Category Archives: HR Tips for Business and Charities

What it says on the tin – some useful guidance for smaller organisations on HR and employment law topics

3 More Tips for Taking on a new Employee

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Originally posted October 2012

In my last blog, I looked at 5 key things to take into account when deciding to take on your first employee.

Having put all the effort into recruiting the right person for your business, you may think that you’ve done all the hard work. In fact, to make sure that you get the best from your new team member requires you to spend just as much time on their first few weeks in the job.

Here are 3 key things to remember:

  • Set out what standards you expect from the first day. It’s a lot easier to get things right from the off than try and change people’s behaviour later.
  • You and your staff member need time to get used to each other’s way of working. If you’ve been working on your own you need to understand how to delegate and also to take constructive criticism. Don’t be precious!
  • Everyone makes mistakes – even you!  If your new team member makes a mess of something, don’t automatically treat it as an opportunity to get rid of them. You’ve invested a lot of time and money recruiting them; unless the mistake threatens the business’s survival or reputation, review what you both can learn from it.

If you want to know more about the most effective way you can manage the people in your business, click here

5 Top Tips when Taking on Your First Employee

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Originally posted in September 2012

So, you’ve launched your own business, it’s going well and now you need to take on your first person. It’s a big step – one which a lot of microbusinesses never take – so you need to make sure you do it right.  Following the steps below can help you avoid an expensive mistake

  1. Be clear and specific about what you want in an employee – what skills do they actually need, and what are just “nice to have”?  Wanting a super-hero who can do everything is likely to lead to disappointment
  2. Remember that as an entrepreneur you have a huge personal stake in the success of your business. An employee, no matter how enthusiastic, will never have that same level of commitment as you. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a fact, but it means that you can’t expect them to devote as much of their life to the business as you.
  3. Make sure that you have all the basics in place – employer’s liability insurance, a payroll provider to ensure you deduct tax and NI correctly, and proper contracts – before you decide to recruit.
  4. Take professional advice if you need to. You use an accountant or a marketing consultant for specialist advice – do the same for people management.
  5. Don’t believe anything you read about employment matters in the media (especially if it’s in the Mail or the Telegraph). They are interested in selling papers and promoting a political agenda, not giving you accurate business information.

 

Remember what you are making is a business decision – and in cash terms possibly one of your most significant ones. Evaluate it against the same criteria as you would any other investment, but remember also that you will be dealing with another human being, not a “thing”.

If you want to know more about the most effective way you can manage the people in your business, or have heard various tales about employment law and want to separate the fact from the myth, more information is available here

Who are the “Firewall” Employees in your business?

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Originally published May 2012

Many small businesses today have disaster recovery plans – a contingency if their server went down or their business premises were flooded. But one area that they rarely plan for is how they would deal with the loss of a key employee.

Consider these examples.

You’re running a regulated business which requires a nominated individual with particular qualifications to hold the licence to operate (there are many small businesses that this applies to – transport, childcare, waste management etc).  That individual – who will usually be a senior person in your organisation – has a heart attack and is off for several months. Your entire business is threatened because your key member of staff is unavailable. What do you do?

Even if your business isn’t regulated, losing a key person can be disastrous. If you employ someone with specialist skills and knowledge and they resign at short notice – worse if they go to work for a competitor – then it could well be goodbye to that major contract.

And even the loss of an administrator could cause significant problems if your business relies on their knowledge of your systems and procedures. The fact that they know a call from Ms X is important and Mr Y is less so, or that it is essential to be at a particular trade conference, would be lost if they suddenly went out of the picture.

So next time you’re analysing what you would do if your buildings were burnt down, identify as well who your “firewall employees” are and consider how you would manage if they disappeared.

How Poor Recruitment Can Wreck Your Business

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Originally published April 2012

Poor, shoddy customer service is something which most people aren’t prepared to accept these days.  We’re more likely to complain than in the past if we don’t receive prompt responses, if a company fails to deliver what it promised or if they try to fob us off. And in these days of social media, a moan about a particular company (such as Waitrose or H&M) doesn’t just go to a few friends but can be around the country or globe in minutes. Years of careful marketing and “brand management” can go out of the window in hours or days with a tweet from an irate customer.

Yet when it comes to recruitment, how many HR people consider the organisation’s image when planning the process? But how many times have you come away from a job interview thinking “what an awful organisation – I wouldn’t work there for double the salary”?

There’s really no excuse for not giving candidates a positive impression of your organisation, and you should always be striving to ensure that your recruitment processes match the public image your organisation has. As US recruitment guru Crystal Miller points out, candidates only expect two things:

  • Acknowledgement- simply that you’ve applied and we acknowledge that. Thank you.
  • Closure- simply that you are or are not qualified for the position, that you are or are not getting the job, there are or are not other opportunities with us, and we acknowledge all these things in a consistent and timely manner. Thank you.

But a good recruitment process offers them more: an insight into working for you, your organisation’s culture and values. Just as much as you deciding who you want to recruit, the candidates will be deciding whether they want to work with you – you are  forming a relationship.

And finally – don’t forget the rejected candidates. Depending on their skills, they may well end up working for a client, supplier or major customer. A bad impression of your company based on their recruitment experience may well cost you in the future.

The Masterchef approach to Talent Management

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Originally published in December 2011

Fans of TV reality show Professional Masterchef will have seen Aussie chef Ash Mair win last night in one of the closest finals in the series. What makes this programme different from the normal reality freakshow (e.g The Apprentice) – and a good example of how to manage and develop talent in any industry – is that it takes those who are already trained in their chosen field and sets up a method of developing their talents by giving them real life situations where they are both mentored and challenged to improve their performance.
The selection process is not through interview or psychometrics – the chefs are given a basic skills test before they can progress to actual cooking (scarily, quite a few apparently qualified chefs fail this). They are not only mentored in specific culinary skills by working with Michelin starred chefs, but also learn about customer service and marketing (challenges  have included taking over a hospital canteen,  and producing menus for children where extra credit is gained for whose dish is chosen most), working with key stakeholders and opinion formers (by cooking for food critics) and benchmarking themselves against the best in the industry.
The key though is that they are always given constructive criticism and challenged to improve, while being given the support to do this. By working with the best, they are then assessed to see what they have learned and pushed to do better.  And while there is a competitive edge, both the other finalists (and indeed others knocked out earlier) will also see a tremendous boost to their careers.
At a time when management is being increasingly criticised for poor performance, and businesses need to develop their staff to give them a competitive advantage, perhaps it’s time to look at the Masterchef model as a way to do it.