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10 popular myths about HR

Written by Haze Carver on .

by Charlotte Bate, Director MAD-HR

There are many persistent and common myths about HR, which have somehow become so ingrained in HR folklore that they could almost be considered urban myths.

In general, most HR myths tend to involve matters that an employer “can’t” do or, just by their tone, always seem to have negative connotations.

Here’s a rundown (in no particular order) of the top 10 most common myths about HR:

1. You can’t contact employees when they are off sick

Employers have a duty of care towards their employees and that duty doesn’t end when they leave the workplace at the end of the day. In fact, this duty extends to employers making sure that they “keep in touch” and maintain regular contact with their employees when they are signed off to see how they are doing.

Regular contact with a sick employee should be compassionate and focus on their wellbeing not just enquiring when they will return to work. A good company sickness policy and procedure will assist employers in ensuring that they are able to effectively maintain contact with and manage those employees off sick.

2. You can’t dismiss an employee who is genuinely off sick

Providing the employer follows a fair process, dismissal for capability due to ill-health is a lawful “fair reason” for dismissing an employee. If the employee is never going to be able to return to work, it is not reasonable to expect an employer to keep their job open forever and therefore under these circumstances an employer could look to dismiss. Persistent short-term periods of absence can equally be dealt with through a robust ‘managing sickness absence’ policy. Providing the employer is able to demonstrate that the business is not able to sustain unacceptable levels of sickness absence, that they have considered any reasonable adjustments required and followed a fair process, then an employer would be entitled to dismiss.

3. You can’t give a “bad” reference

Aside from exceptional limited sectors there is actually no obligation for an employer to provide a reference. However, if a reference is provided then it should be fair, accurate and not misleading. When providing a reference, employers should stick to evidenced based facts, otherwise they could find themselves open to legal challenge from either the ex- employee or new employer for misleading them. For this reason, many employers choose only to provide what are known as “tomb-stone” references, which literally only sets out the basic confirmation of employment details.

4. You can’t dismiss an employee when they are on maternity leave

It is certainly unlawful discrimination to dismiss an employee just because she is on maternity leave. However, it is perfectly legitimate to dismiss an employee on maternity leave if her role is redundant (although certain specific rules apply) or she has committed an act of gross misconduct.

5. Employees with under two years’ service have no rights

Employees with under two years’ service can’t bring ordinary unfair dismissal claims. They can, however, bring claims for breach of contract, for holiday pay, discrimination, maternity rights, whistle-blowing, protective awards, and most other employment claims. Some of these rights (such as discrimination) begin even before the employment relationship has started.

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6. The contract isn’t signed; therefore, it doesn’t count

The employment contract does not necessarily have to be signed for it to hold up in court – it doesn’t even need to be written down. The validity of a contract that has been agreed verbally or not signed admittedly can be more difficult to verify, but it can still be legally binding.

For example, if an employee starts work and has seen their contract but hasn’t yet signed and returned it, they could still be held to the document’s terms as working can be seen as accepting those terms.

7. Employers have to give time off for bank holidays

Employees have no right to bank holidays off, or to be paid more for working them. This entirely depends on the contract between the employee and employer. Full-time employees are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks holiday a year and bank holidays can be counted as part of those 5.6 weeks, but they don’t have to be.

8. Employees returning from maternity leave can demand to change their hours or days if they want to

Employees returning from maternity leave, providing they meet the criteria of having over 26 weeks’ service and haven’t made a flexible working request in the past 12 months, have a right to ask for their working pattern to change. They will usually need to specify the hours/days they would like to work, how it will benefit them and how they think it would work for the business. The employer must consider the request, but they do not have to accept it.

9. When HR is in the room, someone is about to get fired

There is a stigma that if HR is in the room, it’s not going to be a pleasant conversation. This couldn’t be further from the truth. At many companies, especially smaller businesses, human resources are involved in business operations and are not always in the room for potential terminations. HR is there to be part of the team, foster a positive environment and advocate for the company and the employee.

10. HR makes the decisions 

HR makes recommendations, not decisions. Whilst HR is a key strategic department, operations are determined by the senior leadership/owners of the business. However, that line between recommendations and decision making is often misunderstood by staff. Clearly, if a company or business is struggling economically, it must be able to look at all options available to them, which may include restructuring the business or even, if necessary, making redundancies to survive, all of which require input and recommendations from HR.

Professionals who work in HR know that these false perceptions can make their jobs more difficult, and whether they breed resentment toward HR or simply discourage employees from reaching out, the impact is often detrimental. It is clear that only by working together in dispelling these myths, will we start to see the true value HR brings to a business.

If you would like help banishing these myths from your business, please call us and speak to a member of our team here.

If you would like to discuss how we can Make A Difference to your business through our provision of HR services, please get in touch on 01473 360160 or visit our contact page here.

You can view this original article and other content at Mad-hr.co.uk

Top 10 scary facts about HR

Written by Haze Carver on .

by Charlotte Bate, Director MAD-HR

From the looming retirement crisis to the fastest ever fall in number of EU workers, we look at the top 10 scariest facts and statistics about HR that are likely to impact the world of work in the near future.

1. Employee mental health & wellbeing

A staggering 70 million work days are lost each year due to mental health problems in the UK, costing employers approximately £2.4 billion per year1. Mental health is a business imperative. People are the most important resource, yet one in four will have a mental health issue. Mental health issues are the number one cause of sickness absence in the UK. Around half of all long-term sick leave in the UK is due to stress, depression, and anxiety.

The statistics are concerning, not just for the pandemic but the predictions beyond it. Over the past year we have seen companies doing great things to support employee wellbeing during the tough times of the pandemic, but employers need to be looking at what additional wellbeing initiatives and support they can offer their employees.

2. Alcohol dependency among staff

There are 31,767,000 workers in the UK. And a recent survey has found that 85% of 2,600 people surveyed have been drunk in the workplace in the last year. 31% of them admitted to being drunk at work or being unable to work as well due to alcohol, at least once a week.2

Based on that 31% sample. This means that 9.8 million of the British workforce in any one week is drunk at work or has impaired capacity to work. That is a massive 1 in 4 British businesses that have, on average, at least one worker per week at work who is drunk. Or incapable of carrying out their job properly because of alcohol.

It is estimated that £7.3 billion is lost each year in business productivity due to alcohol related issues in the workplace. And 17 million working days are lost each year due to alcohol related sickness! And a staggering 200,000 workers turn up to work hungover on any given working day.

3. Company car drivers’ accidents

Did you know that company car and van drivers are involved in a staggering one in every four serious accidents on the road? And sadly, every week around 200 serious injuries and, even worse, road deaths occur that involve fleet drivers.3

The cost of these accidents does not only ruin people’s lives, but it also has a huge impact on the companies who employee the fleet drivers that are involved in the road accidents, more often than not costing them hundreds of thousands of pounds (sometimes even millions) on fleet repairs, insurance, time off work for drivers and court cases, etc.

4. Cost of recruitment

On average, the cost to employers of replacing a single member of staff is more than £30,000, according to a recent report. The analysis from Oxford Economics found that by far the greatest expense (more than £25,000) comes from loss of productivity caused by the time it takes (28 weeks on average) for a new recruit to get up to speed.4

The remaining costs arise from the logistics of finding a replacement, it said. This includes agency fees, advertising costs, HR and management time, and the possibility of hiring temps before the new role started.

The analysis was based on figures drawn from five different sectors: retail, legal, accountancy, advertising, and IT and technology. Over a year, the report said the total costs for the sectors combined would amount to £4.13 billion.

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5. Engagement

According to the 2020 Global Culture Report, compiled by O.C. Tanner Institute, as much as 50% of employees in the UK feel underappreciated at work. 5Added to this, social distancing measures mean that as much as half of the employed population are still working remotely, further adding to the likelihood of them beginning to feel detached and neglected.

Work-life balance is the top driver of engagement at work, but it is not traditionally an aspect that many employers ask their employees about. Businesses tend to focus on standard elements like pay or traditional career progression, but recent studies show factors like showing support for your employees’ work-life balance and giving them a chance to try more lateral things in their role have a greater impact on engagement.

6. Employment tribunal statistics

The employment tribunal quarterly statistics for the period from April to June 2020 published by the Ministry of Justice,6 reveal:

Single claim receipts and caseload outstanding rose by 18% and 31% respectively in this period, while disposals decreased by 21% to 4,496 compared to the same period in 2019.  Multiple claim receipts and disposals dropped by 43% and 47% respectively, while outstanding caseload increased by 6%.

Annual compensation and costs awards figures have also been published for the employment tribunals and the EAT.  A total of 160 discrimination cases were awarded compensation in 2019/20.  The highest award, amounting to nearly £266,000 was for disability discrimination, while age discrimination cases received the largest mean average award (£39,000) compared to other discrimination jurisdictions.  Unfair dismissal mean average awards decreased to £10,812 from £13,704 in the previous annual figures.

The Ministry of Justice commented that the increase in single claim receipts was likely to be due to rising levels of unemployment and changes to working conditions during the pandemic.  It noted that this was “the highest level of single employment tribunal claims since 2012/13”.  Caseload outstanding has surpassed its peak levels recorded in 2009/10.

7. The majority of workers over 50 want flexible working

Currently in the UK, there are 10.2 million people over the age of 50 in employment. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) arranged for a large-scale survey of over 12,000 workers over 50 and found that nearly 80% wanted more flexible hours and 73% wanted to see more part time positions offered. 63% said that they wanted training schemes to help them gain new skills and to deal with technology.7

8. Fastest ever fall in number of EU workers

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics have shown that the number of EU workers in the UK has taken the sharpest fall since records were first taken back in 1997. In the period between July and September 2018, numbers fell by 4.5% compared to the same period in 2017, which equates to 107,000 people.8

The CIPD recently advised that employers are finding vacancies harder to fill due to the decline in migrants coming to the UK since the vote to leave the EU. More than two in five employers have reported finding it “more difficult” to fill vacancies over the past 12 months.

9. Retirement

In the UK today, there are approximately 12 workers for every retired person. By 2050 that is expected to reduce to four workers per pensioner. That is a third as many workers to fund a bill that is going to be three times as large. Or, in other words, nine times as much tax that somebody is going to have to pay.

Excluding those still lucky enough to be in a final salary scheme, the average UK worker today retires with a pension pot of £40,000.9 With annuity rates around 5% that will buy a pension of £800 a year – or about £15.50 a week.

According to one online pension calculator, an 18-year-old on the new living wage who puts away 8% of their pay for their whole working life would end up with a pension of roughly £3,700 per year at age 68. That is assuming their employer puts in the current requirement of a 3% contribution.

It is fairly evident that there is a huge crisis looming and somebody, sometime soon, is going to have to do something about it.

10. Apprenticeships

Recently published apprenticeship and traineeship statistics for final year-end data for 2019/2010 reveal:

Total apprenticeship starts are down 18%. The number of apprenticeship starts for the whole of 2018/19 totalled 393,400, but this dropped to 322,500 in 2019/20. Of those starts in 2019/20, 47% were from apprentices aged over 25, while 25% were for higher apprenticeships.

Starts for both level 2 apprenticeships and under 19 apprentices dropped.

Traineeship starts were also down 18%. Starts on traineeships took another dip in 2019/20, falling to just 12,100 from 14,900 the year before.

Take up of the pre-employment programme, introduced in 2013, hit a high of 24,100 in 2015/16 but have been dropping since.

From August until 12 November 2020, the number of apprenticeship redundancies reported so far was 1,190. Of these, 22% were under 19s, 35% were aged 19 to 24, while 43% were for 25s and over.

The Government hopes to triple traineeship starts to over 40,000 for this academic year, with a higher funding rate for 19 to 24-year-olds, employer incentives and a tender to find extra providers among new measures.

If you would like to discuss how we can Make A Difference to your business through our provision of HR services, please get in touch on 01473 360160 or visit our contact page here.

You can view this original article and other content at Mad-hr.co.uk

5 things we wish all employers knew about HR

Written by Haze Carver on .

by Elaine Coe, MAD-HR

As an owner or leader of a business, you have to wear many hats. Whilst HR is most certainly one of them, it can be tricky trying to navigate complicated employment legislation and employee issues, providing strategic HR or managing the coaching and development needs of the team.

Whilst you are unlikely to become an expert if every field, we do think it is worthwhile to understand some basic HR principles as this can help you manage risk, retain your employees, give them the opportunity to develop and contribute more and, inevitably, lead to your business’ success.

Here are five points that we wish employers knew about HR.

1. You are a business owner or leader; you are HR too

A leader or manager skilled in basic HR is a great asset to any business. Do you know the basics of employment law? Company policies? If yes, are you actively using this knowledge to help the business mitigate risk.

Do your employees know what your company policies are and have a basic understanding of them?

Do you have an office manager or administrator who has become your businesses go to for HR queries and fixes? Sound familiar?

It is worth exploring what training have you given them recently, as with all of the changes in employment legislation and government guidance, they may be feeling overwhelmed and unsure even when they are on the face of it doing an amazing job.

MAD-HR offers a training workshop specifically for those we call HR Heroes: the office manager, the PA, the partner of the business owner, the finance person, and those carrying out HR alongside another role and lacking the underpinning knowledge.

This is a four-part training course that has been designed to reflect new working arrangements and restrictions. Available online, the course can be accessed from your own place of work, wherever that may be.

2. People leave their managers, not their job

Exit interviews conducted show that, time and time again, the strongest influence on an employee leaving is the manager’s impact on the employee experience – that’s a lot of pressure!

Those same exit interviews show us that it is the small things that really matter. Many times, we have been told by employees that their manager rarely greets them, never says ‘thank you’, only talks to them when they have done something wrong, never praises their achievements, and so on…

Business owners, directors and managers are under enormous pressure and sometimes fail to pause, reflect and acknowledge. As you rush from a conference call to answering emails and thinking about your next appointment, take the time out to put down your phone and engage your team in a meaningful way. Why not schedule some time to place a call to your team, find out what is going on in their worlds, take a genuine interest? This is incredibly valuable to your team and you will all reap the benefit.

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3. You are the ambassador of recognition and rewards

Perhaps as a business you offer a rewards scheme. How often do you shout about it? Or is it the least visited page on your company intranet?

Challenge yourself to make the most of it; talk to your employees about it, share team achievements, catch people doing things well.

What if you do not have a rewards scheme? There is no time like the present to start! Even rewards as simple as a thank you email, a gift card for a coffee or lunch on you, are enough to help an employee feel valued. Plus, by recognising others’ achievements, it not only improves their morale, but it makes you feel good too.

4. You are a leader/manager 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

As HR professionals, we navigate and mediate a number of workplace concerns that can happen outside the workplace, but directly impact the business. Whether it’s the Christmas party, a few drinks after work, an off-site team building activity, what happens at these events rarely stays at the events. Having fun with your team is important, however, all the policies that dictate professional behaviour, protect against harassment and promote safety are likely to be relevant and need to be followed even when off-site.

Please celebrate and enjoy time with your team but remember to remain professional and lead by example.

5. There are times when you will need an HR professional

In our experience, every business needs effective HR support. Your people are your greatest resource; treating your employees fairly and providing them with opportunities to grow will help you achieve your ambitions and hit your business goals.

HR plays a significant role in developing positive business culture and improving employee engagement, productivity and operational efficiencies.

Do not wait until an employee comes to you raising a complaint, another team member has left during their probation, or your sickness wage bill is alarmingly high. Investing in great HR now will pay dividends, particularly when you are partnering with a champion of your business, your values and culture. A great HR consultant or business partner can be a cost effective way to get the skills and experience you need, when you need them. They will get to know your business and its ethos, demonstrate a return on investment and increase the knowledge and productivity of your employees.

If you would like to discuss how we can Make A Difference to your business through our provision of HR services, please get in touch on 01473 360160 or visit our contact page here.

You can view this original article and other content at Mad-hr.co.uk

Motivation in the Workplace

Written by Haze Carver on .

By Alex Sellers, Director of Learning and Development at Turning Factor

There are countless articles and books written on the subject of motivation, and in particular, how to get the most out of our employees in the workplace. It is fairly clear that there is no one set of step-by-step rules to encourage people to maintain 110% effort 100% of the time.

Motivation can be defined as energy. Consider for a moment how you feel when you are motivated or demotivated. Are you energised? Are you engaged? Or do you feel lacklustre, tired and stressed? If we have too many people in our teams and businesses who are consistently demotivated, then the impact can be dramatic and difficult to recover. It is well known that negativity breeds negativity – when people feel isolated, frustrated and disengaged, the natural inclination is to pull other people into that world to create justification for these negative feelings. The literal opposite is true of teams and organisations where there are high levels of motivation and engagement – there is a competitive advantage to having high levels of motivation present across your organisation.

What is clear is that beyond strategy, structure, traditional performance management and organisational objective setting lies a universal and underpinning truth.

This truth is that people in the workplace have a choice about how much and what kind of energy they put into the work they do. This is called ‘discretionary effort’ and that there are many factors that can influence this choice. It is our role, as leaders and managers, to understand these factors and, therefore, what influences people’s levels of motivation.

So what can we do as leaders to encourage our people to remain focussed and engaged in their activities? Studies show that people are more engaged in their work through the right balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors.

Let’s look for a second at Frederick Herzberg’s ‘Two Factor theory of Motivation’, a widely accepted theory, which he developed in 1959 following a study of over 200 professional workers at the Ford Motor Factory. Herzberg suggests that there are two principal and different areas of need in the workplace that affect satisfaction and motivation. His work follows on from Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ and is classified in the group of motivational studies that are based around human beings’ desire to satisfy a need.

Herzberg stated that there are two distinct areas that we as leaders and managers need to pay attention to. The first of these areas he called hygiene factors, and they include things like working conditions, relationships with our peers and supervisors and, interestingly, pay. He found that the perceived absence of any of these factors would create dissatisfaction and he also found that if these factors were sufficiently present (in the perception of the workers), they would not increase levels of motivation, they would simply prevent dissatisfaction. The second of these two areas he referred to as motivators and these included things like achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth and the nature of the work itself. He found that when these factors were sufficiently present, they could positively motivate and when they were not present, they could demotivate. The two factors exist separately and the factors lead to positve motivation are fundamentally different nature to those that lead to dissatisfaction.

The beauty in Herzberg’s theory lies not in the precise validity (which has been challenged due to the size of the control group) but in how we look at the things that are important to us and our teams in the workplace. Consider for a second how you feel or felt when you got a pay rise. I am sure there would have been the flush of excitement, the thoughts of what we could do with the money and the added security … but how long did these feelings last? Now consider for a second the deeper reward that a pay increase gives us. Surely the pay increase has more meaning when we understand that it is a recognition of our value to the organisation that has garnered this increase. Herzberg found that the two most important motivating factors were achievement and recognition. He also found that hygiene factors had to be present to avoid dissatisfaction, but could not in themselves alone increase levels of motivation.

So, when we are in our businesses and our teams perhaps it is not enough to simply address the working conditions, environment or get the exciting new gadget. We need to be paying very close attention to how we are challenging, enriching, supporting and recognising our individuals and teams for the work that they do.

To consistently encourage high levels of motivation we should be looking to empower, challenge and engage our team members and ensure that we support and recognise their hard work and efforts towards our mutual goals. As managers, we should be constantly on the look out for things that we think are motivating our team, but are actually hygiene factors. The point is that we have to work hard to encourage positive motivation and we have to have the courage and self-awareness to challenge our own preconceptions of what truly motivates an individual. Simply put, we have to invest our time and energy to see the results. But when we do, those results will be dramatic and inspiring.

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Three Simple Ways to Explain Your Start-Up Business Idea

Written by Haze Carver on .

Kathy Ennis, LittePiggy

“What do you do?” might seem like a simple question, but it can strike fear into the heart of the most experienced businessperson. So, I know how difficult it can be explaining your start-up business idea.

If you’re setting up an accountancy business, for example, how do you explain that you’re different from all the other accountants out there?

Added to the fact that you probably don’t want to sound cheesy or too salesy, you don’t want to talk for so long that people get bored, and you don’t want anyone to think you’re just rehearsing an impersonal pitch.

When you think about it like that it gets easier to see why the “What do you do?” question can feel like so scary.

But before you give up in despair, here’s some good news. It is possible to explain what your business does, in ways that are simple, fresh, and compelling.

Here are three ways I use to help my clients talk about their start-up business idea. There should be something here to help you get to grips with this too.

1. It’s Not All About You!

The usual question is, “What do you do?” 

That wording naturally puts the emphasis on you, which is why so many of us will automatically mumble something like, “I’m a life coach/yoga instructor/beauty therapist” (delete as applicable) in response.

But if you reframe the question into “What problems do you solve?” it becomes much easier to think of a heartfelt, original reply.

For example, if you’re an accountant, you could say “I help you pay less tax.” A yoga instructor could reply, “I help you become more bendy!”

The key is to think about the question from the perspective of your customer, rather than yourself. It’s all about outcomes for them; definitely not the inputs from you.

So, try crafting a snappy, one-sentence explanation that tells people how you’ll solve their problem. This will not only help to avoid your business being stereotyped, it’s also likely to start a much more interesting conversation!

Struggling for problem-solving ideas? My book, Five (and a Half) Steps to a Brilliant Brand, will help you create a unique Problem-Solving Statement for your business

2. A Strapline Saves Time

A strapline is a short, easy-to-remember phrase that helps people instantly recognise your business.

If you’re a start-up attempting to summarise your business idea the ‘strapline’ is a great place to start.

Here are a few, well known, examples:

  • Innocent – Little Tasty Drinks
  • HSBC – The World’s Local Bank
  • Carlsberg – Probably the Best Lager in the World
  • Co-Operative – Good with Food
  • Ronseal – It Does What It Says on the Tin
  • Apple – Think Differently
  • Nike – Just Do It

Your strapline should encapsulate your brand’s values and personality. Also, it shouldn’t contain any jargon or complicated phrases. 

And … only use humour if you KNOW your audience will find it funny.

A good start is to select the very best aspect of your product or service, then think about your ideal customer mood. 

For example, my own strapline, ‘Taking Your Business from Passion to Profit’ explains what I do, in a way that (I hope) generates interest and excitement!

3. The ‘Elevator Pitch’

An ‘elevator pitch’ is a clear introduction to who you are and what you offer. The idea is that it should be short enough for you to say to someone during a brief ride in a lift (elevator).

Your elevator pitch should be no more than 60 seconds long, and it should encourage people to ask questions… so please don’t attempt to cram everything into it (which is a relief, when you’ve only got a minute!)

I’m not a fan of the ‘pure’ version of the elevator pitch, to be honest. 

What I mean by this is the ‘learned-by-rote’ speech that is delivered in every situation – regardless of the audience. You need to have enough flexibility in what you want to say, and enough confidence in your product or service, to make it appropriate to a variety of situations.

Keep in mind, the purpose of your elevator pitch is to build interest and excite your audience. If they hear the same thing over and over again or, the content is not relevant to the situation you find yourself in, it can do more harm than good.

You don’t want to be remembered for the wrong reasons!

Use your explanation to outline the customer benefits of what you do, and include a call to action at the end.

You could encourage people to follow you on social media, visit your website, download a resource or maybe you could suggest a one-to-one coffee catch-up, instead? 

It’s well worth spending extra time and effort on describing your business well, and don’t worry if it takes a few tries and tweaks to get it right! 

Next Steps

If you’d like to talk through some ideas or road-test your elevator pitch, I’m always happy to listen. All you have to do is schedule a half-hour, complimentary Breakthrough Sessi

9 strategies for rapid business growth

Written by Haze Carver on .

Mark Williams Action Coach

We all want new customers right? Well, here’s our guide on how to rapidly increase your business growth through 9 highly effective, proven steps. This will assist you in generating new leads and successfully converting prospects into paying customers, therefore building momentum behind your business growth. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Build A Loyalty Ladder To Create “Raving Fans”

Loyal customers are ideal customers. These are the people who sometimes refer others to your business, which makes them especially valuable because they serve as a free form of advertisement. These are “raving fans” and they are a golden asset, and tremendous source of new customers. Read our blog on how to make your customers love you.

If a business makes a concerted effort to identify their loyal customers and earn their highest praises, they will almost certainly become cheerleaders for your business. This is an investment that pays off many times over, and it costs much less than traditional forms of marketing.

For a company to rise to this level of appeal, they must make an intentional, targeted effort to personalise each transaction and aspect of the customer relationship. Your investment in these special services should be calculated based upon the value of the business that raving fans bring to the company. Put another way, customer service is transformed so that it becomes an incentive and rewards programme tailored to individual clients. When other potential raving fans witness this kind of VIP treatment, they will similarly become inspired to tell others about the business in order to enjoy the exclusive benefits of this preferred customer relationship.

*Top Tip: Turn your local customers into raving fans! Birthday presents, surprise gifts aligned with times of the year – tell your customers you LOVE working with them on valentines day, celebrate International Women’s Day with your female customers, send Christmas presents….

Create A Referral Programme

Designing a referral programme that rewards customers for bringing others into the customer base follows on from our first point about building ‘raving fans’.

Referral rewards can be in the form of discounts, gifts, invitations to special events, or exclusive “closed door” sales events. A closed door sales event can have a particularly strong appeal with customers who desire a feeling of exclusivity.

A referral programme can borrow ideas and schemes from the raving fan concept, but it will be executed in a simpler and more general fashion. Many customers have friends, co-workers, and family members who require the same products and services, so referrals are a natural method of growing your customer base. By using existing customers as a resource for community outreach, you can easily turn one customer into five to build on your business growth.

*Top Tip: Offer your customers a discount code to share with their friends AND use themselves. Bloom & Wild have done this very effectively in the past where they have offered their customers a £10 voucher for referring a friend (who also gets a £10 discount).

Weed Out Bad Clients And Cater To The Best

Contrary to popular belief, it is sometimes advantageous to lose customers, especially if the business owner deliberately orchestrates the loss.

By prioritising the kinds of customers a business prefers to have, it makes it possible to eliminate those who create unnecessary headaches and detract from your overall bottom line. This allows you to better serve other, more valuable customers. Furthermore, it also allows a company to focus on attracting the kinds of desirable customers that contribute to most of their profits.

Shedding those who are a liability – the 5-10% of people who can never be satisfied – is actually a net positive in the long run. Identify who the best customers are by applying the “80-20” rule. This principle states that 80% of a company’s business comes from 20% of its customers. Treat those 20% of customers particularly well, and invest extra energy in satisfying their needs while extending service above and beyond the call of duty. They form the core of the business’ customer base, and by appealing to them it is possible to create more customers who are similarly lucrative.

As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. The needs of the best customers will always be the same as the needs of the best potential customers the organisation is trying to attract. Learn to cater to those needs and those kinds of clients, and you’ll watch your bottom line swell in size.

*Top tip: It can be hard to get your head around eliminating customers when they are paying you. Keep in mind the extra time these customers take up which you could be putting to good use in creating an even better service to your higher value customers.

Create Strategic Alliances

By partnering with other businesses with which there is a common customer demographic but no actual direct competition, a company can expand its customer base and rapidly grow quickly and easily. Customers who trust other businesses and have proven their loyalty to them will be inclined to follow their recommendations or perceived endorsements of an alliance partner.

Locate businesses that share the same philosophy, style, and corporate culture as your own. By creating good alliances, it is possible to come up with all sorts of creative campaigns to increase both business’ customer bases. Alliances are a form of networking that share the common goal of growing each other’s customer base, because two heads are often better than one.

*Top tip: Start with referrals to each other, promote each other to your database and ask your alliance to ghost write the copy for your email to save you time and ensure they are happy. Offer to do the same for your copy too. Share each other’s businesses on social media and perhaps even write a blog for each other. All easy steps you could take in the early days of your partnership.

Train And Support Your Staff

Employees feel valued when business owners invest in them to help them further their futures and enhance their careers and skills. As a result, they develop a sense of ownership and responsibility that can boost a business’s customer base dramatically. Read our blog on 6 ways to make great people love working for you here!

Employees come in contact with people every day, both inside the place of business and elsewhere. Anybody who walks through your doors is a potential customer, but it takes a certain level of professional skill to convert them into a raving fan. Alternatively, an employee might attend a church or school, where there are dozens of potential customers. By helping that employee learn the skills needed to promote your business to those people, it is possible to capture the people that have not heard of you previously.

Employees often profit from attending sales or marketing workshops, for instance. Representatives for major wineries often travel to Europe to learn more about wines, at the company’s expense. Hair salons send stylists to conventions to learn new tricks of the trade. Construction companies send carpenters and electricians to night school to get advanced certifications. These investments all pay off when those employees return and land lucrative new accounts, do a better job, or are able to charge customers a higher rate for more specialised service.

*Top tip: Invest in those who are already within the business, and it will pay off by bringing in new customers from outside the business, which will in turn aid your business growth.

Improve Your Conversion Rate From Leads To Customers

Keeping tabs on leads or sending contacts costly mailings can be a drain, not an asset. As leads and contacts are made, they need to be converted as soon as possible into customers. Otherwise, they can simply become a nuisance and a labour-intensive list of names.

Once someone becomes a “lukewarm lead”, it is important to warm them up so that they become a hot prospect and then a loyal customer. When someone walks into a party and doesn’t know anyone, they are inclined to turn around and leave. But a good host or hostess knows how to spot them, introduce them, show them around, and help them enjoy themselves. The same holds true for businesses that are converting strangers into loyal customers. Conversion requires getting to know the person, understanding their wants and needs, and then fulfilling those needs in a way that is mutually beneficial for both parties involved.

*Top Tip: Be helpful! Offering free advice and support is always a great way to warm up prospects and show the value you can add. Show them you care and don’t force a sales pitch. Sales isn’t about pushing your product or service to people who don’t want or need it. It’s about finding people who need what you do, and finding how you can help solve their problems!

Convert A Single Customer Into A Multiple Customer

One of the easiest ways to rapidly grow your business and increase your number of customers is to concentrate on those already in your database (we’ve spoken about this enough times in this article). This kind of conversion is often just as lucrative – but far less expensive – than trying to drum up business from cold-calling complete strangers.

For example, by up-selling or cross-selling different goods and services, profits can very easily be increased with little effort. Sell a customer a premium version of the standard item they are already buying, and it turns a mediocre customer into a top-tier one. Introduce them to other products in the lineup, or convince them to purchase other services, and it is just as good as landing a new customer.

*Top Tip: Get you know your customer’s needs. This will help in your up-sell as you don’t want to try and sell them something they have no use for.

Follow Up

Once a business manages to recruit customers, it is important to maintain consistency through on-going marketing campaigns that strengthen the relationship, expand upon it, and further respond to the wants and needs of those customers. The investments required to find, identify, and attract new customers are much greater than the energy and effort required to retain an existing customer who will reward the business with loyalty, referrals, and greater profits over multiple transactions.

Neglecting to follow through and preserve “top-of-the-mind awareness” is a common mistake made by business owners, and it can prove to be costly. Even the largest and most recognised brands in the world continue to run successful advertising campaigns designed to keep existing customers and add new ones to their database.

*Top tip: Email marketing is a great way to follow up with your customers. Providing regular helpful content in their inbox regularly will remind them of you when they are ready to buy again.

Test And Measure

At the final stage of the game, testing and measuring takes on a hugely significant role. Just as tests and measurements helped to identify successful marketing tactics, they also help to provide a quantifiable snapshot of results. Here are 5 main areas of the business which should be explored and monitored:

  1. The number of leads generated.
  2. The conversion rate that shows what percentage of leads converted into actual buying customers.
  3. The number of transactions completed by each of those new customers.
  4. The average cost of each sales transaction.
  5. The profit margins generated.

It is also really valuable to ask leads how and where they were contacted. This data is needed in order to identify and weed-out ineffective lead-generating strategies.

Once you have worked out what seems to be working make sure you focus on those winning initiatives. Recognising this success is vital so you can replicate this process again and again.

It’s also worth remembering that campaigns work in different periods of time. What didn’t work this year might work next year or during another cycle of the market or sales season.

*Top tip: Make sure you hold on to ideas that, while they may not have generated a huge amount of customers, did show some promising results by attracting useful leads. Those “runner up” strategies might produce paying customers at a slower rate too, so don’t write them off prematurely.

I hope this has given you lots of ideas on how to grow your business quickly and effectively. While it is tempting to grow your business through generating new leads, much of the secret to rapid business growth lies within your already established customer base. Spend time nurturing and looking after your valuable customers and you will see your numbers grow, grow, grow!

To find out more about how I may be able to help your Norfolk business thrive then please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 01603 559590 or email markwilliams@actioncoach.com – you can also get in touch through my contact form here. If you’d like to know a little more about my experience, expertise and accolades then click here.

Your Business Mindset is Essential for Successful Growth

Written by Haze Carver on .

Kathy Ennis

Thinking small means staying small. Discover how to harness your business mindset and increase your business success.

Have you ever wondered how some business owners leap effortlessly from working out of a small room in their house, to running a large, profit-generating company that employs teams of people? 

Meanwhile, you’ve been working all the hours under the sun, yet you’re still barely covering the monthly bills.

But those big, hotshot business owners aren’t necessarily any more talented than you.

They’ve just developed a focused, business mindset for success, that’s all.

Business Success? It’s All in Your Head

Though their businesses are different, there’s one thing all successful business owners have in common.

They focus on three key principles, which are:

Money: they understand exactly how their business makes money (and how much their business costs), so they can implement the right financial management systems.

Marketing: they create compelling and engaging marketing strategies, regularly analysing their results so they lead directly to more sales.

Mindset: they develop a resilient mental attitude that allows them to make decisions, solve problems, bounce back from obstacles, and manage their success.

Business mindset is the most powerful principle of all, because it underpins everything else you do in business.

So, here’s how to start developing a business success mindset that will help pave your way from micro to macro.

Your Business Mindset will Bring You Your Own Version of Success

What does “success” mean to you?

It could be endless wealth, with your own private island, celebrity friends, and a collection of vintage cars, or it could be simple security and comfort.

Defining your own version of success is important, because it’s only then that you can start planning towards it in a purposeful and measurable way.

For example, visualising the wealthy scenario may mean starting work on an ultimate goal of making millions, whereas security may mean earning enough for you to be mortgage-free.

Understand the Power of Your Brand

Many people immediately think “logo” when they think brand. 

But your logo is only a small outcome of your brand development.

Your brand is your unique personality – it’s everything people think, hear, see, and feel about your business. 

Essentially, you are operating in a crowded marketplace, your brand is the thing separates you from all the other businesses offering similar products and services. 

Build Trusted Business Relationships

Connections are not relationships. 

As an example, look at the number of followers your business has on each social media platform. How many of them do you know personally?

Developing deeper, more long-term relationships based on trust will help you succeed in business, because we are all naturally geared to help those people we know and like.

Which leads on to…

Give Without Expecting to Get

One of the most important tools in your business mindset kit is to offer your connections something of value first.

For example, instead of starting conversations by telling people what you do, ask what they need help with. 

Listen, share ideas, offer introductions… anything that you can see helps others out. You’ll develop a reputation based on trust and helpfulness, which is something everybody values in business.

(Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you won’t receive so much as a response in return, but when you do, the experience can be truly magical!)

Invest in Others’ Expertise

Whenever I am asked what is the missing link between a promising businessperson and a successful one, mentoring comes to mind

Sir Richard Branson

Investing in your future business success is essential. 

As a micro business owner, ask yourself why others should buy from you, if you’re not prepared to invest in support and expertise that elevates you above your competition.

No one person knows everything about business (and nor should they) which is why drawing upon others’ professional skills – just as they will draw upon yours – will help you on your way from micro to macro.

I may be biased, but mentoring, as Richard Branson mentions, is a great start! 

Someone who has been there, done that, and got the T-shirt to prove it will help you focus on your personal version of success, helping you develop the right business mindset while sidestepping all those classic business mistakes. 

You’ll also have the benefit of a brain to pick and an ear to listen when the going gets tough.

If you’d like to discuss what the power of mentoring could do for your business, why not book a complimentary, half-hour Breakthrough Session now?

The 6 Fatal Flaws of the Traditional Corporate Escape

Written by Haze Carver on .

Kathy Ennis

If you’re stuck in a job you hate or one you no longer enjoy and dream of the transition from employee to business owner, swapping it for the life of an entrepreneur can seem incredibly tempting.

Freedom. Control. Money! 

Not to mention the word “entrepreneur” itself, which sounds so independent and thrilling. 

It’s a word that tells others you’re not a corporate drone. You’re a go-getter who had the courage to leave a job or someone who has grasped redundancy by the collar, so you could make your business dreams come true.

But as someone who’s experienced life on both sides of the fence, I can tell you this: the grass isn’t always greener!

For one thing, becoming an entrepreneur means losing the security that comes with your regular salary, swapping it for all the risk that comes with going it alone.

Suddenly, there are no colleagues around to help you out when things get tough. You’re responsible for EVERYTHING, which can feel as though a rug has been swiftly pulled out from under you. 

That learning curve can feel incredibly steep (and it never seems to straighten out!)

Don’t get me wrong. Making the transition from employee to business owner – via a side-hustle – counts among the best, most exciting experiences of my life. 

But there have been some extremely rough times too, and I’d be lying if I said it was a journey everybody should take.

I’ve worked with lots of start-up founders over the years, which means I’ve seen the same mistakes (some of which I made myself) happen over and over again. 

So, here are six fatal flaws to avoid when transitioning from employee to business owner.

1. Lack of Knowledge and Focus on ‘Business’

You can be amazing at whatever you make or do.

But you’ll also need to have some understanding of the mechanics of business, if you’re going to make the transition from employee to business owner and become a successful entrepreneur.

That’s because running a business involves so much more than designing a logo, setting up a website, and opening a bank account. 

It’s a skillset that involves everything from planning and forecasting, to market research, selling, and ensuring you can attract (and keep!) customers.

RELATED POST: Business Skills: Time to Arm Yourself with the Skills for Success

2. Not Understanding How Long It Takes to Be Profitable

This might come as a surprise, but business isn’t just about making money, it’s also about spending it.

There will be costs associated with things like website design, hosting, and maintenance, marketing, memberships, admin assistance, and so on. 

And that’s before we move on to things like getting customers, which is not guaranteed. And, I hate to say it but it’s an unhappy fact, some people just won’t pay when they say they will (or at all).

Try not to be disheartened if the money doesn’t flow in immediately. Seth Godin once said:

It takes about six years of hard work to become an overnight success

And I can report that he’s right!

3. A Belief That Start-Up Life is More Fun than Challenging

Oh my goodness, I don’t want to sound like a prophet of doom – honestly. But, remember I said that the grass isn’t always greener?

So you think you’re frustrated and challenged at work now, just wait until you’re an entrepreneur!

The transition from employee to business owner can be compared to a rollercoaster ride, with the same exhilarating highs, and the same plummeting lows.

As for free time, what’s that? In the beginning, you’ll be so consumed with business tasks so things like binge-watching on Netflix and (paid) holidays will feel like dusty relics from the past.

Also bear in mind that no-one will pay you for being sick anymore, and you’ll only receive professional development if you can make time (and pay!) for it yourself.

But, would I ever go back to the 9 to 5, even with all these challenges (they never go away, just become easier to manage). No I would not!

4. Thinking “It’s All About Me”

It may not seem this way from the articles and stories you read about popular entrepreneurs, but there’s no room for ego in business.

Your customers must ALWAYS come first. 

That means dedicating yourself to providing the very best service or products possible – and that dedication has to override everything else.

You have one, very simple job as a business owner. It’s to make your customers love your products and services as much as you do. In order for that to happen they need to know, like and trust you. For that to happen, you need to be there for them.

The customer isn’t king (or queen); they aren’t always right. They do need to be nurtured and to feel the love.

5. Being Unprepared for Loneliness

When I started out on my own, I missed the office banter and ‘water cooler’ moments I’d taken for granted in my job.

It took me a while to get used to being on my own for a large part of each day (though not completely alone… my cats now know everything there is to know about running a business!)

You can combat loneliness by getting out and networking, joining a supportive group to chat with, and finding an experienced mentor to business bounce ideas off.

REALTED POST: Don’t Just Sit There! Start Getting More Business (Hint, You Need a Business Mentor)

6. Your Job vs. Your Life

The important thing to remember about having a job is, if you don’t like it, you can always swap it for another one. 

You can also take a holiday, a sabbatical, or a break whenever you choose.

But when you own a business, your life and your work become intertwined, and that’s not always the picture of sunshine and roses some people try to paint!

You could say that being an entrepreneur is like Marmite, in that some people try it and hate it, while others love it so much that they’d never go back to a 9-5.

And, you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. If you give business ‘a go’ and find it’s not for you, going back to work is absolutely OK. The most awful thing would be to feel trapped, or worse, a failure if it doesn’t work for you. You are no such thing. Like Marmite, it’s for some, but not for others.

Here’s An Important Question to Help You Transition from Employee to Business Owner

Has this list of flaws put you off becoming a business owner?

If it has, the lifestyle might not be for you… and that’s OK! There’s no shame in admitting that you’d rather be employed than self-employed.

But if you’re still raring to go for it, it’s time to think hard. 

Don’t view entrepreneurship as an escape from an unhappy job. It can be that, it is also much more. You will need to make some serious adjustment (as we’ve seen.) 

Why not start a side-hustle first, to test your ideas and give yourself a taste of start-up life before jumping in?

Make use of your corporate connections, and don’t burn your bridges by sticking two fingers up to the boss and walking out! 

You never know whose help you’ll end up needing along the way… and one day you may even want to go back.

In the meantime, get some more advice from someone who’s been there and done that. Book a half-hour, complimentary Breakthrough Session with me will help clarify your next – exciting! – steps.

Why Failure Will Teach You Much More than Success

Written by Haze Carver on .

Kathy Ennis

What happens when you fail at something? Do you brush yourself off and start over, or slink away in embarrassment, vowing never to try anything new again? If it’s the latter, you’re missing out on a valuable learning experience that every successful businessperson understands well – failure will teach you so much more then success ever will.

You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure

James Dyson

James Dyson is well-placed to talk about failure, since it took him over 5,000 attempts to create his famous Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner!

Other ‘famous failures’ include WD-40 (40 indicates the number of failed formulas that came before the one that worked).

Even the humble Post-It note took 12 years of development – and constant rejection – before it became the office essential it is now.

Did you know there’s even a Museum of Failure, that exhibits failed products and services from around the world? 

“Innovation needs failure” is the museum’s motto, and among its big-brand exhibits are Google Glass, what was intended to be an ‘improved taste’ Coke, and fat-free Pringles (a terrible idea if I ever heard one!)

Why Don’t We Talk About Failure More Often?

It’s a good question. 

We see, hear, and read so much about successful people and their brilliant businesses, that it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one who ever gets things wrong.

But many people are so scared of failure, that they don’t get started – so we never get to hear about their eventual success!

As someone who has failed many times in the past, my advice is that it’s always better to throw yourself in, and give your ideas a good go.  

OK, so you may not get a ‘perfect’ result. But while it’s hard to get things 100% right, it’s just as hard to get things 100% wrong. 

That means there will ALWAYS be something you can take away and learn from… and maybe even get right the next time.

And, of course, there are people like me – Business Mentors – whose role it is to help, support and nurture you. This means you can make those failures with the assurance that there will be someone there to catch you when you fall and put you back on your feet again.

RELATED POST: Give Me 10-Minutes and I’ll Give You the Truth About Business Mentoring

Why Failure Is the Best Teacher of Success

Failure gives us a reality check

When we fail, we’re reminded that nothing stays the same, and that we can never be in complete control. 

So, we have to be as open and responsive as we can, adjusting our plans when the unexpected happens (we all have recent experience of this!) and trusting that others – such as those we’ve outsourced work to – will do what they say.

Our greatest glory is not in falling, but in rising every time we fall

Rocky Balboa

Failure makes us value what we work for

If we have to work hard for something, we naturally value it more. 

That means when we try again in business, we know exactly why it’s so important to do things like attracting customers, developing strong relationships, or even getting to grips with podcasting. 

We understand more about what we’re striving for.

Failure teaches us how to survive and grow

I can clearly remember all my lowest points, in my life and in my business.

While they were horrendous at the time, they also helped me realise that nothing was more important than getting myself back on track. 

To do that, I had to face everything that had gone wrong, so I could learn from it all.

I call this realisation ‘finding your imperative’. It’s the ‘thing’ that makes you do whatever you have to do, almost instinctively.

And in my experience, nothing is more effective at helping you find your imperative than failure!

We don’t start learning until we have failed

People telling us that “the sky’s the limit”, and “anything’s possible”, and “follow these tips for success” is all well and good.

But no advice really takes form until the stuff hits the fan!

That’s when we tend to realise the difference between knowing and owning… because unless we ‘own’ whatever we need to do, we probably won’t do it!

Failure brings a world of opportunity

Failure means we’ve been given the chance to take stock, pause, then take a deep breath and start again.

Nine times out of ten, if we’ve honestly learned from failure, we’ll come back bigger, better, and bolder than we were before.

Failure has taught me to question my assumptions, do different, more successful things, and meet amazing people who have brought so much to my business, and to me personally.

Failure translates into courage

One of my core values is ‘courageous’.

Everyone who starts a business has to have courage, because as we know, there are no guarantees of success! 

I was no different, starting a business aged 40, armed with nothing but enthusiasm and what I hoped was a good idea.

Interestingly, failure can even give us a courageous boost at times, since it teaches us how powerful and resilient we can be, both as people and as business owners.

Failure encourages inner strength

Failure teaches a positive mental attitude, as we realise that we can look at things with a ‘glass half empty’ or a ‘glass half full’ approach! 

(One approach is much more appealing to customers than the other… can you guess which?)

It helps to remember things like this when you feel like giving up – and we all have days like that.

Remember that it’s a positive step to admit you need help, too, so don’t suffer in silence if that feeling of not wanting to get out of bed persists.

Failure reveals your true support network

Surrounding yourself with positive people is much better for you than spending time with people who are always complaining, or talking about themselves.

Think pipes versus drains! People fall into two categories: pipes or drains.

Water pipes bring us fresh water and allow us to feel refreshed; there are people like that. On the other hand, drains carry waste and effluent; there are people like that. So, question. Which type of people do you think you should surround yourself with – especially if failure is something you fear.

With ‘pipe’ people around you, when you need help, you can feel confident that you’ll receive it… so there’s no need to keep putting a brave face on.

Please Don’t Be Afraid to Fail!

As we’ve seen, the biggest, brightest, and best cite failure as the very thing that propelled them towards the success they enjoy now.

So why not join their ranks, by shouting, “come on failure, do your worst!”

If you could do with some help turning failure into success, or you want to understand how you can learn from your experiences, why not get in touch? 

As a business mentor who’s seen it, done it, and worn the T-shirt, I can help motivate you to become even better than you think you can be.

Understanding your Customers: Understanding your market

Written by Haze Carver on .

Lloyds Bank Academy

Your market is the area or industry your organisation is operating in. It’s your field, your customers, your competitors. You can see then, how understanding your market is essential if you’re going to build a successful organisation. Finding out what your audience really wants will help you improve your products and services to meet their needs. By discovering how your competitors work, you can find ways to improve on your products and services to give your organisation an advantage.

Carrying out research on your market will allow you to create effective advertising and find new ideas for your products and services. It will also help you to understand the competition you face and help you to price competitively.

In this lesson, we will review the different types of market research and why it’s important for you and your organisation.

KEY LEARNINGS

  • What market awareness is
  • The different types of research you can carry out
  • Survey creation and research methods

Download the Guide here

Chapter 1

Levels of market research

Market Awareness

Gaining market awareness can be done in a number of ways. From online research, reading newspapers and other publications, speaking to friends and employees, talking with your customers, analysing your competitors’ business approach, analysing sales, to taking a note of trends happening in your business.

Informal research

This kind of research typically describes the gathering of information and opinions through conversation, surveys or more basic research techniques. For example, surveying of customers and potential customers to gain their feedback on a regular basis or reading a book on your organisation’s market. We’ll go into more detail in section 3.

Carl used informal research to set up ‘The Badger, a successful wine bar and craft ale house. He used Facebook to gain customer feedback and identified a real gap in the market, allowing him to build his business to fill it.

Formal research

In contrast with informal research, this research would be carefully planned and carried out, probably by a professional, to support a key organisational project or decision. The researcher should have a clear brief, budget and timescale.

View Chapter 2 here Improving your market awareness

Lessons for life, for businesses and for charities

Whether you want to improve your career or give your business or charity a boost, the Academy has lessons and skills training for you.

Watch the introduction video to find out how Lloyds bank Academy is helping people learn digital skills

Browse Lessons for Life Browse Lessons for Business Browse Lessons for Charity

How to make sure you’re home for dinner – time mastery for business owners

Written by Haze Carver on .

Mark Williams Action Coach

So you work for yourself. You’re either a director or you’re self employed – it doesn’t really matter which. You work 40+ hours a week and you rarely make it home by 6pm. But you wish you could. You wish you didn’t have to work so much and you realise something needs to change.

This is something which is felt by so many business owners. You leave your secure job in search of freedom, more money, more time and the ability to create your own path (just some of the reasons atleast), but more often of not business owners gravitate towards the hamster wheel, racing from one job to the next with little thought about why you went into business in the first place.

The clock doesn’t stop. You can’t magic more time out of thin air, but what you can do is master yourself through managing your tasks, your goals and your productivity in order to create more time to do the most important tasks to drive your business forward and achieve the results you want to see. The results you always thought you would achieve, but you’ve never ‘got around’ to working on.

Here are our top 6 ways on how to make sure you’re back for dinner:
  1. Start at the end and work backwards – How many hours a day do you want invest in your business and at what points during the day do you want to invest them? Do you work best at particular times in the day or do you want to be the one to pick your children up from school? Through working out what the end game is you can then work towards that and create plans in order to achieve your goals.
  2. Think about your lunch break. Hands up if you’re a ‘grab and go’ type. Sandwich at the desk whilst replying to emails with one hand kinda business owner? We’ve all done it. However, through taking time out at lunch time and enjoying your 30minutes-hour off you come back sharp and motivated, which lasts through the afternoon. It was well reported earlier in the year that Boris Johnson takes a short post-lunch nap, and whilst this was firmly rebutted by Downing Street it sparked a debate about the health benefits of napping. According to NASA and a study from Harvard Medical School napping can help with information processing, aid memory formation, regulate emotions, support the immune system and increase alertness. Not bad. It is also widely reported that napping is not for everyone and that some may find it counterproductive. If napping works for you then this may be something to consider in order to keep as focused and productive during your working hours.
  3. Work out what your top time wasters are. Are they your staff? Is it notifications on your phone? Once you know where you are most unproductive it’s time to tackle those areas. Social media and notifications can be easier to handle, however if you have staff who come to your regularly with issues or questions then this is something which you can manage more effectively. Could your staff need more autonomy and confidence to make decisions for themselves? Or perhaps they need some more in-depth training and support to get comfortable with their role? Through increasing their confidence you will automatically find that they come to you less and you therefore have more time to do the important jobs.
  4. Make a list of routine tasks – hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. Then prioritise these tasks. Once you know what needs to be done and in what order, you can create a default diary for each week so you know how to spend your time each day. This will sharpen up your focus and enable to you work towards your goals more effectively. A great idea is to then give your default diary to someone else – perhaps your PA. This will hold you accountable and breed productivity.
  5. Outsource or delegate. Once you have created your default diary you may like to work out where the majority of your business comes from and the work you need to do to attract it. Can you easily increase sales through being more productive in this area? If so then it may make sense to outsource or delegate jobs which you are doing that others can take charge of. This will free your time up to focus on the really important areas. As long as the cost of delegation doesn’t outweigh the new opportunities then it’s a no brainer.
  6. Providing employees with the right tools and equipment is important so they can perform their duties efficiently and on time. There’s nothing more counterproductive than spending time waiting for paperwork to print because you haven’t got a fast printing device. High-quality, modern programs and equipment make a massive difference, not only to the workforce but also to how your company is perceived.

Being proactive rather than reactive in business is vital for increased productivity. Goals, focus, managing staff effectively, ensuring the correct procedures and equipment are in place and knowing when to delegate are all key elements in ensuring you can make the best use of your time in order to stop working 40 hour weeks and to make it home in time for tea!

Good luck! If you need any help with how to implement any of the above into your business then I’m always here to chat.

To find out more about how I may be able to help your Norfolk business thrive then please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 01603 559590 or email markwilliams@actioncoach.com – you can also get in touch through my contact form here. If you’d like to know a little more about my experience, expertise and accolades then click here.

Motivation in the Workplace

Written by Haze Carver on .

By Alex Sellers, Director of Learning and Development at Turning Factor

There are countless articles and books written on the subject of motivation, and in particular, how to get the most out of our employees in the workplace. It is fairly clear that there is no one set of step-by-step rules to encourage people to maintain 110% effort 100% of the time.

Motivation can be defined as energy. Consider for a moment how you feel when you are motivated or demotivated. Are you energised? Are you engaged? Or do you feel lacklustre, tired and stressed? If we have too many people in our teams and businesses who are consistently demotivated, then the impact can be dramatic and difficult to recover. It is well known that negativity breeds negativity – when people feel isolated, frustrated and disengaged, the natural inclination is to pull other people into that world to create justification for these negative feelings. The literal opposite is true of teams and organisations where there are high levels of motivation and engagement – there is a competitive advantage to having high levels of motivation present across your organisation.

What is clear is that beyond strategy, structure, traditional performance management and organisational objective setting lies a universal and underpinning truth.

This truth is that people in the workplace have a choice about how much and what kind of energy they put into the work they do. This is called ‘discretionary effort’ and that there are many factors that can influence this choice. It is our role, as leaders and managers, to understand these factors and, therefore, what influences people’s levels of motivation.

So what can we do as leaders to encourage our people to remain focussed and engaged in their activities? Studies show that people are more engaged in their work through the right balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors.

Let’s look for a second at Frederick Herzberg’s ‘Two Factor theory of Motivation’, a widely accepted theory, which he developed in 1959 following a study of over 200 professional workers at the Ford Motor Factory. Herzberg suggests that there are two principal and different areas of need in the workplace that affect satisfaction and motivation. His work follows on from Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ and is classified in the group of motivational studies that are based around human beings’ desire to satisfy a need.

Herzberg stated that there are two distinct areas that we as leaders and managers need to pay attention to. The first of these areas he called hygiene factors, and they include things like working conditions, relationships with our peers and supervisors and, interestingly, pay. He found that the perceived absence of any of these factors would create dissatisfaction and he also found that if these factors were sufficiently present (in the perception of the workers), they would not increase levels of motivation, they would simply prevent dissatisfaction. The second of these two areas he referred to as motivators and these included things like achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth and the nature of the work itself. He found that when these factors were sufficiently present, they could positively motivate and when they were not present, they could demotivate. The two factors exist separately and the factors lead to positve motivation are fundamentally different nature to those that lead to dissatisfaction.

The beauty in Herzberg’s theory lies not in the precise validity (which has been challenged due to the size of the control group) but in how we look at the things that are important to us and our teams in the workplace. Consider for a second how you feel or felt when you got a pay rise. I am sure there would have been the flush of excitement, the thoughts of what we could do with the money and the added security … but how long did these feelings last? Now consider for a second the deeper reward that a pay increase gives us. Surely the pay increase has more meaning when we understand that it is a recognition of our value to the organisation that has garnered this increase. Herzberg found that the two most important motivating factors were achievement and recognition. He also found that hygiene factors had to be present to avoid dissatisfaction, but could not in themselves alone increase levels of motivation.

So, when we are in our businesses and our teams perhaps it is not enough to simply address the working conditions, environment or get the exciting new gadget. We need to be paying very close attention to how we are challenging, enriching, supporting and recognising our individuals and teams for the work that they do.

To consistently encourage high levels of motivation we should be looking to empower, challenge and engage our team members and ensure that we support and recognise their hard work and efforts towards our mutual goals. As managers, we should be constantly on the look out for things that we think are motivating our team, but are actually hygiene factors. The point is that we have to work hard to encourage positive motivation and we have to have the courage and self-awareness to challenge our own preconceptions of what truly motivates an individual. Simply put, we have to invest our time and energy to see the results. But when we do, those results will be dramatic and inspiring.

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