So why was the money spent in the first instance? Common excuses are it is a branding exercise, or we do not have the technology like web based CRM software in place. In this instance lack of technology or branding is no excuse to waste money or not measure your marketing campaigns. When advertising in offline medium like the Yellow Pages, the action required is a phone call. With all advertising regardless if it is off or online, it should be measured. Marketing dollars are limited, so I want you share with you the easiest way to measure your marketing efforts.

You measure your phone calls by having a report automatically made available for you on a monthly basis. For around $25.00 per month you can register a 1300 number and have it routed to your local business number. The benefits are twofold.

First, customers are more likely to pick up the phone and call because it’s cheaper to just make a phone call. Rates are minimal, and should just be factored into the cost per client. If you are concerned about this cost then chances are you are not measuring you marketing activities or may not appreciate the cost per lead. If the objective is to receive phone calls, then at least register a 1300 number. For Australian businesses check out ’1300 Numbers Australia’ and ‘Simple 1300 Numbers’.

The second benefit is you have monthly reporting to work out your cost per lead. The same phone still rings, but the difference is each call redirect is being recorded for reporting. Your report will show you how many people call and usually the duration. For example if you spend $5,000 per year, and you receive 2 phone calls per month, your cost per lead would be $208.

Only by measuring your marketing campaigns can you decide if your marketing spend is being used in the most appropriate manner. There is no viable excuse to not measuring your marketing outcomes. Period.

Marketing for the mere sake of branding is no reason to not measure the outcome. In the tough times many business wind back their marketing spend. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know exactly how your marketing campaigns are affecting your business? Cutting back due to the economy is disaster in the making. By measuring your marketing outcomes it will allow you to cut back on areas that are ineffective.

Many of us drive within the legal speed limit (or just slightly above it) only because we fear being caught and punished. Without that downside risk many would establish a habitual cruising speed above the current legal limit, with potentially catastrophic consequences for all parties. So strong detection systems, rules and their enforcement are a natural part of enjoying the benefits of a law-abiding society.

In the same vein, employers have a moral responsibility to put in place “strong detection systems, rules and enforcement” when placing assets (whether cash, stock or services) within reach of their employees – some of whom may live in a state of continual financial challenge.

It’s just not fair to tempt a person beyond a certain point and, in the context of a business, it’s just plain dumb to do so! Why? Because of the loss of assets? No, because the failure to be able to accurately identify a thief places everyone under suspicion, erodes team spirit and confidence and, often, will paralyse a business.

The damage to the business usually goes well beyond the value of the stolen goods.

The Cost

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that employees are responsible for upwards of 60% of all theft suffered by small and medium businesses, and yet it is the easiest theft to manage.

As one of our clients has said, “I had to take a $20,000 hit in one of my retail sites before I realised how guilty I was of helping people to steal from me. It was a lesson well worth learning!”

21 Tips

Below we’ve assembled 21 tips for reducing employee theft, in many instances simply by reducing the temptation to cross the line. While many of these may appear to relate to a retail context, you will find they also have parallels in just about any type of business. We commend them to you.

1. Set an example of honesty yourself. As a leader of people, it is essential that you demonstrate what you expect of them.It should go without saying that employers or managers who cut corners; lie about facts, products or services; who don’t treat Customers, suppliers or staff fairly, are inviting those below them to follow suit.Less obvious may be the need to demonstrate honesty in matters such as drawing (your rightful) cash from the business – don’t do so in a casual fashion that would look exactly the same as a staff member’s stealing it! Instead, follow process. Use the petty cash system and lodge a docket; cash a cheque so that it’s recorded; or draw cash from an ATM. If you take stock, book it against a register or “sell” it to yourself against a loan or capital account so that staff understand that it is accounted for.Don’t do anything, yourself, that would compromise the accountability for inflowing cash (such as pulling cash from the till for lunch), but instead be the first person to respect and abide by the systems. Lead by example.
2. Background check everyone! So many smaller business operators are so inherently honest themselves that they find it hard to think the worst of anyone. They take people at face value, and don’t check references or prior employment history. It doesn’t work.Background check every intending employee as a matter of course.Gain their written permission to do so as a condition of their employment application employment.When checking their application, be wary of gaps in employment history; absence of references from past employers; or refusal by a past employer or referee to provide a reference or further detail when requested. If you strike the latter case, develop some questions that would enable you to infer a problem without requiring the other party to cross the line of the Privacy Laws.

   If doubts emerge, and yet the person you are considering looks to offer a lot, it’s probably time to engage an agency or trained investigator with access to police and other sources. It may involve a fee, but that fee will be miniscule in comparison to the ultimate cost of making a poor hiring decision.

   Let new applicants know some of the detail of the processes to which they are required to agree as a condition of their application, and don’t be surprised when some don’t proceed. Your process is already working – and this step cost nothing!

3. Create water-tight security systems. It is the employer’s responsibility to create systems that isolate and assign accountability so that the weak are not tempted and the guilty can be readily identified. To do less is to unfairly tempt people who, in other circumstances would act within the rules; and to create uncertainty in your own mind about who is innocent and who is guilty.Part of the collateral damage of not doing so is that good staff will generally not hang around if they are not trusted – so you lose them because of a lack of system and the misdeeds of a bad apple. That leaves you employing just . . . ?Our security specialists tell us that people who are likely to steal tend to deliberately choose employers whom they assess to be soft targets.Scary thought, huh?
4. Run your systems regularly. Make all staff aware of your security systems. Make it clear that there are the systems they know about, and the behind the scenes cross checks, reconciliation systems and auditing processes that will pick up any irregularity immediately.Having done so, you had better administer those systems, carry out those reconciliations and cross checks, and regularly query any discrepancies. The mere fact that you routinely ask for explanations of anything that is not a 100% fit with the systems confirms to all parties that you are doing your job and that the systems are in play.This last step is no different to your passing a police patrol car on the highway – a passive reinforcement that driving within the limit and abiding by the law is a good thing to be doing right now, and at all other times, even when you don’t see the officer.
5. Pay good wages. Pay peanuts and you’re inviting hungry monkeys to rifle your peanut jar!If you employ good staff but are not making sufficient profits to pay them above the market, you have to ask yourself whether you are doing your own job well enough (ask us how a Business Improvement Specialist can make the difference!)People have an innate sense of fairness and, if you are not paying them what they feel they are worth, they may be tempted to “top it up” from within the business. Much better if you take the initiative in this area than to tacitly invite them to do so.Besides, staff know when they are stealing and lose respect for themselves in doing so – but they also lose respect for you. How can you expect to command a good result in those circumstances?
6. Involve and educate your staff. Be prepared to discuss everything, from profit to wages and everything in between, with your staff.Invite their input. Make them part of a solution; that way, they can’t be part of the problem! If they sense that you value their input they will be more likely to align with you, and less likely to seek to “balance the books” or seek a “top up” outside of the system.As part of your staff education, ensure that all staff understand just what expenses have to be met from the seemingly huge inflow of cash from sales. Many less sophisticated staff members think you get to take it all home, forgetting the mountain of bills that you owe suppliers for stock, staff for wages and superannuation, and other providers for the products and services that run the business. If staff realise how delicate and thin profits are, they will feel a greater sense of balance between their pay packet and your slice of the takings.
7. Don’t make it easy. Ensure that you have simple rules in place about how stock and other valuables (including stationery, equipment and consumables) are to be handled, and where they are not to be taken – for example, to staff areas, change rooms, lunch room or outside of the premises.These rules may include, in a retail context, excluding employee bags from counters or other areas where small stock and other valuable items are stored; signing for any equipment or assets that are removed off site; etc.
8. Have clear, tight refund, exchange and warranty policies. Make sure there is a clear and watertight paper-trail for extraordinary movements of money and stock such as occur when purchases are refunded, goods are exchanged or other goods or services are provided for lower or no payment.
9. Offer employee discounts. It’s an easy matter for you to pass goods and services to your employees at a discount and the real cost is neglible – in fact there may still be a small direct profit in doing so.You may also be able to extend this to providing access to a range of goods provided by your suppliers that you don’t normally trade in, and even discounted access to the products and services of some of you business clients.Here you are demonstrating care for your team, passing a financial advantage and adding value associated with the job, all of which encourage fairness to your in your team.
10. Rotate responsibility for running and auditing your security systems. The stories of the faithful bookkeeper who hasn’t taken a holiday in 10 years, being found guilty of embezzling a million dollars are legion! They didn’t take holidays because, if they did and some else did the books in their absence, their manipulation of the system would have been discovered!So, mix rosters, rotate responsibilities, and enforce holidays.
11. Don’t encourage collusion. When rostering staff for duty, don’t allow friends to consistently work with friends; instead contribute to building a broader network of relationships across your team while also increasing your security by rotating partners particularly when one party is collecting and another checking money, stock or other valuables.
12. Spot check. Randomly select a day in which you check every aspect of the value flow within your business. Cross check receipts against takings; invoices against receipts; stock movements against sales.Instruct that all items across the point of sale will be scanned rather than hot keyed on one shift or day, to check for practices such as selling a high value item to friends by keying it as a lower value item.This not only keeps you on your guard, but lets staff know that you are monitoring and enforcing the systems (the police car parked behind the billboard again!)
13. Spend time in the trenches with the troops. The practice of having management periodically (randomly) spending time at the coalface of the business, in the trenches with the troops, is invaluable from on number of counts:

    a. It provides management with an up-close view of the workings of the systems.
    b. It provides direct contact with Customers and direct observation of staff’s interaction with Customers.
    c. It uncovers inadvertent or deliberate abuse of steps in the accountability systems.

    Any one of these counts make this practice worthwhile. All in combination make it just good business!

14. Balance cash in the middle of the day. Occasionally balance every till and cash holder in the place in the middle of the day, rather than at the end of it. The break in routine demonstrates that you are actively checking the systems, and broken routines make (internal and external) thieves nervous.That’s good for the business.
15. Stock take cyclically. Most stock is monitored by computer these days (or should be, since it’s so easy), so there is little justification for doing a massive stock take once a year.Instead, break stock into logical categories or lots and stock take 8% every month (all stock will be checked once in the course of a year), or 1% of stock every day (the equivalent 2.5 full stocks a year!)
16. Don’t allow staff to ring up their own purchases. Instead they – and you – follow due process, walk around the front of the business, and have another staff member run the sale.
17. Don’t permit employees to sell to their friends or family. Same rule as above – follow the processes.
18. Seek expert theft prevention training and advice. There are many business security experts out there (one of our acquaintance, Phoenix Global, is headed by an extremely competent former police detective and offers a wide range of services to business clients – and has an excellent newsletter!)When it comes to the collateral damage done to morale and team confidence, theft prevention is one area where there is no doubt that “a gram of prevention is worth a kilo of cure”!
19. Popularity is not a plus! When it comes to identifying the guilty party in cases of employee theft, there is strong anecdotal evidence that the more popular the employee the more likely they are to be the one stealing from you.You can often double that rule when the employee has invested a lot of time into being popular with you or their manager, without the same attention to their relationship with other team members. Besides, other staff may smell a rat, and resist their advances, but managers, being one step or move removed from the action, are an easier (and more useful) mark.
20. Share your suspicions. If you suspect you have a theft problem, take all of your team into your confidence and ask for their help. 97% of people are inherently honest, and that 97% will work with you to monitor any situation in which you suspect foul play.At best it may uncover evidence of a thief; at worst it may discourage one from trying, or minimise their activities.
21. Install passive security systems and use them. The advent of cost-effective surveillance systems makes close circuit TV monitoring of high risk areas logical. If you do install such systems, seek legal advice to ensure you are within privacy guidelines, and then monitor the output, and make it obvious to staff – and other visitors to your business – that you do.Don’t be one of those who invest in the money in hardware but won’t invest the time into using it.

A Sobering Tale

More than 30 years ago a massive case of employee theft was reported by one major US company – their relatively junior Mail Clerk had embezzled more than $1,000,000 from their Petty Cash Fund!

Now, you might ask, “$1 million! From petty cash? But how?!”. Well, the circumstances that preceded it demonstrate just how easy it is to fall behind the times, get out of touch with evolving needs and let a gap open in your defences – in much the same way that we all face evolving gaps in our business defences these days along the technology frontier.

But, back to our Mail Clerk: in the 70’s, when snail mail was the norm, it had traditionally been managed by drawing small amounts of cash from a petty cash tin, taking it to the post office, buying stamps (or, if you were really sophisticated, having your franking machine charged), sticking them on envelopes, putting the postage purchase receipt into the petty cash tin to balance the funds, and recording the mailing. Transactions were then recorded in the Petty Cash Register, totalled, a reimbursement cheque requisitioned from the accountant, and the cycle repeated.

Because of the menial nature of mail and the relatively low values it involved, balancing the Petty Cash Register was usually assigned to a junior staff member and was audited, often very cursorily once a year, by the accountant around the end of a financial year. In the meantime, throughout the year, petty cash reimbursement cheques were issued almost as a matter of course, and without auditing or control.

The company we are talking about here underwent rapid growth, acquired a number of other companies and, as an economy measure, brought all of their mail handling into one location and, as tradition would have it, placed it under the control of a junior Mail Clerk. The gap opened wide in this case because the consolidated mail bill was now more than $1,000,000 a month and, yes, Petty Cash reimbursements were issued as a matter of course against a junior employee’s unchecked requisition.

The temptation proved too much and the young staff member fell victim to it – next thing you know, several million dollars had gone missing from petty cash!!!

Still, that was “the old days” and you can thank your lucky stars that that can’t happen in your business in this electronic era . . . . . . or could it?

It’s sobering to consider the level of electronic fraud that the banks and credit card companies currently tolerate as “the cost of doing business”, in much the same way as your local council might accept a small percentage of leakage from their water mains. Both parties view the level as “not worth fixing.” In the Sydney area, the council’s losses are estimated at around 30% of total water inflow; in the banking and credit community it’s nowhere near as high – only .5% – but, then again, that’s $25 billion a year world wide.

I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it!

Interesting Link: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/60/executiveSummary.html

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

We had some impassioned debate, here in the office, about the sensitivities of those honest people and the potential for offending the innocent, but in the end my take was that if you are a law-abiding motorist, then discussions about the dangers of speeding, and the deployment of patrol cars and speed cameras to trap and punish speeders will simply reinforce the wisdom of your good judgement in choosing to obey the law.

The same goes for honesty at work, so here goes . . . .

Is It Fair To Tempt Your Staff To Steal?

There are few events that can occur that cause more wide-spread angst within a business than when an employee steps across the line and steals from the business; it’s the loss of faith rather than the loss of money that hits home hard.

One of our relatively new clients with a multi-site operation recently experienced a case in which two lots of shift takings from one of the sites never made it to the bank. This fact was picked up when doing a bank reconciliation 48 hours after the event and the initial assumption was that “the bank has messed up”, and a request for a trace on the funds was lodged.

The bank took their time, during which a third banking went astray, and our Client faced the uncomfortable uncertainty of not knowing whether they (the bank) had a major problem – or he did! With $2,000 down, the bank finally came back to say, “No, it’s at your end”, confirming the Client’s worst fears – he had a rat in the ranks.

The problem was complicated by the fact that he had employed two new staff members who were in alternating shifts – one would prepare the banking at close of business and the other would bank it at opening the following day, and vice versa the next – compounded by the fact that in two of the instances, deposits from one shift were held over to the next.

Golden Rule for Money

It is a basic management tenet that systems for the control of money should be so rigorous that they would avoid tempting a weak soul and would actively discourage all but the most determined thief from even trying to circumvent them.

The money control “system” such as it was in this case, had holes in it you could drive an armoured truck through – and someone obviously had, with $2,000 loaded into the back!

What followed was a most unpleasant three weeks for all concerned.

Both staff members were within their probation periods, and it would have been easy enough to dismiss them but that would have meant punishing the innocent to get to the guilty – something that my very fair-minded Client was averse to doing. But, he was equally stressed by the knowledge that he was having to protect himself against – while continuing to pay – a thief.

He was also extremely uncomfortable in the knowledge that he was tarring both the innocent and the guilty party with the same brush in terms of his attitude and demeanour – but who was which?

After The Horse Had Bolted

Belatedly – though predictably – the next few coaching sessions included designing a money management system that would suit his somewhat fluid circumstances – retail, overlapping shifts, absence of night banking facilities, remote site, split roles.

I calculated we spend around 70% of three sessions dealing with plugging this leak, and trying to identify the guilty party; that he spent probably 20 hours on managing the issue; and that he invested more than $1,000 in bringing in a fraud expert (an ex-detective of our acquaintance who specialises in security) to attempt to confirm his suspicions.

The latter was a good investment in that the specialist delivered a strong circumstantial case which, when viewed in the context of the behaviour and circumstances of the staff members, and our Client’s suspicions, singled out one party as the culprit. But, there was insufficient proof to involve the police.

A decision was made and the business and remaining team are in the process of healing the wounds. It will take a while, as it impacted strongly and negatively across the entire team. The monetary cost was probably around $,5000 but the loss of confidence and the negative impact on what had previously been a tight-knit team, will probably lead to far more!

Post Mortem

The Dalai Lama has said, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson”. So, what lessons emerged from this event?

1. 
   Background check your intending employees. So many smaller business operators are good souls who find it hard to think the worst of anyone, take people at face value, and don’t check prior employment history. In this case, it emerged that there had been “a prior incident in which the police were involved”. The time to know that is before making an offer of employment.
2. Create water-tight security systems. It is the employer’s responsibility to create systems that isolate and assign accountability so that the weak are not tempted and the guilty can be readily identified. To do less is to unfairly tempt people who, in other circumstances would act within the rules; and to create uncertainty in your own mind about who is innocent and who is guilty. Good staff will generally not hang around if they are not trusted – so you lose them because of a lack of system and the misdeeds of a bad apple. That leaves you employing . . . ? (Scary thought, huh?)
3. Run your systems regularly. In the case in point, it took three thefts and bank verification days later before our Client confirmed that it was his problem. That’s two thefts too many. That’s dependence on someone else to look after his money.
4. Set a strong positive example. Be honest in all of your dealings with Customers and staff. Bosses who act in any way dishonestly – whether by misrepresenting goods or services, over-charging, cutting corners on quality, cheating on tax or bending the rules to exploit others – are setting a strong, negative example for others in their team, and can provide the last bit of justification needed by someone who decides to steal from the business.

Robin Hood made it fashionable to steal from those who had acquired their wealth dishonestly – and someone who decides to be dishonest, but still needs to live with themselves, can be extremely creative about why it’s alright to do so this time.

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

Lessons from the Geese, was written in 1972 by Dr Robert McNeish of Baltimore, a science teacher who was intrigued by the behaviour of geese and first wrote a piece consisting of five facts about geese behaviour followed by five lessons that could be drawn from that behaviour, for a sermon he delivered in his church.

You might like to use the following template, based on the good doctor’s original work (and some of the embellishments of the other people who have taken it up), as a team building exercise within your business (though, with a bit of a twist, it can be made to work for any group).

Further Research

If you are truly intrigued by this exercise, you might like to take advantage of the research done by Sue Widemark: http://suewidemark.com/lessonsgeese.htm

Exercise Directions

(You will gain from doing this alone – but you’ll gain a lot more from doing it in a group.)

Working in a group, you might consider having each member follow each of the steps below alone, then repeat the exercise as a group activity to draw together all of the insights and to distil the “essential lessons” from each behaviour:

1. Read each fact about geese behaviour, then reflect upon what lessons that behaviour might hold for you and your team.
2. Use the template below to catch your thoughts about the lessons you discern in each fact.
3. Once you feel you have exhausted the lessons, turn to the “stock lesson” for this behaviour provided below, then reconsider your own insights to see if one can add to them.
4. Discuss and exchange your insights.
5. Resolve on “commitments to action” (things you now commit to do differently as a result of your insights).
6. Write out your common insights and display them in a manner that will keep them ‘top of mind’ in your team, for however long they are useful.

Exercise

Study each fact about the behaviour of geese, and look for lessons that you might draw from that fact, and apply in the context of your business, to produce a better result (more productivity, less stress, smoother relations, etc):

Fact 1: As each goose flaps its wings it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.

Lessons I can see:

Fact 2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.

Lessons I can See:

Fact 3: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.

Lessons I can see:

Fact 4: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

Lessons I can see:

Fact 5: When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.

Lessons I can see:

Dr McNeish’s Lessons

The good doctor drew the following lessons from the behaviour of geese. You might like to use them to stimulate your thoughts about the lessons you discerned, and to reach for a couple of “stretch” lessons to really pack value into this exercise:

Lesson 1: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are travelling on the thrust of one another.

New Lessons I can see:

Lesson 2: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

New Lessons I can see:

Lesson 3: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities and unique arrangements of gifts, talents or resources.

New Lessons I can see:

Lesson 4: We need to make sure honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

New Lessons I can see:

Lesson 5: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.

New Lessons I can see:

Group Discussion

Discuss your insights among yourselves, and be sure to capture any new lessons or insights that other team members have shared with you.

Group Lessons I can see:

Commitment to Action

As a result of this exercise, we will now do the following differently:

1. _________________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________________

3. _________________________________________________________

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

1. First come “essentials”. We need to pay our staff sufficient money to enable them to purchase food, shelter, clothing, education for their kids, some leisure, and the other things that enable them to feel that they are doing at least as well as their community of peers.
   Once these needs are satisfied, others become more important. Pay the going rate (or just a little more) for work of a good quality from staff, and know that more money won’t necessarily buy more work or better quality.
2. Secondly, with our essentials met, we next seek “security”. It’s fine to be paid well, but we can’t take out a 20-year mortgage or even a 3-year car loan if there is a risk we won’t have a job tomorrow. Let your staff know that the business is solid, and that the future looks bright. If there are tough times ahead, let staff know that you are aware of these, that you have plans in place to manage this (you might even ask for an extra effort from them to assist), and that you are totally committed to navigating their boat to a safe harbour.
3. Beyond the essentials and security, we all tend to seek a sense of belonging and the love and acceptance of ourselves by others. These will not necessarily bind us if we feel undervalued (underpaid) or insecure, but there are many instances of people continuing in low paid and even insecure employment for the sake of remaining with long-term workmates. Anything that you do to create a positive and supporting esprit de corps for your staff, and to encourage them to see themselves as a vital part of “something great” will be repaid many times over in the form of a willingness to go the extra mile.
4. Our thoughts next turn to recognition (praise, promotion, prestige). These are not things that would bind us if we felt undervalued (underpaid), insecure or alienated (excluded) but with these three lower needs met, a bit of recognition goes a long way to making us feel good about our work. Create systems from bringing to your notice, efforts that go above and beyond the call of duty, and use your creativity to find a host of ways in which to recognize and/or reward those efforts, and watch in wonder at the lengths to which your people will go to earn that recognition. (Hint: Give stronger emphasis to “self improvement” than to outright talent, and you will develop a team of winners, rather than finding yourself continually recognizing a few talented individuals!)
5. The motivator that research says that only 4% of people attain. Maslow called it “Gemeinschaftsgefuhl” – but, if it’s alright with you, I’m happy enough to say “Self-actualisation” or “providing someone with the opportunity to do a job in which they have a high degree of competence and which they love, in such a way as that they can express themselves in and through it.”

Self-Actualisation – Creating the Circumstances

So, how would you go about motivating someone to the self-actualisation level with respect to a specific task?

Well, first we would have to assume three key factors were in place, namely that:

1. 1. We have provided the person with a crystal clear Vision for the enterprise as a whole so that they can ensure their output for the task at hand advances that.
2. 2. We have clearly conveyed the Values we hold dear in the business (so that they can navigate with confidence if they venture into territory where we have not laid down specific rules).
3. 3. We have selected someone with sufficient Competence to be able to do the task at hand.

With these three in place, we can move our team member towards self-actualisation by asking them a question such as: “How would you go about producing this result?”

Notice that we focused on the result (what we want as output), rather than on the activity (how it’s to be produced), because it’s the activity – the new or better or smarter way of achieving the result – that is likely to be the source of their greatest satisfaction, and of your greatest gain in terms of effectiveness and efficiency!

If you give this process a try, how will you know if it worked? How will you know if your team member is approaching or attaining self-actualisation in their role? You could look for the clues, which could include:

• Fire in the belly! Self-actualised people show obvious signs of relish!
• Midnight oil! Self-actualised people lose track of time, and are totally focused on the task (actually, there is a risk they can get derailed by focusing on the process – the activity, again – so a truly excellent manager would check with them periodically to measure results and provide feedback).
• Flow! When we are self-actualising, we tend to work smoothly and efficiently.

Key Question

1. How would you feel if your team were performing at or near their peak capability, at tasks in which they found deep satisfaction, and to which they brought to bear all of their energy and ingenuity? In other words, “What would it feel like to work with ‘The SA Dream Team’?”
2. Well, if you are a manager of people, and you are reading this, you have the chance to find out! Of course, you may need to do a little (or a lot of) research before you had a solid grasp of what you would have to believe, know and do to be able to build such a team – but I wonder what would happen if you set that as a goal, right now?
3. If you would like a bit of motivation in pursuing this possibility, I can offer it in the form of Maslow’s 1956 description of “self actualized individuals” (a totally seductive picture of what your staff could be like, given good management).

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

So what should the Leader’s Job Description contain?

You Can Boil the Leader’s Job Description Down To 6 V’s

V1 – Vision

It’s the leader’s job to come up with a crystal clear Vision of the “finished picture of perfection” on the business – the point at which it will arrive when it is a finished work of art. Think of this as a picture of what Victory looks like from where the company and its people presently stand.

While possessing the vision is important, it is useless without the ability to sell it – persuasively – to those who would follow. It must be passionately communicated to all who would undertake the journey towards it so as to ignite the purpose, and engage the energy of the team.

It is the Vision – the idea of what the company or business can become – into which the team pour their energies and from which each team member draws the sense of being part of something bigger and better than they can be by themselves.

A clearly-held Vision provides one essential reference point against which team members can measure their efforts when faced with the question, “What should I do in this situation?” If it moves the business towards the Vision, then it’s one of the right things to do – that is, if it accords with V3.

V2 – Vanguard

As a leader, your Vanguard will comprise “those leading the charge” – your key team members – who are vital to your success. Your job is to do whatever it takes to get “the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats” (Jim Collins, Good to Great).

Remember that your own energy levels at work will be the average of the five people you have most to do with in your role as leader. If you would be a great and strong leader, surround yourself with great and good people to whom you can delegate with confidence.

A Coach assembling a relay team knows that she must select four runners who are each champions in their own right, or her team won’t stand a chance of winning. She would never contemplate including a slightly weak runner for any reason when she knows it would cost the other three (and her) victory!

Use the same mindset when selecting or evaluating staff. It’s part of your Job Description – and probably your most important KPI!

V3 – Values

It’s the Leader’s job to articulate or spell out their Values – the ways by which it is permissible or constructive or good to achieve the Vision. Shared Values keep everyone in step, within bounds and feeling safely and securely within the rules of the game.

Equipping your team with a clear statement of your values automatically provides them with guidance on how to answer for themselves, the recurrent question, “How should I act or what should I do in this situation?” Those answers will be along the lines of, “If what you intend to do is true to our Values, and moves us in the direction of our Vision, then it’s one of the right ways to act!”

Nordstrom’s (a US retailer who has made their name synonymous with “Service”) have equipped their staff with clear Values that include the desire to deliver outstanding customer service and to strive for high individual productivity. They then lay down a single rule for their staff, “Use your best judgement at all times” and manage to deliver on their promise to their customers to a degree that is the envy of every retailer.

As a leader, part of your job is to consciously (and conscientiously) “value” each individual member of your team and to make them aware of the fact that you do.

V4 – Vector

A Vector can be defined as a “force or influence” and part of a leader’s job is to bring about results through influencing their Vanguard towards achieving the Vision in a manner consistent with their Values.

Vectoring implies a certain “indirectness” or “subtlety” to the process of influencing others, and the greatest leaders move their followers to believe that they now want what the leader wants.

A good leader, like a good sailor, will be sensitive to the slightest shift in the breeze and will “vector” their craft to take advantage of that and so, in our context, vectoring also acknowledges the Leader’s responsibility to stay in touch with the marketplace and to continually influence their team to position the business to take advantage of change.

V5 – Venue

The leader has a responsibility to set a standard in terms of venue – the “setting in which your business is carried out.” Venue relates both to the physical environment which you create for your team, and the timing of events critical to your success.

As the leader it’s part of your job to create and maintain an efficient and effective workplace that nurtures your team members in the long term. You are the one who will dictate priorities for investing in the tools that your team requires to perform at extraordinary levels.

As the leader, you also have primary responsibility for “timing”. As the general in this battle, the time and place of battle are of your choosing and, like a good general, you have the responsibility to ensure that your people are prepared when you call upon them to go to war – and that they have the ordinance required to ensure their victory.

V6 – Valiance

It’s an olde word, from a different era, and it means “the quality of mind enabling one to face danger or hardship resolutely”.

Most of the research on leadership comes, at some point, to the characteristics or key behaviours that sustain successful leaders in the minds and hearts of their followers. Those key behaviours include:

• Honesty – Be sure to practice sincerity, integrity, and candour in all of your actions and be aware that deceptive behaviour – whether to team members or others – will always erode trust.
• Competence – Good leaders base their actions on rational and moral principles and avoid acting arbitrarily or inconsistently.
• Intelligence - resulting from both inspiration and the diligent pursuit of knowledge and, eventually, wisdom.
• Fair-mindedness - Show fair treatment to all people, whether team members, clients or suppliers – or members of the general public. Prejudice threatens justice, and a lack of perceived justice erodes a team member’s sense of security.
• Empathy – a sense of common humanity with others is a strong bond-maker, and tends to guide you in being sensitive to the feelings, values, interests, and well-being of others.
• Courage – Followers want to know and believe that their leader has the perseverance to accomplish goal, regardless of inevitable obstacles. Calmness under stress instils others with the courage to bear difficult challenges.

Valiance in a leader inspires the team to believe that the impossible is possible, and takes them beyond themselves. It is the element that drives the saying that “extraordinary businesses comprise ordinary people doing extraordinary things”.

Goals – Your Vision

Questions for Leaders

You might like to tick the boxes, and give yourself a score at the end of this article:

• Do you have a clear Vision of what your business will look like if/when it is “finished”?
• How well have you sold this Vision to your team?
• Could anyone in your team recite your Vision with passion?
• Are you crystal clear on the progress towards the Vision that you want your business to achieve in the next 12 months?
• Does anyone else in the business know that path – or is it a well kept secret?
• Have you ensured that your path accords with your Values?
• Can your team recite the values by which the business abides?
• Have you written out your goal(s) for your business so that you attain clarity, and so that they exist outside of your mind?
• Have you provided each team member with a clear, written statement of your Vision, and your Values, and your Goals?
• Have you negotiated from each member a written statement of what their contribution to the Vision will be this year (these are their Goals)?
• Have you reviewed their Goals and clarified milestones and review dates with each team member to enable you both to measure progress quickly and with certainty?
• Are you Vectoring to make the goals for the year (and the Vision to which they will contribute) a daily focus within your business through your conversation and activities?
• Do you have goals in relation to improving the conditions in which your team works (your Venue) as a step to improving productivity?
• Take a look at the attributes listed under “Valiance” and ask yourself, “Who do I have to become in order to be the CEO of the business I can foresee?” A handy next question could be, “Where will I start in the process of becoming that person – and when?”

And, now that you’ve given yourself a score, let’s look at how that might compare to another score, provided by “an informed reference group” – your staff.

The Boss’s Performance Review

Are you doing a good enough job (in your own estimation) that you would be comfortable (or game) in asking your team to rate your performance? Just remember, “feedback is the breakfast of champions” so if you want to be one, you need to eat like one!!!

Since they don’t do this every day, your staff will need a little guidance (and guidance is just another part of your job description, right?), so how about drawing up a form that reads “Performance Review for (your name)”, the upper portion of which contains a two-column, ten-row table headed “Task or Area of Responsibility” and “Score”, with the instruction to fill the first cell of the ten rows with what they believe are the ten most important tasks you perform (or should perform), followed by their score for how well they think you do each.

If they sit there blankly, obviously not aware of just what it is that you do in the business, you’ve learned something important already – that you don’t communicate as well as you might!

If they write a list of things that have little to do with what you consider to be “vital tasks” associated with your position, again, you’ve gained a valuable insight into an issue that can only benefit from your conscious and directed attention – making sure that the “body” of the business knows what the “head” is doing!

You might consider making it optional as to whether each of your “reviewers” puts their name to their Review – you want to encourage the greatest degree of openness possible, after all.

With all responses in, it would be a good idea to provide each member with your version of your Job Description – and even your self-assessment score – so that they have the other half of the picture to balance with their own.

Next, taking all of the responses, compile a composite picture of your staff’s view of your job description and of your performance. Consider posting the results for all to see (it will provide a strong message that you took their input seriously).

If the divergence between your own picture of your job and theirs varies widely, consider what you need to do to gain alignment: A meeting of your key people to discuss the differences? A general discussion with all of your staff (in a smaller business)? Some deep reflection on your own as to what the differences are telling you about your performance; your communication skills; your priorities and focus; etc?

As a follow up, you could ask key or all staff for suggestions or recommendations on how they feel you could improve your performance as their leader. If you get no response, it will be a bad sign. If you get any response, it will be a positive indication that people care enough and hope enough that they will work for a change that they feel is worthwhile!

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

Here’s a little help on the planning side:

1. Build Better Specs

Always start with what you want to end up with! List the outcomes, the results that you want from anyone filling a position in your team.

Be specific; use numbers and dates where applicable. Specify the periods over which performance will be measured. Where ever possible, work out the value of this level of performance to the business so that you can apply some perspective to the salary package you may have to craft to acquire a person capable of delivering those results.

Use the 3:1 Rule as a test of your final cost/benefit assessment: The new team member should generate around three times their grossed up cost to the business, in gross profits. Their grossed up cost will be something like their pre-tax salary, plus 30% (to cover super, work cover, holidays, sick leave, etc).

2. Align Personality, Skill and Character With the Role

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that certain personality types are better suited to certain tasks than others. For example, if we simply divide people into “big-picture” and “detail oriented”, which of those two types would you like doing your bookkeeping or accounting? And which might be better suited to sales, strategy and marketing?

There are a number of tried and tested profiling tools that may help you to identify characteristics that will align with the results that you are looking for from your new team member. Two of those are the DiSC Analysis or Meyers & Briggs.

3. Write Your Advertisement to Your Ideal Candidate

If you write an average ad, you’ll get an average unemployed (our about-to-be-unemployed) person replying to it. Is that what you want?

Given that if you attract the wrong people to your position and make a poor selection, you could be weeks or months of salary and hair-tearing down the track before you terminate them and start again, is it worth spending time (maybe hours) and resources (maybe hundreds of dollars for a skilled copywriter) to end up with an ad powerful enough to pull the perfect candidate for your position, away from their current employment and straight to your door?

Tips for an excellent advertisement for a position:

• Start by writing a rambling letter to the ideal candidate about what you want and what you are offering them – start with money if you must, but then go all the way through “security”, “belonging”, “recognition and rewards”, and into “autonomy, responsibility, and opportunity for personal growth and expression” territory. The right person is going to join the dream that you so persuasively sell them, rather than selling their soul for the money you offer.
• Boil your rambling personal letter down to an elegant letter and put it on a page of your website, and link to it from your ad.
• Boil your elegant letter down into an advert that describes the ideal person in such a way as they would recognise themselves; and describes the job in terms of what they will gain from owning it. Link to the longer version on your (or a host’s website – if they are technology savvy, this will suit their style of communication).
• Rack your brains, take advice – do whatever it takes – to come up with a headline that will call out to your ideal candidate (and which will probably frighten, discourage or put off any less-than-ideal candidates) by being a challenge to growth and adventure.
• Do your research and find out where your ideal candidate is likely to read this (newspaper ads are all but dead, and the web is the thing, but don’t overlook your storefront window, your staff as couriers of the message, any communication your put out of the business, your vehicles, etc).
• Think about leaving the ad running even after you find your ideal candidate. After all, what’s harder to find: An ideal team member, or paying work for them to perform?

4. Sell Your Vision For Your Business

Do you want people who work (just) for money? Or do you want people who want to contribute to something fabulous, that’s bigger than themselves, into which they can put a piece of themselves and of which they can feel proud?

If you’re after the second lot, then you had better be very good at selling a crystal-clear vision of your dream for your business to them – otherwise you’re likely to attract drones!

What is your Vision? How will you share this in a way that will cause the right candidate to go, “Wow!”, and walk out of their current job to join you?

Yes, you can save yourself the brain fag and skip this step, but what type of candidate are you then likely to end up with?

5. Tailor a Quick Assessment Process

Sometimes it’s just smart to sit down with a professional recruiter at this point (and not before this point!) and have them take charge of the pre-selection process for you.

It can be a time-consuming task sifting through a number of candidates, and it is likely that a good professional will be able to grade a field of candidates against a clear selection criteria quicker and more efficiently than you can. Besides, it puts someone between you and the candidates until you are ready for that one-on-one meeting.

If you are one of those “hands-on” people who wants to run the selection process from end to end, it may still be a smart move to consult a recruitment specialist to develop a set of questions specific to your needs, that will sort the candidates into “As” (appear to have everything we want, right now); “Bs” (could qualify with a bit of development work on our part); and “Cs” – not for this position.

To these “standard” questions you’ll then add others to determine any objective or professional qualifications, background, experience, etc, that you require or desire in a candidate, by which time you will then have the basis for a quick, preliminary grading system that should avoid you wasting time on the “Cs”.

6. Discover Their Goals and Aspirations First

Give someone enough rope and they are likely to hang themselves so turn the traditional job interview process around by letting the candidate do the talking.

Use purposeful, open questions (ie, questions that can’t be answered with a single word); ask follow on questions based on their answers to explore some depth to better understand your candidate; occasionally use extending questions (“Tell me a bit more”) or friendly silence to encourage them to go on.

Ask questions to find out what they know about you and your business. If they are worth their salt they will have researched you before their interview (whether on the web, by walk in, or by talking to people who already work for you, know your business, etc).

Set out to discover what makes them tick, and why they would want to work for and with you. Discover what talents, experience, knowledge and ideas they bring to the table, and explore those a little. It is entirely possible that you could start out interviewing a candidate for one job but end up targeting them for another particularly suited to their talents or background.

Then invite them to ask questions of you. Form your opinions based on the quality of those questions, and the background knowledge from which they are asked.

Listen for the assumptions in their speech to gain a feel for how well their values and expectations align with your own, even at this very early point in your relationship.

Bottom line: You’ll learn much more by listening to them talk and having them ask questions about the job, than you ever will by telling them about the position.

7. Assess Their Commitment To Your Business’ Goals

This is an “imprecise measure” at the best of times, but what you are looking for at this stage in the assessment process is an indication as to whether this person is a “committer” or a “renegade”.

Committers are “joiners”; they like other people; they like working with others, collaborating and teaming to build projects larger than they can handle alone. The look for causes to join, visions to buy into, and goals to meet.

Renegades are “users”; they intend to use the business, its resources and the position almost solely for their own ends. Sure, they will “do the work” – they may even be highly productive – but they tend to view their work as the product of their efforts alone (or at least see themselves alone as deserving of credit for any results to which they contribute). The often have a poor opinion of the others in their crew, and seldom step out to lift, grow or assist others – unless there is a clear pay-off involved.

A simple test for this factor is to ask questions that explore about how they feel or felt about their last or previous positions. Committers generally convey a positive account of their experience; renegades tend to give the game away with comments that display arrogance, ego, negativity and lack of respect for others.

8. Clearly Convey Your Core Concepts

If you’re wanting someone to give more than their physical presence and base labour to your business you are going to have to sell them your Vision for the business (the “picture of perfection” towards which you are striving; your Mission (the path you are following to achieve that Vision); your Values (the boundaries of behaviour along that path); your Goals (the milestones on the path; dated measures of performance); and your Code of Conduct (the way we treat each other, our Customers, and the assets of the business).

When it comes to your Core Concepts, don’t make the mistake that many larger corporations make in spending huge resources on having a expert in semantics design great sounding concepts; having an artist render them under glass and hang them in the boardroom and reception area; and then never looking at or talking about them again – except to quote them in their Annual Report.

Your Vision, Mission, Values, Goals and Code of Conduct should be wound into the daily fabric of your business and the lives of those who make it work.

When you go out into the labour market seeking new team members you need to carry these Core Concepts with you both as a beacon (to attract those who resonate to them) and as a touchstone (against which to test each candidate’s personal core concepts for alignment with your own).

It’s going to be a lot easier and less costly to incorporate someone into the team whose core concepts already resonate with your own.

9. Craft A Powerful Investment Process

When you bring any new team member on board, you are faced with an inevitable investment of time and resources so as to enable them to come up to speed and meet your performance requirements as quickly as possible, so why not convey this process – explicitly – as the beginnings of your on-going “Investment in Them”?

Their first month or so on the job will set a tone that is likely to persist so invest the time and thought required to design an excellent process – a system – that provides each new team member with:

• A clear understanding of our “Investing in You” philosophy
• A detailed Job Description and/or Contract that is framed around results and outcomes, rather than activities and tasks, detailing all performance requirements, assessment processes, and any rewards associated with those.
• A clear statement of your termination process.
• An Organisation Chart that clearly depicts the formal lines of communication, support and command and their position, responsibilities and authority within that structure.
• An introduction to and (actual, verbal) discussion about your Vision, Mission, Values, Goals and Code of Conduct – and a written copy to which to refer thereafter.
• A Team Member Guide introducing each member with a self-written thumbnail sketch, to speed the development of relationships and integration into the team.
• Statutory materials – OH&S guidelines, employment mattes, etc.
• Position-related information (eg, for a salesperson, this would include background on key account clients)
• A duplicated sign-off receipt that verifies that all of this material has been received by and explained to your new recruit.

Consider your responsibility for, and the benefits of, creating and managing a social process that quickly folds new recruits into the team and promotes the relationship building essential to high productivity and staff longevity.

10. Design A Performance Assessment & Recognition Process

We’ll often ask staff, “Is your boss happy with your performance?”, only to be told, “She must be; she hasn’t fired me yet!”

Is this level of feedback likely to promote top performance among team members? Or could it be done better?

There are two key points to any assessment and recognition process: The period of assessment should be agreed and honoured (how many bosses do you know who keep putting off periodic performance reviews?); and the assessment criteria must be transparent, mutually-agreed between the parties (at the outset! – no point trying to change the rules mid-game) and as objective as possible.

The best way to achieve transparency is to agree on one or more objective measures of performance; for a sales person, that may be sales revenue or gross profit per period; for administration staff it may be a maximum turn around time for quotations, or the timely lodgement of tax or other regulatory returns. Whatever the measure, it should be directly related to the results required of the position, and progress towards it should be regularly discernable by all parties (that is, the assessed person should not find out the result during the assessment, but should have been progressively aware of their performance throughout the period of assessment).

One important factor in creating an effective review process is the frame of mind in which it is administered! If, in the understanding of the parties, the assessment is to determine “whether they have failed or not”, the process will be cast in a negative light – and will probably be avoided by all parties as well!

If, on the other hand, the assessment process is seen as part of the team member’s personal and professional development (a sort of periodic stock take from which their next course of support and development will be planned) it likely to be viewed in a much more positive light – and to be carried out!

11. Create An Investment Plan With All Staff

If you’re going to set yourself apart from the crowd and establish a truly brilliant business you are going to need one essential ingredient, and that is a truly brilliant team!

Truly brilliant teams don’t happen by accident, and they don’t come cheap! Not that they have to cost a lot of money, but they will require a significant investment of time and planning – mixed with a passion for excellence – if they are to form in the first place, and grow thereafter!

You’ll need to give some thought as to what you will need to invest in each of your team members to bring them to a level competence and commitment that will make them your strongest and most valuable asset. The obvious candidates are “training” and “positive work experience”, but the less obvious candidates can be as, or even more, important: “inclusion”, “security”, “recognition”, “belonging”, “personal and professional growth” and more.

Then you’ll need to develop a process for delivering both the invitation to growth and personal investment, and then the actual experiences, agreements, understandings, and culture that will make that growth a highly likely outcome.

You could always start this process with a briefing on your desire for and interest in their personal and professional growth, followed by an outline of the knowledge and skill training that you will provide, support or require them to complete, but it won’t stop there. In fact, the picture won’t be finished until you have created a culture where people learn and grow and support each other as a matter of course.

How would you do that?

12. Find Out What Makes Them Tick

We’d hope that you had a fair idea of what makes your new (and old) team members tick before you selected them, and this point re-iterates the fact that it’s nearly useless trying to motivate people with your “external goals” – ie, goals or rewards that you provide as opposed to their own internal, private or personal goals.

Much smarter to align the rewards you place on the behaviour you want, to a team member’s achieving their own, personal goals. For example, rather than talking about their hitting a sales or other performance target to qualify for a bonus, you might ask them what they feel they need to be doing to hit the performance goal that is going to put the deposit on their new car/house/boat/toy.

Ask yourself, which one of these approaches is likely to gain the most buy-in from John:

• “Come on John, how can I help you hit your sales goal for the month, and qualify for your bonus?”; or
• “Come on John, how can I help you get that deposit for your new sport scar?”

The second point in this step is to be aware that “people’s motives change over time” and to have in place a process for staying in touch with those changes as they occur in each member of your team. That process could be as simple as a weekly game of pool at the local pub, with plenty of opportunity for relaxed chatter about life and goals outside of work; or it could be a formal and dedicated day during which each team member gets to share their personal and professional gaols with their team.

Whatever your process, just ask yourself whether, by knowing what really matters to each member of your staff, would place you in a better position to help them to achieve their goals, and to grow them personally and professionally.

13. Rate Your Performance as Their Mentor, Coach & Guide

It has been said that “feedback is the breakfast of champions” so does it make sense, if you are really aspiring to have and to lead an excellent team of people, that you seek and welcome feedback on a regular basis?

Give some thought as to how you would measure your own success in your chosen role. I have one rather scary suggestion: Your score will be equal to the average of the performance of each of your team members!

You could also seek feedback through a “mutual performance review” during which you provide each team member with an assessment of their performance, after which they provide you with their assessment of yours.

And so we come to the $64,000 question: What would your business look like, function like, perform like the year after you implemented your own version of these 13 steps? And how big would the bag need to be to carry all those extra profits to the bank?

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.

www.profitune.com

In simple terms, it’s now riskier than ever for an Australian employer (especially one hot under the collar) to terminate even an unsatisfactory employee. Add to that situation the fact that, under The Fair Work Act, a union can now seek an injunction in the Federal Court or Federal Magistrates Court to prevent dismissal of an employee, and that the burden of proof has been reversed so that the employer must prove that they did not breach the act, and the employing-people stakes just got a whole lot higher.

Later in this piece I’ll share my absolute, no-hassles strategy to getting the wrong people off your bus without a ripple, but first let’s at how to stop them sneaking aboard in the first place!

Preventative Maintenance

In Good to Great Jim Collins stated that great companies seemed to get all of a small number of key factors just right and he began his list with the fact that they had leaders of low personal ego but high passion for pursuing their (Company’s) vision and upholding its values (two things about which I’ve written much in the past).

Second on Collin’s list was to “get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats,” so let’s start with the first part of that process:

Getting the Right People on the Bus

You could write a book about this, and in fact we have – calling it Solving the People Puzzle – but in the space available to us let’s look at a couple of techniques that might help you next time you go headhunting.

Find or Attract Good People

Break this process down into the following steps:

1. Create a list of the characteristics and capabilities of the people you want on your team.
2. Write out a list of the reasons why your ideal employee would want to work for you.
3. Create a profile of your perfect next employee.
4. Write a personal letter to them, selling them on exactly why they’d be better off working for you.
5. Transfer your personal letter to a page on your website (here’s a real-life example).
6. Add a request to download an Information Outline you’ll need from them (we’ll show you how to avoid “CV-Overload”).
7. Dream up a catchy advertisement headline – “Career Opportunity – Finally Get Paid What You’re Worth!” and then add your new page link (e.g., www.mybusiness.com/position.html) as the only text below the headline.
8. Print your headline and the link on a card or page and hand it out to your best staff, telling them you’re looking for someone just like them, and asking them to find you someone. Throw in a $500 bonus for a successful referral.
9. Print the whole letter, with the link at the bottom and give it to every customer and supplier you can. (Imagine the impression you are creating when they read the list of attributes and skills you are looking for – this is marketing AND it could find you an ideal new team member).
10. If you still don’t have the candidate you’re looking for, publish your headline-and-link advertisement. It will be low cost, so you can spread it around and still stay within budget.

Get Their Own Words

Remember the Information Outline in step 6? You’re going to ask for exactly the information you want and no more, and you’re going to ask for it in their handwriting!

Let’s face it, 60% of Resumes are written by someone other than the applicant, and sometimes by a Professional Resume Writer! Let’s get the real thing, and let’s make sure it entails some effort, attention to detail and commitment – all things we are looking for in an ideal employee. Since the folk you want aren’t stupid, it would be wise to tell them why you are taking this approach.

One of the items you will ask for is an employment history from their first job to their last detailing months as well as years, and with no omissions. You don’t want an edited or sanitised version – you want the truth in this very important area.

Do a Clayton’s Interview

When your candidates turn up as appointed, apologise for the fact that the other person on the interview panel (always have two or more in on the selection process) has been called away, and tell them you’ll have to reschedule. Then, suddenly struck by the realisation that you have been hanging out for a coffee for the last hour, ask them if they would join you.

Lead the conversation that ensues with open questions. Be relaxed, genuinely engaged and interested (this could be your next great team member) and let them talk.

You’ll be amazed at the number of people who shoot themselves in the foot at this early stage, saving you the cost of a more formal interview.

Due Diligence

Checking the background of prospective employees can present a legal minefield in these days of privacy laws, but there are a few simple strategies that you can use to get the results you need.

Firstly, ask for the full contact details of every past employer. You’re not going to go back one or two jobs, you’re going back ten – or all the way!

Next, ask your short list candidates to arrange for you to talk with their past employers. Provide them with a list of your available times and dates and give them authority to arrange appointments with them for you.

This step is likely to weed out any second-rate candidates on the spot. It is also likely to prompt explanations in advance from those who may have suffered personality conflicts in past positions. How they present their side of the story will tell you a lot about their personality, character and ethics.

Getting the Wrong People Off Your Bus

OK, so you may have made a few mistakes in the past and things have now reached the point where you’re ready to say goodbye – but the other party is not budging! What do you do?

Simple, you safely apply a three-step antidote to everyone in the business:

1. Create a dynamically evolving workplace that is constantly focused on achieving your Vision through change in response to the demands of your marketplace. Begin a culture of continuously examining new systems and new ways of doing things. Invite your people to engage in shaping their own responsibilities, their own workplace.
2. Negotiate clear and objective key performance indicators (KPIs) for each area of responsibility for each member of your team. Make sure that they sum total of those KPIs is sufficient to deliver the goals (budget) you have set for your business.
3. Measure everyone regularly on an agreed schedule and provide fair and constructive feedback.

If you have made a past mistake in hiring, you will find that your negative candidate will resist change, either loudly or passively refusing to participate and certainly rejecting the spirit in which change has been introduced.

They will reject measurement because they know it will cut through their smokescreen of self-promotion and reveal their lack of true performance.

They will resent and reject and object to negative feedback since it is deeply at odds with their egoistic self image and highly threatening to their influence within the business.

Formally record your processes, issue them with copies of the material that relates to them – and they will leave.

What are the chances of an unfair dismissal action? Hmmm, if you were doing this just with them there is a potential basis for discrimination and victimisation. But it you applied the same process across the board, to all of your team, and dealt fairly and objectively with everyone, you will find that your records will give the lie to any charge of discrimination.

And what of your good people who have “suffered” the same treatment?

Strangely enough, we find that they actually love change; they actually look forward to certainty in their goals and performance indicators; and they react very positively to praise for a job well done, and constructively to any invitation to step up, to improve their skills, to go to another level.

I think they’re the folk you’re looking for.

For a lot more detail on Solving the People Puzzle (because that’s what we are talking about here) try the option on the right side of this link.

Peter Rowe is the Managing Director of ProfiTune Business Systems, one of Australia’s foremost Business Improvement Specialists whose clients include both multinational corporations and small private companies across every quarter of the business arena. Peter’s new book ‘Solving the People Puzzle’ is due for release in 2010.
www.profitune.com