to make sure your business covers its costs, makes a profit and you come out smiling with lower stress levels?

If you are a small business then you’re the person handing it (along with everything else) but if you have a HR person then they should be poised to provide services in this area.

Often people see the HR function as, recruit – select – payroll – rostering – ohs – industrial relations. Clearly however there is more and loosely put it’s about staff well being – Training and development, induction programs, skills updates, policies and procedures, performance management and lastly our topic, working the culture – In short the internal relationships and the things that make them go well.

So the HR team looks after the culture… (ask about that next time you interview a person for a role in HR and see their response…) But what is ‘it’ that they have to tweak to make it work?

Basically it’s about behaviour adjustment, (to match to the organisations culture)  but before that happens the HR team need to figure out if anything needs to be adjusted (an ecology check), assessing the current situation and looking for ‘gaps’ or areas of ‘risk’ which are or could become an issue, they need to understand and figure out ways to develop internal relationships so they can know the who, how, why, what and where of what needs adjusting.

Then they need to plan ways to tweak the culture so it’s healthier and can stay that way. If you look at organizational culture in this way, your team should be able to develop a sure fire development plan which is based not just on developing role based skills and abilities but enhancing the philosophical, intellectual and emotional intelligence of the team too. E.g. a leader may need to have more ‘people’ skills to be more effective in their role, so a program which allows better ‘reading’ of people and explore what makes them tick, might be useful, yet not something which may be directly business related when you look for courses or workshops to develop these skills.

If the first step is an assessment of the team culture, the second step is developing a program which explores  and develops all relevant aspects of the analysis.

Perhaps the program is a series of information sheets – a revamp of the organization’s value statement – a new section in the induction program – and or new Key Performance Indicators – or a more personal development based approach to training and development. Let’s not forget it may also be an adjustment to the physical aspects of the business, colours, furnishings and the like can have a huge bearing on how staff perceive a business and therefore relate and respond to the environment.

Whatever approach you take to the notion of developing your business culture, you should give it due concern, the positive flow on effects can make a big difference to the way things happen in your business.

Remember this little statement… (thanks Tom P)

Excellence, always! If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?

Consider the role of a senior member of staff, perhaps a person in a strategic planning or Human Resource Development role. Your aim may well be to push some boundaries and open the playing field up to new ideas and options. In that case you may want a person with a different approach or cultural fit to the rest. This then raises questions about the type of cultural differences and skill sets you might want to have with this type of recruit.

How will you decide what culture and skill sets you require? That depends on the role and how much of a ‘shift’ you want to create in the system. Clearly if you go for a person who is totally different in their interests, values and beliefs to the rest of the team, you may end up with a situation where the gap between your current culture and your ‘imposed’ one is too great to sustain for any length of time. I liken it to a bridge trying to span a distance which is too great for the structure to hold for long, eventually it fails.

Your new cultural direction should consider the following points.

• The change should be different enough from the existing situation but still maintain structural integrity.
• Creative approaches or not? – if the existing culture requires stimulus to get it moving then a more creative skill set can do just that.
• If the growth pattern of the enterprise is stagnant then a more profit driven or sales oriented person can add value.
• Managing the change might need extra effort on the part of the HR dept, supervisors and team leaders to oversee the new direction.
• Is this culture re-shuffle a part of an ongoing strategic plan? – If so it will probably fit with a core value of innovation.  With that underpinning the new approach, the team should see the benefits this will bring for the longer term.
• Although a different cultural fit might be the main aim it doesn’t mean the core organisational values need to be ignored, in fact they are probably going to be strengthened by this new approach as terms such as respect – innovation and service get a bigger airing and may be explored at a deeper level.

Like anything changes to a business need to take into consideration various factors before being implemented but the above cultural development points might be a good starting point to consider.

On too many occasions I have seen things get badly messed up and staff in an organisation go into a flat spin trying to overcome a difficulty because a detail or two was missed.

Here are some quick examples.

• Someone goes on long service leave and the flow through of paperwork stopped, this meant a build up of invoices not sent out, so a whole quarter of income was delayed.
• Or how about a person who has a few days off due to illness and no one was able to take over that person’s role without some serious investigation of their scant notes.
• A ‘proof sheet’ at a printer’s was not signed off by the client and their $20, 000 print project had a serious error, the client blamed the printer and the proof sheet oversight cost them dearly.

It comes down to how people set up and run their systems to ensure things can carry on despite breaks in the usual routine, or a back up failsafe device (like a person to double check an important document).

Are there holes in your system and what’s keeping it propped up? Perhaps it’s time to review and tweak the systems you have in place to ensure things can flow more effectively.

They turn up, they do the tasks, but how happy are they? Some of you are now asking “why should I care?” as long as they turn up and do the tasks…

Well a happy team will generally do things more effectively and with greater interest. If they are more at ease then they will probably be more alert and less stressed. Now does it make sense… So what can you do to assist them to be happier?

Survey them – Every few months or so develop a simple survey to measure how they are going in the happiness stakes at work – and loosely at home, you don’t need to pry too deeply but imagine if things are down at home, then it can impact the work situation, what will you ask them? well try doing an internet search for staff surveys and make a list of questions from there.

Do a Maslow – Dr Maslow came up with a list of needs people have in a range of situations, but the workplace is a great place to use it. Do a search on his list and then use it as a guide to measure with – It can be a very useful way to set up an induction program, or anytime a person moves to a new position or division and things change. It can give you a view into what sorts of things should be in place for this person to perform well. According to Maslow you should be aiming to get your people to a ‘self actualised’ position, this way they are in the best position to add great value to your organisation.

Is your workplace a brilliant place to be? – Take a look, is it a great place or a dump or somewhere in-between? Now figure out what can be done and when. It’s a great way to start forward strategic planning. When profit gets to x level you can update a few things, and continue on from there bit by bit until you get the organisation up to a great standard. As a one off big spend it might cost a lot, but in stages it can be a lot easier to handle. It could be developed by adding a question or two in the initial survey.

Keep on tweaking the list! – Use this list as a guide to improving your business and keep on tweaking it see if over time the results are showing up.

So how do you create a system which is bullet proof and others can follow it if you are not able to carry on with the task. A system which helps you keep your sanity and your customers loyalty as well. Try these.

• Regularly test the system with your customers – if the cracks are going to appear they will probably show up when you least expect it when the customers want you the most.
• Keep others in the loop when you update to the system – It’s great to have a good system but if others on your team don’t know about the changes, how can they use it to their advantage? And did you work with them to tweak it?
• Think about what cracks first – Is it you who does not handle the pressure, or others? Is it the system? (old technology may not handle what you want it to). Is it the way you record information to keep the system up to date? (Paper based first – computer updates later – or directly into the system? Either way you need to be able to identify what the challenge is and then explore ways to adjust it to suit.
• Are things in a logical sequence or all over the place? – following steps is just that a logical one after the other process, sure there may be a side track here and there, but in the main it’s only a short side step. Put things in order to keep the process flowing as best you can.
• Take action – all of the above are action steps but when will you do them, can they be implemented slowly or do they all need to be done at the same time? Make sure you set time to make the system work more effectively for you it may require some time sacrifice up front but the saving further on will be well worth it.
• Fire, aim, ready! – Yes it’s out of order, but often business is like that, we have to react to things which are thrown at us at a moments notice so we may not have the ability to get ready, then aim… Sometimes the process can work out well with this approach as you can set a process in action, and tweak things to get the aim right as they progress.

Go on, try these out and see what happens. You might just keep your sanity in place a bit longer and build that all important customer loyalty while you are at it. Oh and don’t forget the sense of accomplishment you will feel when you have knocked things into place and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel!