Posts

Ways To Create A Harmonious Workplace

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Ways To Create A Harmonious Workplace

Nobody wants to come to work to be unhappy. More importantly, when you consider how much time your employees actually spend in the workplace, you can appreciate the need to need for your team to be happy at work. An unhappy and stressful work environment can have a very real impact on the mental health of your employees. As a business leader, you have a duty of care to ensure that the health and happiness of your team are maintained at a high standard.

From a business point of view, creating a happy workplace means that you will have a more productive team. There will be less sickness due to stress, and your team will work together in a more effective manner.

But, how do you prevent internal conflict and problems that stem from the way that the company is managed? Here are some ways that you can create a harmonious workplace.

Get Outside Help

If there are signs of any conflicts within the workplace, or the way that you are running the company seems to be bringing about stress and unhappiness, then this could end up being quite costly.

Seeking external help will mean that you get an outsider’s point of view. And a company that deals in dispute resolution and litigation solutions will be able to provide operational support and advice from a legal standpoint.

Have Policies In Place To Protect The Team

Many insecurities and stresses in the workplace stem from concerns over the fact that there are no policies that allow the team to feel secure. By making sure that all of their rights are taken into consideration in their contract and in the company policies and procedures will ensure that they feel secure and protected.

Foster A Policy Of Open Communication

Your employees have a right to know as much as possible about their workplace. Of course, there will be matters that they don’t need to know. However, if there are changes that may occur, consulting with your team and being open about them well ahead of their implementation will provide the time for any adjustments.

Be sure that you have an open-door policy, where you are approachable and free to answer any questions or deal with any concerns that your employees may evert have.

Encourage Your Team To Celebrate Each Other’s Successes

Success is something that should always be celebrated. You need to make sure that you create a workplace where this is standard practice.

As habits and behaviors are learned parrot fashion, you need to lead by example. Find the time each week to point out the success of the team, but also to highlight different personal successes. Don’t just focus on the same people each week though, and try and demonstrate a variety of skills and successes to celebrate.

A great way of encouraging your team to share in each other’s success is to create a noticeboard where they can leave positive thoughts about other members of the team. A ‘motivation station’ is great for building morale and making sure everyone feels part of the team.

How Much Should You Pay Your Staff?

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Talent Management Article, How Much Should You Pay Your Staff?

If you’re a start-up business looking to hire employees, you’ll need to consider how much money is enough to keep your staff happy without your business suffering. To stop you skimping out or overspending, here are some ways to budget for your staff and ensure they get the most suitable rate.

Know how much you can spare

Consider how much you need to comfortably live on and if you will need to make any cuts. You will need to be making enough money from your clients to cover the cost of your staff’s wages, plus compulsory insurance schemes such as employer liability and vehicle insurance if they are planning to drive. You’ll also have to account for any training and any wastage that may occur as a result of that (if it’s a restaurant you may need to prepare practice dishes resulting in wasted food, if it’s a professional electrician business you may have to pay for health and safety courses).

If after all this you still can’t afford to pay your staff minimum wage, you should reassess your business plan before making the decision to hire employees. Taking on a financial advisor or accountant temporarily may be necessary in order to budget this.

Commission or salary?

Next you’ll have to decide what kind of contract to give your staff. For businesses in which payment is not always guaranteed from week to week, commission pay may be more appropriate. In some sales jobs this can be a great incentive to make those big sales. However many employees may be put off by the uncertainty of not always being paid. Salary-based pay works best when you have a regular enough income to always assure payment to your staff. Failing to be able to provide for your staff could get you into a lot of trouble, so make sure you have that regular income to fall back on.

Account for age and experience

For young employees, the minimum wage bracket varies. This ranges from £3.40 for apprentices to £7.20 for those 25 and older. For businesses wanting to take on staff cheaply, apprenticeships are popular choice. However, apprentices are limited to what work they can legally do, and may still have to do their apprenticeship alongside a college course, so don’t look at them as a full-time solution.

It’s important to also account for experience. If you’re hiring an assistant manager, they should be getting more than your average worker. When advertising for experienced workers, make sure you’re charging more than the starting rate to ensure they don’t choose another business over yours.

Compare other businesses

A great way to gage the going rate is to find out what other businesses are charging. Job sites are a good indicator of this, as you can see what other employers are charging. For an even better pointer, you may wish to pay for a salary benchmarking and comparison survey. This involves paying a professional to review similar businesses to your own and find out exactly what they are paying their staff. From here you can set your own rate and know that you aren’t being too tight-fisted or over generous.

Incentives and bonuses

On top of regular pay you may want to provide extra incentives to keep staff happy. The most popular form of incentive is to offer bonuses to staff that perform well. This could include setting a yearly target that the whole team must aspire to or individual targets. Of course, make sure that these targets are realistic so that staff want to achieve them and don’t alter the goalposts halfway through the year – find a target and stick with it to keep people motivated (keep it on a big board or continuously talk about it weekly meetings).

Another incentive is to offer your staff stakes in the company. John Lewis is the most famous company to have pulled this off, but you don’t have to be retail giant like them – small business can offer shares too.

You can also offer other incentives such as free dental care, childcare vouchers, a company car or free lunches. Christmas parties and social events can also be provided to improve morale. These are some of the best incentives as they don’t just offer workers money but offer experiences. Such benefits are often known as employment packages. It is important to realise that these are affected by tax and NIC implications (another thing you may want to ask a financial advisor or accountant about).

Why Your Business Needs Workforce Management Systems

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Entrepreneurship | Why Your Business Needs Workforce Management SystemsWorkforce management systems are some of the most revolutionary features that can handle everything online from HR to hour registration and scheduling with one single tool. Handling paperwork for an organization is something that the HR department can confirm is not that interesting, not to mention the small errors that can lead to taking a whole day to discover why the books are not adding up.

HR is one of the departments that do not directly contribute to profits or productivity, yet it can take a huge chunk of a business’s operating budget. With a workforce management system, you do not have to print a handful of paper copies or place scanned pages in a hard to organize folder on your computer. This saves the labor needed to operate this department and you can save a lot of money. Here are some of the reasons why you should consider installing workforce management systems in your organization:

Cutting costs

It requires dozens of people to prepare the paperwork that is necessary for calculating and making the payments for labour in good time. You can save this labor and reassign those employees to more productive tasks. The workforce management system pays for itself through the savings you make from reducing labor costs. You can get this software from Synel-Americas and integrate it into all of your management systems.

Higher employee morale

The systems allow your organization to automate almost all of the payroll and timekeeping functions. The software captures the employee’s data to calculate payroll more accurately to eliminate mistakes with pay and benefits. Mistakes in benefits and payments are among the things that demotivate a workforce most and many unhappy workers cite it as a reason for attrition. It can also lead to workers organizing for collective bargaining rights, which is not a good image for the organization.

Compliance

HR is responsible for making and keeping records for legal and financial purposes. This provides the statistics necessary to prove that the business is in compliance with its legal obligations. This data is also needed by unions, individuals with employment contracts, and by company policy. A small gap in compliance can cost your business a huge sum in fines and the organization’s reputation.

Analytical function

Workforce management software helps management to obtain accurate and comprehensive data. This data can be used to evaluate the actual performance against the budget to measure the success of the management. Data management can help you discover interesting trends in your business to make better decisions. Having available data at all times and in a simplified form also saves you the time you need to react to sudden changes in the business.

Customer satisfaction

A well-motivated workforce will always give satisfying services to your clients, which is crucial for business growth. The system can be used to evaluate the employees’ performance and the organization can give rewards in a fair and justifiable manner. This leads to healthy competition within the organization and increased customer service performance.

Conclusion

Workforce management systems offer a lot of important benefits for business whether large or small. The software helps companies to move forward with the best human resource technologies available. The money saved also enables the company to attain ROI and direct the resources to more investments.

How To Turn Around Your Under Performing Sales Team

/in /by

Your sales team is at the heart of your business and when they perform well, the business thrives. But when they are not performing so well, your business is in real danger. Unless you can turn things around and get your sales team working again, your business could fall apart completely. In some cases, it might just be that you’re going through a slow period and things will pick up again soon. But if sales figures are low for an extended period and things don’t seem to be turning around on their own, you need to start making some changes. Here’s how you can improve your underperforming sales force.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How To Turn Around Your Under Performing Sales Team

Identify The Problem

The first step in fixing your sales team is identifying where the problem lies. For example, you might be getting plenty of qualified leads but your sales team is not closing that many deals, or maybe they are not getting enough leads in the first place. You may also find that certain employees are underperforming compared to their coworkers and you need to focus on those people in particular. The best way to identify the problem is to look at your sales data. If you use  a good salesforce dashboard, you can see all of the data about your sales team and how they are performing. By looking over all of this data, you will be able to identify exactly where the blockages in your sales pipeline are so you can start working towards a solution.

Generate More Qualified Leads

Sometimes, your sales team is struggling because you are generating leads but they are not qualified leads and so they cannot convert many of those customers. If that is the case, you should focus on targeting your marketing efforts more effectively so you get more qualified leads. Using digital marketing is a great way to reach more people and, most importantly, reach the right people. Spend some time thinking about who your target market is and how you can create marketing campaigns that will resonate with them.

Motivate With Targets

A lack of motivation could be the reason that things are slowing down. When people have a goal to reach for, they work a lot harder and sometimes, employers do not give their sales staff big enough targets to hit. People may be motivated initially, but if they are hitting their targets easily and you are not raising the bar, they will start to be complacent. It’s important that you set dynamic goals for your sales team so they always have something to strive for.

Improve Training

If customers are progressing to the final stages and then dropping out, that’s a sign that they are not very good at closing deals. In that case, you may want to consider improving your training. Giving your sales team more tools that they can use and helping them to improve their phone manner will make it a lot easier for them to convert those customers.

If you spend some time rethinking your sales team, you should be able to identify the problem and fix it before your business falls apart.

5 Tips to Improve Productivity in the Workplace

/in /by

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | 5 Tips to Improve Productivity in the WorkplaceAccording to experts, inefficiency can cost you between 20% to 30% of your business profits. Have you taken a hard look at your current operations? If you haven’t done so, you should get on it as soon as possible.

You may think it’s difficult to improve productivity in the workplace, but that’s far from the truth. It can be as easy as finding ways to motivate your employees and streamlining your operations. Don’t know where to start?

We’ve got you covered. Here are our top 5 tips to increase productivity in the workplace today.

1. Create a Positive Work Environment

As a business owner and leader, it’s vital to create a positive environment where your employees feel comfortable. Aim to motivate them through monthly events such as leadership workshops. You should also consider setting up a breakfast bar and other facilities to make your office space more comfortable.

2. Promote Employee Wellness

Healthy and happy employees make the dream work. You should always promote and prioritize your employees’ wellbeing. You can do this by scheduling wellness clinics at your offices or creating a fitness challenge to motivate employees to take care of themselves.

You should also promote talking about mental health as well. Try to make your employees feel comfortable enough to ask for a day off to prevent any burnouts.

3. Harness the Power of Technology

Believe it or not, using the most advanced technology can help you increase employee productivity. It’s important to take a look at your operations at an organizational and departmental level. Remember every department is a piece of the puzzle.

An example is how many businesses miss the mark when designing their accounting operations. When companies don’t streamline processes such as paystub generation, employees may be spending too much time completing these tasks. If this situation sounds familiar, you should consider a paystub maker such as Paystubs.net.

4. Set Up an Employee Development Program

Academic degrees and experience provide employees the knowledge needed to meet their job requirements. However, the best employers promote employee growth.

Establishing an employee development program or academy can help your employees grow. Focus on providing in-house seminars and courses to improve their skills and efficiency.

5. Empower Your Employees

You can empower employees by delegating tasks and guiding them. Make sure to monitor your employees’ performance to ensure they’re making the right choices. An empowered employee will contribute to your company’s success.

A great way to empower employees is by establishing a mentorship program. Under this program, company leaders will mentor your employees. This empowerment program will help you develop in-house talent for any need that arises in your organization.

Can You Improve Productivity in the Workplace?

As a business owner, you can improve productivity in the workplace. It will come down to implementing the best measures to motivate your employees. The first step is analyzing your operations and pinpointing where there’s room for improvement.

Focus on providing your employees with the best tools and creating a positive work environment. A good practice is asking your employees how you can help them. It may seem difficult to increase employee productivity, but we’re confident our tips will help you take your business to the next level.

Did you find this article interesting? Check out the rest of our site for more insightful articles.