Season 3 Review- Enegaging Your People for Success - Lisa Askwith

Lisa Askwith - "Engaging Your People for Success"

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Introduction

People are the powerhouse behind everything, they are an intrinsic part of your business, and your everyday life. If you can't engage and work with them in a mutually beneficial style then everything suffers.

I passionately believe in not only ensuring your people are engaged, but in putting people at the centre of the work equation. Whilst the business, or product, or service, is still vitally important, it is the people that will ultimately make or break your company's success.

Many Business owners forget this, and get too heavily involved in metrics, ignoring the empathetic leadership that is needed to build a successful company culture. Culture is king especially now that the new generation of workers want to feel connected, valued and able to make a difference in their organisations…...or they move quickly.

In today’s show we are reflecting on some of the key tips, ideas, adn strategies that we have reviewed this season. To ensure that you have the tools and direction you need to make your business the best that it can be by Engaging Your People for Success.


Show Objectives

To highlight the key themes that you need to investigate further to ensure that you as a business owner, or leader are able to fully capitalise on your biggest asset, YOUR PEOPLE.

Season review- you can download the podcasts to further review each topic discussed this season.

Ep2-   Without a Career Path you are sending your People elsewhere to succeed.
Ep 3-  Promotions Need to be Based on Performance, not Connections
Ep 4-  Why Formal Training Programs for Job Demands & Career Development Retain Your People and Improve your Culture
Ep 5-  Continuous Improvement Should be on Everyone’s Mind
Ep 6-  Trust Based Authentic Management and Ownership is vital for culture, growth, innovation and retaining your talent
Ep 7-   Taking the Pain out of developing  and Making Performance Appraisal Formal
Ep 8-   Why and how leaders acting more like coaches can save thousands $$$$$
Ep 9-   How to Hire the Best Talent 
Ep 10- How to retain the best talent
Ep 11- The Tools for Being Quick at Separating Mismatches from the Business
Ep 12- Leadership and Why and How it is Crucial to Bring Your People Outstanding Leaders


Key Issues tips for your business

Ep 2 -Without a Career Path you are sending your People elsewhere to succeed

One of the best things you can do for your business is provide a clear, achievable, and fair career path.
 
This is important for a few reasons;
 

• Employee’s will stay if they can follow a pathway that is clear and supported
• Career paths provide brilliant ways for employees to gain further training and be of greater value to your business, as well as themselves.
• Staff progressing through the business and staying helps promote a culture that is positive and rewarding, and encourages shared success
• Staff feel more valued and therefore more engaged if they can follow a career path

Ep 3-  Promotions Need to be Based on Performance, not Connections

This can be one of the biggest issues in a company that leads to a toxic culture. It also sits next to having a strong, clear, accessible career path available for all employees.

The perceived, or real habit of promotions being about who you know not what you know, can be disastrous for a business, leading not only to a toxic culture, but demotivated staff, placing incapable senior staff, and causing high turnover. Hence, the bottom line gets hit dramatically.
In order to help provide a feeling of fairness, and access some key items need to be ready available and well managed by a competent leadership team in your business, these are;

• Clear JD’s and KPI’s that link to company objectives and values
• Open roles actually open to all for interviews, not just shoulder taps
• Staff should have a career path map that allows them to work towards the next role, and demonstrate capability and learning
• Clear performance reviews that are regular and linked to JD’s
• Clear structure of roles, and key skills required to fill them, that can be accessed by everyone, allowing transparency
• Trained leadership team who supports company values and adheres to it!

Ep 4-  Why Formal Training Programs for Job Demands & Career Development Retain Your People and Improve your Culture

A great training program package would cover 2 key areas;
 
Job Demands
 

• Should support business needs and growth
• Should be broad where possible,
• Should be part of the JD steps and growth

 
Career Development
 

• Linked to JD and KPI’s
• Linked to a clear succession plan throughout the company, and possibly cross function if possible
• The more programs that you can offer the better your staff becomes, and the more they can give back.
• Training is seen as one of the best retention tools, as staff are very mobile now, so if you want to keep them engaged with your business and get the benefits of that, you need to offer programs that they want to add to their career plan too. This should be win-win
• Sometimes staff will leave as they develop and no longer have a pathway in the company. Try and support this and see it as win-win, as what they give back before they leave as well as after can quite often be very beneficial.

The other great thing about successful Training programs is that they successfully increase the skill set of your people, and as people are the greatest asset in any business this now opens up new opportunities.

Ep 5-  Continuous Improvement Should be on Everyone’s Mind

Continuous improvement should be recognised company wide and be rewarded to ensure staff always offer suggestions, and help the company improve.
 
You will hear me talk about leadership a lot in this Season, as it is crucial to several steps in engaging your people in general, but is also a critical need for continuous improvement to be successful, in fact;
 
The support of an organization's leadership team is usually cited as the number one factor for the success of a continuous improvement initiative. Leaders must exhibit behaviours that not only demonstrate support for the initiative but also the behaviours that they wish all employees to emulate.
 
So ensure your leadership team is up to the task, and follow the steps to make sure continuous improvement is part of your company culture, it leads to massive and often unexpected successes.

Ep 6-  Trust Based Authentic Management and Ownership is vital for culture, growth, innovation and retaining your talent

Remember Trust is earned over time and taken away in an instant.
                                                                                         
Trust is becoming a key driver of keeping employees in a business, and hence that relationship with management is crucial. People are no longer looking at lifetime jobs, so this means they are much choosier, and have a much lower tolerance for anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or devalued……much more so than any time in the past.

To develop trust basd authentic leadership you need some key steps to work really well for you, these are;
 

• Strong leadership in place that is focused on developing a support and positive people culture- regular 360 degree feedback and culture surveys
• Consistent and constant leadership training that reflects the company values, culture and empathic leadership
• Visible leaders
• Leaders walking the talk
• Available leaders- working teams can help with this
• A living breathing culture that is distributed through all parts of the business
• Regular open communication
• Regular praise and recognition
• Psychological safety
• Space to try new ideas and be supported

Ep 7-   Taking the Pain out of developing  and Making Performance Appraisal Formal

Performance Reviews are one of those things that seem to strike fear into appraisers and appraises alike, and they simply should not be like this. In fact they can be so much better.
                                                                                     
Performance reviews should actually be a positive experience, and if the company and culture is set up properly they can be. However, so very often I see companies that treat performance reviews as a very negative event, and hence staff become anxious and reviews are never really a beneficial experience but more something to survive and get through to the next paycheck.
 
Tips

• Progressive companies are redesigning their performance management to evaluating accomplishments, and how these are achieved (behavioural)
• A good appraisal systems takes the ‘pain’ out of its use and actually encourages and raises employee satisfaction and engagement
• Effective PM is a process not a one off event

Ep 8-   Why and how leaders acting more like coaches can save thousands $$$$$

A good coach brings specific and well-defined issues to the attention of others. Being unspecific about problem areas, or failing to bring them up with the appropriate parties, suggests a reluctance to affect positive change and a lack of leadership.
 
A good coach is,
•       positive,
•       enthusiastic,
•       supportive,
•       trusting,
•       focused, 
•       goal-oriented,
•       knowledgeable,
•       observant,
•       respectful,
•       patient
•       and a clear communicator. So essentially a skilled and empathetic leader.
 
If you are new at Coaching your staff, these are some great point to be aware of, and ensure you are able to incorporate them. The other simple step that you can also use to help guide you through initial conversations and find a your rhythm is an old but very useful 4 step process- GROW
 
G-Goal
R- reality- is it achievable or does it need something for success
O-Options review several
W-will- time bound


Ep 9- How to Hire the Best Talent

Recruitment:
•       Agreement on role characteristics against KPI’s/team fit/JD
•       Development of short list criteria
•       Division of tasks- HR vs recruiting manager
•       Advertising- sign off requirements and authorisation
•       Candidate selection- short list
•       Phone interviews
•       Face to face interviews
•       Offer
•       On boarding
•       Probation review

Ensure your hiring managers/leaders are involved in all steps of the recruitment process. With a key focus on the correct Job Descriptions, and performance reviews during probation

Ep 10- How to retain the best talent

To really succeed at retaining the best talent you need to build a culture that supports not only your business vision but your people. This can take time, but is the most worthwhile thing you can do as a business owner to ensure long term success.

Key tip- Culture needs to be constantly nurtured and embedded throughout the organisation, and must be embraced and supported by the leadership team.

Culture can become toxic, and once this is established for a period of time, it is very hard to change.

Key issues arise, such as;

• Disengaged staff
• High staff turn over
• Silo thinking and mentality
• Increased sick leave
• Increased turnover
• Lack of accountability
• Blame culture
• Bullying
• Nepotism

These are hard things to change, in fact, in some businesses I have worked with it has taken over 6 months just to start to break into a toxic culture, and change beliefs and patterns of behaviour. This takes concerted effort, and must be continued in order to bring the culture back to positive, which still takes many more months to achieve

Ep 11- The Tools for Being Quick at Separating Mismatches form Your Business

1. do the standard operating procedures and positions contain clear performance standards? Who owns these?
2. Are performance 1:1 meetings occurring between leaders and their direct reports?
3. Is there documentation on performance? 
4. Is there a policy or informal rule for 'probation'? 
5. Is there an arbitration clause in employment contracts? 
6. make the decision sooner rather than later, focus on performance.

So to summarize, some of the key things that you need to have in your business to quickly remove mismatches (and get the best results) are;

1. Robust recruitment process with engaged hiring managers
2. Up to date, fair and consistent JD’s, Contracts and KPI’s
3. Consistent and Fair performance appraisals
4. Structured induction with regular reviews and performance check points with the hiring manager for the entire probation period
5. A clear and actionable probation process
6. Engaged and culture driven leaders to monitor and apply all of the above
7. Documentation must be clear, relevant and kept

Ep 12- Leadership and Why and How it is Crucial to Bring Your People Outstanding Leaders

Providing your people with exceptional leaders should form a key part of your people management and engagement strategy. How you go about finding them and or training them are vital to so many metrics in your business that lead it to success. After all, study after study shows great people leave bad managers, not companies…..so how much of a negative impact are poor leaders really having on your business? Worse still how many underperforming employees are staying because they know how to put up with the bad leadership and can get away with doing the bare minimum? 

The key points to focus on are;
 
1-    recognizing the leadership in your business and developing it- Including leadership attributes in your leaders performance appraisals to establish the qualities you need in your business.
2-   Developing the servant leader profile and skill set
3-   Focusing on authenticity and empathy
4-   Allowing people to feel valued
5-   Becoming an exceptional Coach and mentor
6-   Developing your purpose and allowing yourself to further develop a growth mindset.
 
Taken together these 6 key items are actually very large, but the great news is they all work together to make you, or your leaders outstanding. Plus with a constant focus you will include all of the behaviors naturally in your leadership tool kit, allowing you, your business and your people to be the best that they can be.


To ensure you are utilizing your biggest Asset, YOUR PEOPLE, all of the Episodes in Season 3 of Engaging Your People for Success come together to enable you to take your business to the next level, and maximise your results.


Shows

Previous: Episode P5.012Leadership- Why and How it is Crucial to Bring Your People Outstanding Leaders  
Next: Episode P5.001 Summary of Season 4 of Engaging Your People for Success- Introduction

Written by Lisa Askwith

Director of ApexBRS | ApexBRS, Regional Director of See Global Media, Chair of  EGN Singapore, and Associate Professor Cambridge Corporate University | At the Age of Change, providing the HR component of the Global Executive MBA and BBA.

You can connect with Lisa on any of her platforms

LinkedIn Lisa Askwith - Director - Apex BRS
https://www.apexbrs.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ApexBRS
https://tockify.com/ibgrnetwork/pinboard?search=lisa&startms=1602216000000

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