Quick tips for engaging your workforce

Engaging your workforce isn’t easy.  Every generation is engaged differently.  So, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to increasing engaging with your workforce doesn’t work.  You need to think outside the box and ensure your approach is tailored.

Statistics show (and it make sense), if you have an engaged workforce they are more productive, more gets done and the financial results of the organisation are improved.  So all in all it’s a great result.  Every company should want this outcome but how do they get it and what do companies do wrong? 

Most companies do their annual employee engagement survey and measure what they need to improve.  They then come up with a number of initiatives to drive improvement – they focus on them for about 2-3 months and then they fall off. 

These activities are normally determined by management on what they think will fix the engagement.  Without engagement from the right level of people these activities don’t do the trick.

What I have seen work really well is to have a People Committee – this committee is made up of representatives from each team and they are responsible for regular / informal pulse checks and work on key initiatives that can put in place to increase engagement. This works really well and I have done this in 4 separate companies. 

The team determine what they want to do and all you need to do as leader is give them the support to put the initiatives in place.  They will come up with initiatives you will never have thought of, they will drive them and execute them and feel part of the improvement that is being put in place/made. 

This will drive engagement.

Have fire side chats with the team to talk through what drives them, what needs to change and where they need support.  When you start a new role or on an annual basis make sure you speak to every single person in your team and really understand how people feel and how you can make a difference.

Engagement is more important than ever.  What are you tips to engage with your employees?  Please feel free to share in the comments or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

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 Looking to develop your team? Reach out.

Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.

We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Article by Jo Hands, Co-Founder Whiteark

The Importance of Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement refers to the process of defining, analyzing, and improving business processes to increase overall quality, while removing as many waste activities as possible.

“Article by Jo Hands, Whiteark Co-Founder & Director”

There are three types of waste in Lean:

1. Muda

The major process wastes including, transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing and defects.

2. Mura

The waste of unevenness or inconsistency in your process. It stops your tasks from flowing smoothly across your work process and therefore gets in your way of reaching continuous flow.

3. Muri

The waste of overburden, when you assign too much work to your team, you place unnecessary stress on both your team and process.

If you want continuous improvement to become part of your culture, you need to focus on getting rid of the unevenness/inconsistency wastes (Mura) and overburden wastes (Muri) first. Eliminating all major process wastes (Muda) is almost impossible but focusing on reducing their adverse impacts on your work is key for implementing continuous improvement.

Companies should consider having a funding model for Continuous Improvement initiatives - making changes to processes to increase their profit, improve employee satisfaction, and accelerate productivity and efficiencies. Most often, business budgets do not include an allocation for continuous improvement – and a large amount of money is not required to make a substantial impact. Organisations should create a continuous improvement culture and encourage their people to look for opportunities to improve processes across the business and where the identified opportunities,

1. Align to the company’s strategic priorities/strategic direction and;

2. Size up to have biggest impact

There should be a funding model to support these initiatives. To execute on a continuous improvement process, benefits should be associated.

Below is a simple, common model that is used for Continuous Improvement, referred to as the Deming Circle – Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). This model is a never-ending cycle that aims to help companies improve further based on achieved results.

Phase1 – Plan:

Define the objectives and processes required to achieve the desired goal. Setting output expectations is critical to achieving continuous improvement, as the precision of the goals and their completeness is a fundamental component of the process of improving.

Phase2 – Do:

Apply all that has been considered in the Planning phase. Expect that unpredicted problems may occur, which is why, if it is possible, you should test your plan on a small scale and in a controlled environment. Standardisation will assist with applying the plan smoothly – clear roles and responsibilities are essential.

Phase3 – Check:

Audit your plan’s execution “Do” phase and assess if your objectives and processes and goals from the “Plan” phase worked. To avoid recurring mistakes or if the team identified problems with the process that need to be eliminated in the future you need to undertake a root-cause analysis.

Phase4 – Act:

You developed, applied, and assessed your plan, now you need to act. If everything in “Do” worked well and you were able to achieve the original goals, then you can proceed and apply your initial plan. Your PDCA model will become the new baseline.

The benefits of the PDCAs model, includes: helping your team identify and test solutions and improve them through a waste-reducing cycle, stimulates continuous improvement culture (people and processes), allows your team to test possible solutions on a small scale and in a controlled environment, and prevents the work process from recurring mistakes.

Companies are looking for ways to increase their quality and reduce their costs which is why process improvement has become so important in today’s operating environment for the following reasons: customers have higher quality expectations, strong competition within the market and an unpredictable economic environment.

Whiteark has the expertise to help you with your continuous improvement needs, if this is something your business would like to explore, please reach out to Whiteark for a no obligation consultation.

Some key people capabilities for companies to consider

Capabilities describe the skills, knowledge or attitudes needed for a given task and are used to assess an employee's effectiveness. They can be looked at as human or people capabilities and technical capabilities. In this article we are focusing on some of the key people capabilities that companies should consider as essential for their organisation.  These are particularly helpful in informing and supporting your decisions in attracting, developing, rewarding, and retaining employees.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s thoughts and feelings. It is about taking the time to listen to team members and fellow employees and consider their thoughts and concerns, not just your own. If you have empathy you are able to better communicate with others in a way that makes sense to the them.  It also gives you a better understanding of how people are communicating and interacting with you.

According to Forbes, empathy is “increasingly recognized as a pivotal leadership tool in today’s global market, benefiting leadership effectiveness”. Where empathy can be very powerful at work, especially with leaders, is when empathy is demonstrated, it shows that they care about their team a human and individual and aren’t just following the policies and rules without considering the person. If you treat others as you expect to be treated and show empathy, this will almost always result in a better outcome for the individual and the organisation.

Communication

Communication is a fundamental capability that you need to have to be effective and ultimately successful. Communication skills are so important, they allow you to understand and be understood by others through; clearly explaining ideas to others, actively listening, speaking to audiences, and giving and receiving feedback.

Great communication is essential to having a productive, successful, and efficient company.

Effective communication plays a big part in helping to have a strong, efficient, and happy team, has a very positive impact on employee engagement, improves customer satisfaction and increases productivity.

Resilience

Headsup describes resilience as “the ability to cope with the ups and downs and bounce back from challenges”. At work there will always be tricky situations from workload pressures, difficult working relationships, and the challenge of juggling personal situations at the same time. If you have greater resilience this will go a long way in helping you manage stress.  As it is well known, high levels of stress can often lead to mental health conditions.

Resilient teams are able to bounce back from setbacks and failures and embrace new challenges with energy.  Having empathy and caring relationships within your team will assist your team in being resilient too.

If you are resilient you are usually able to demonstrate strength in being adaptable as well. During these Covid times, this has been more important than ever as many people have had to move from working very quickly in the office to home, dealing with so much uncertainty and change personally and professionally.

Flexibility

These days when we talk about flexibility we automatically think of working from home and having a flexible work arrangement.  As a people capability, MindTools defines flexibility well as, “the capacity to adjust to short-term change quickly and calmly, so that you can deal with unexpected problems or tasks effectively”. Being open to change and different ways of doing things is critical to being successful as a ‘flexible’ employee. Employees and leaders who can demonstrate flexibility in a range of situations and can communicate well will be more efficient and effective.

An effective leader who has strength in this capability, listens to others, communicates well, adapts their style for the situation and audience, has strong relationships and easily change plans as the situations change. 

Many of these capabilities link together, if you have strength in one you will often have strength in others. As an employer, if your people plan considers key people capabilities in all stages of the employee life cycle, this will have a positive impact on retention, productivity, engagement and ultimately your company’s success.

Looking to develop your team? Reach out.

Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.

We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Article by Phoebe Reid

When should you recruit versus developing existing staff?

It is fabulous when everything seems to be humming along with your team, they are working well together, have a good understanding of their role and business and are motivated and engaged. But then someone resigns! This can throw a real spanner in the works if you haven’t planned for it. By having meaningful succession and talent planning and robust career and development planning processes you are able to better plan and be prepared for these situations.  This will help inform your decision to recruit externally or promote someone internally that you have already identified with the right skills and experience. 

This article will look at the two options to filling vacancies when someone leaves your business, or a new role is created:  recruiting externally or hiring from within. 

Recruiting externally

There are a number of reasons to recruit externally, there are times when you need some new talent to bring new skills and different organisational experiences, so it is important to find the right balance between hiring new employees and promoting current employees.   You will usually assess each role as the vacancy arises.   Existing business challenges can sometimes be solved with new ideas, so recruiting a fresh set of eyes who can look at the role and business in a different way may be the right solution.

A clear and known recruitment policy will assist you in hiring right. By this we mean hiring not only the right person with the necessary skills and experience, but also the candidate with the right cultural fit – this is just as important.  The selection and interview processes play a big part in hiring successfully and ultimately retaining these employees.

if there is a vacancy for a highly specialised role, you should consider the effort and resources needed to train an existing employee versus hiring a new one who already has the essential skills. It may be easier and more cost effective if you run a recruitment process and find an external resource.

Hiring from within

Many leaders think of recruitment as the only option when someone resigns, if you are a smaller business this may sometimes be the case, however in medium or larger businesses there will often be an internal option.   A recruitment policy that consider hiring internally before looking externally is recommended.

Employees who are given training, development and have a career path defined for them, are more likely to stay in your business.  The cost to hire is huge, according to Employment Hero, the average cost of a new hire can be anywhere between $3,500 to $5000, with executive roles being much greater than this.  Then you have the expense and time it takes for the new employee to be trained and learn their role and business. So, this is a significant reason to focus on developing your staff where possible.

Look at the way you support and engage your existing employees. Support them with internal training and upskilling opportunities, which will have a positive impact on the culture and overall employee engagement.  When employees feel challenged, supported and that their company invested in their growth and career, engagement is higher, and turnover reduces. 

As part of your succession planning process you should consider which roles are the hardest to hire and invest in developing employees with these skills so that you have options. Ideally for some roles you will have a successor who is ready or possibly ready in the near future already identified in your business.  This is also the case where there is a skill shortage and you know that skills are really hard to recruit in the market. 

Looking to unite your team? Reach out.

Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.

We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Article by Phoebe Reid

What does resilience and adaptability mean to you?

Common themes for 2021 off the back of the year we have had…resilience and adaptability.  This article will explore what they mean (let’s get back to basics), how does it apply personally, how does it apply professionally and key practical tips to be more resilient and adaptable.

This all comes down to experience so keen to get your practical view and experience on this – what works and what doesn’t so we can share this as a community.

What does this mean?

Let’s go back to the basics, the dictionary.

Resilience is defined as:

the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
"the often remarkable resilience of so many British institutions"

 the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.
"nylon is excellent in wearability, abrasion resistance and resilience"

Adaptability is defined as:

the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions.
"adaptability is an advantage in the harshly competitive global economy"

the capacity to be modified for a new use or purpose.
"this is a good example of the adaptability of listed buildings"

How does it apply to me personally? 

Change is constant. 

Being able to adapt to change and deal with things life throws at you (resilience) is critical to your happiness and success.  That doesn’t mean that you are always ok or you are always having a good day.  It means that you take what life gives you and make the best of it.  Some days this is not easy, other days it is. 

Adaptability allows you to proactive change based on a change in circumstance. 

It means embracing the change and looking for the positives, opportunities and way to make the best of the situation.  It’s an important skill in your personal life for the challenges that life will throw at us.

My mother always told me …life is not fair…which I didn’t like and thought maybe she was wrong but I have learnt this also to be true.  Life throws its challenge at everyone – what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – but it’s how you bounce back is your true sense of character.  Everyone has a story, everyone has tragedy – so that doesn’t make you unique but your response determines the impact to your life – if you are resilient you bounce back / recover quickly.

Most of you will resonate with this BUT it takes some difficulty in your life for you to really know and appreciate how resilient you are.  Your inner strength, what you can deal with and how you respond normally surprises you – so be kind to yourself and reflect if this is true for you.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

— Charles Darwin

How does it apply to me professionally? 

Managing organisational change – adapting, responding and showing resilience through change will make you a strong leader and role model in the organisation.  It’s hard to find leaders that are happy to champion change.  To be able to manage change well with your team you need to explain the why and how it impacts them and the team.  Be a good communicator.

Leading by example & navigating your team through change – it ties into the managing organisational change but leading by example in words and actions and ensuring a clear message of leadership to your team.  Teams go on a journey with change – people respond differently and go through various phases of responding to change as demonstrated by the change curve below.  As a leader you are responsible to manage and help your team work through change to allow them to be both adaptable and more resilient.

“When something goes wrong in your life, just yell ‘Plot Twist’ and move on.”

— Anonymous

Organisational change requires strong leadership, an ability to be decisive, communicate and take the employees on the journey with you.  This is the role of the CEO and the leadership team and will define the success of a leadership team – the ability for them to make change and take the employees on the journey.

Practical Guide

At Whiteark we are all about creating practical guides and tools to apply for key principles.  So see two below that we think are great for improving adaptability and resilience.

The 7 C’s of Resilience:

Dr Ginsburg, child paediatrician and human development expert, proposes that there are 7 integral and interrelated components that make up being resilient in Children that can apply to all of us – the detail is below:

1. Competence

   People need to be seen when they are doing something right and to be given opportunities to develop specific skills. If people in business have a particular passion for something or aptitude for a specific skill, activity or sport, we need to recognise this and let them know we’ve noticed and encourage them.

2. Confidence

   The solid belief in one’s own abilities is everything. As we teach and nurture, we build  confidence. We need to be careful not to undermine confidence but develop it by pushing our team to achieve and creating age-appropriate opportunities for experiencing success.

3. Connection

   When people are part of a community (class, team, club) they know they aren’t alone if they struggle and that they can develop creative solutions to problems. Close ties to family, friends, and building a sense of community at work can get team members sense of security.

4. Character

   People need an understanding of right and wrong and the capacity to follow a moral compass. A fundamental sense of right and wrong helps people make wise choices, contribute to the world.

5. Contribution

   The experience of offering their own service makes it easier for people to ask for help when they need it. Once people understand the feel-good factor of helping others, it becomes easier to ask for help when it’s needed – being willing to ask for help is a big part of being resilient. People who learn to cope effectively with stress are better prepared to overcome life’s challenges.

6. Coping

   People need healthy coping strategies to manage their stress. Some strategies involve engaging and disengaging such as breaking down seemingly impossible  problems and challenges into smaller, achievable pieces, avoiding things that trigger extreme anxiety, and just letting some things go.

7. Control

   People need to feel like they have a degree of control over their lives and their environment. When they realise that they can control their decisions and actions, they’re more likely to know that they have what it takes to bounce back.

4 Ways to Boost Your Adaptability Skills

1. Change Your Thought Process. Let go of the “Well, that's the way we've always done it” mentality

2. Force Yourself to Take Risks. Little progress is made without risk. ...how do you encourage failure in our organisation and innovation as it’s powerful and important

3. Encourage Others to Be Open Minded. One of the best ways you can develop an open mind is to encourage others to do the same

4. Embrace Learning.  Always learn from others, from situations and make the most of everything

 
Well it’s fair to say that resilience and adaptability are key skills to be successful in life and work – so very important. 

These skills and the ability to be able to apply them in business will allow companies to respond to changes in market, customer and consumer expectations and unexpected financial or commercial issues that occur.  Building a leadership team of resilient and adaptable people will be a key differentiator for an organisation.

Determine what kind of leader you want to be and be proactive in creating this. Start by having a think about what resilience and adaptability means to you? Join the conversation online by Searching for Whiteark on LinkedIn. Whiteark chat with a chief every week to learn from leaders in their field so if you want to learn from experienced leaders tune into The Chiefs podcast series.

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At Whiteark we have hands on practical experience helping leaders to build resilience and adaptability. Please reach out for a no obligation conversation.

Whiteark is not your average consulting firm, we have first-hand experience in delivering transformation programs for private equity and other organisations with a focus on people just as much as financial outcomes.

We understand that execution is the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for the business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you. Contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

Six tips for leading people through change

All companies undergo change, but few execute change successfully.

When leading people through change, the most effective leaders devote substantial effort in engaging everyone involved in the change, and understand that people need time to adapt to the change.

The magic six

There are six key competencies required to successfully lead people through change - communicate, collaborate, commit, support, influence and learn.

Communicate.

Communicate what the change is and the purpose and benefits of the change, this will increase buy-in.

Collaborate.

Bring people together to plan and execute change - encourage employees to break out of their silos and don’t tolerate unhealthy competition. It’s important to include employees in decision-making early on to strengthen their commitment to change.

Commit.

Display resilience, persistence, and willingness to adapt to challenges and remain positive and patient with results.

Support.

Remove barriers to employee success, including personal barriers such as wounded egos and a sense of loss, as well as professional barriers such as the time and resources necessary to carry out a change plan.

Influence.

Influence is about gaining compliance and commitment to drive change. Identify critical stakeholders and define what “buy-in” looks like from each of them to result in leading to a successful outcome. Communicate the vision for the change in a way that resonates with their value drivers.

Learn.

Never assume you have all the answers, ask questions, and gather formal and informal feedback. Input and feedback will allow you to make constant adjustments during the change.

Navigating change is not easy, hence it is critical for leaders of change to be resilient, because it helps people cope with the inherent pressure of change, uncertainty, and any setbacks.

Need to lead your team through change? Let us help.

Focused on delivering both commercial and financial outcomes, we take care of your people to ensure they remain engaged and excited. We understand that when it comes to strategy, execution is actually the hardest part, and so we roll our sleeves up and work with you to ensure we can deliver the required outcomes for your business. Our co-founders have a combined experience of over 50 years’ working as Executives in organisations delivering outcomes for shareholders. Reach out for a no obligation conversation on how we can help you, by emailing us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au

What gets measured gets done

If it’s not part of your KPIs it’s probably not worth measuring. Most of us have heard the phrase ‘what measures gets done’. Sounds simple right? But when it comes to measuring what matters, it gets a bit tricker.

There are many organisations that aren’t clear on what they should be measuring. An easy way to address this is by using my KPI scorecard – see the breakdown below.

Alignment to strategy

Ensure the metrics being measured align with your organisation’s strategy.  For example, if you’re measuring organic traffic to your website but your strategy is all about driving leads via performance advertising, then this should be your first focus. Every KPI should have a measurable lead indicator. Sure, you can measure outside of this, but put your KPI measurements first and ensure they are adequately resourced before looking at anything else.

Set targets

For each of the key metrics, set targets that are a stretch by achievable.  These targets should align to a financial year; end of year target and monthly profile to deliver the end of year metric. 

Look at your baseline for last fin year and then consider the environment you’re operating in now and what kind of % increase you think can realistically be achieved. Talk to the relevant experts in the business and ask them to help form a plausible growth scenario. 

Regular measurement

When selecting what data outputs you’ll be measuring, get picky.

There should be no more than 20 key metrics that a business reviews and measures each week. For metrics that aren’t performing; a detailed plan should be prepared for the next month to get the metric back on track.

Refresh your metrics

Sticking to the same strategy all year isn’t always realistic. The beauty of measuring strategic outcomes each month allows for real time business decisions. This informed angle, means you can confidently pivot when necessary. If this is the case, update your metrics to align with these changes. And don’t forget to clearly document these changes and communicate them to the wider team. Especially those who are managing measurement.

Top Tip

It’s important to note; while financial metrics are critical, non-financial metrics are also key drivers, working to align the overall vision and values of the organisation.

Stop your reporting

Once you’ve sorted your KPI scorecard, it’s time to take a step back. Most organisations have so much reporting that it doesn’t get reviewed or given the attention needed to make it valuable. This is a common problem and can also make the task of analysing data end up in the ‘too hard basket’.

So stop. Now that you have a clear idea of what you should be focussing on, everything else is just clutter. Put in place one weekly dashboard of the top 20 metrics that align to the business objectives.  Provide performance and commentary for how each of the metrics are tracking. If you have a clear view on these, you’re much better off than measuring more but not reporting accurately. 

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Need a starting point?

Whiteark can help. We have a network of experts with practical experience implementing metrics measurements that matter to organisations.

Whether it’s advice or hands-on assistance, the Whiteark team are your go-to for valuable data analysis.  Contact whiteark@whiteark.com.au or call +61 459 826 221 to discuss.