HR

This week the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reported that the main reason for workers changing their employer was due the need for higher wages and better benefits. This is compared to the same poll last year in which job satisfaction was the key reason for workers wanting to change employers.
So what has changed? Employees are finding that pay freezes implemented during the darkest days of the recession are now meaning that they are struggling to keep up with inflation and thus looking for work elsewhere, and those who are unable to find work elsewhere are reporting greater levels of stress at work and are feeling less satisfied with their jobs.
Therefore surely it must be in the interest of employers to support their employees by ensuring they have the life skills needed to deal with the issues surrounding their work life? Perhaps by giving managers the training, tools and coaching needed to understand and aid not just themselves but all workers within an organization they would find increased levels of job satisfaction and levels of work related stress reduced which in turn would surely increase motivation and productivity?
It would be interesting to hear other peoples thoughts on this issue.

I know you’re very excited that Britain’s Got Talent will be back on our screens this Saturday. But this blog is about a kind of talent that you won’t see on stage, probably because watching a talented employee would be incredibly boring… maybe that’s why they go unnoticed!

Britain (and come to think of it, every other country in the world!) is full of talented, ambitious, creative and intelligent people who want to be proud of their work and yet all we hear about are the bad ones. Just like when raising children, spending the most time with the ones who act up will only encourage the others to act up. What about the well-behaved? What about the ones who try hard? Well they’re alright on their own so we let them get on with it! Wrong!

We should be nurturing our talent. With unemployment figures at staggering levels we have vast opportunities to find the right person for the role and then help them to grow into the best employees you have, who knows? You could be handing them the reins someday. So here are some tips for spotting undetected talent:

Graduates:

Graduates are funny aren’t they? For the most part their work experience is limited to a check-out job and a degree that earns them no life skills. They are in a catch-22 of no experience –no employment – no experience. And with so many of them unemployed they are literally ripe for the picking by clever companies. Why are graduates so great?

1. although they may not yet have much work experience, they are intelligent (Uni’s not that easy you know) and they are used to working to deadlines. Give them something to do and they will get it done!

2. they are used to learning, so they are happy to learn new skills and grow in your company. If you are willing to support them they can become an excellent asset in a short space of time.

3. they know their stuff. Use them for what they have studied for 3 years. If it’s computers and you have hired them for sales, why not get them to set up an online marketing plan where they will need to do all the coding. If they studied law and you’ve hired them for admin, why not ask them to review the company policies and make sure they’re inline with what’s required.

So you’ve got your talent, but how do your nurture it?

1. Mentor them. Remember when you first started? You weren’t always so clever! Let them learn from your experiences as well as their own.

2. Ask them what they need to help the transition between university and working life. If you can support them with this they’ll be more willing to help the company grow.

3. Train them! You’ll be amazed how fast they’ll learn and apply new skills. If you want to preserve your best people you have to give them opportunities to develop and training is a great way of doing this.

4. Coach them. When you see them for a review, run through the GROW model with them and help them take responsibility, they’ll thank you for your trust and they will repay it.

And most of all, never forget the bottom line: Experience doesn’t always mean Competence. Give someone new a chance, they might just surprise you!

On Channel Five’s The Gadget Show last night the team played a game of giant tetris. We thought it was a brilliant team building exercise, showing the importance of clear and precise communication when working as a team. Enjoy the video here and let us know what you think!

1. Don’t talk to them about anything personal to them. Your employees like to remember that they are human and that at work, their home lives are also appreciated and taken into consideration. If you want to alienate them, make sure you never ask about their families, weekends or holidays.



2. Don’t praise them. When your staff do well for your company and put in the extra work that separates an average job from an excellent one, they deserve praise. Here’s a wacky idea: if you praise them they might just do that excellent job again next time. If you don’t praise, they definitely won’t.
3. Only give negative feedback. Along with not praising them, pointing out solely what they’ve done wrong is a sure fire way to lose staff. However be careful with this one: If you praise them when they do well and provide constructive feedback when they don’t perform to the required standard, they will probably think you’re being reasonable and be eager to please. If you want to alienate them, make sure you only give the negatives!
4. Don’t understand what they like and dislike. I’m not talking about ice-cream flavours. Some employees will love networking or cold calling. Others will hate them. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do them, it just means that it may be harder for them to do the things they don’t like. So if you want to alienate them, pay no attention to what they like and reward them with activities they hate: e.g.: “thanks for all the number crunching, how about a nice afternoon of cold calling”. (Quick tip here, the easiest way to work out what your employees like is through a simple psychometric, NEVER do one of these if you don’t want to keep your staff)
5. Pay no attention to relationships between employees. Some employees get on together, others can’t stand each other. If you make sure never to pay attention to this you can always alienate staff by assuming they get on great with their co-workers. Easy!
6. Assume the worst. If someone is unusually late for work, assume that it is because they are lazy good-for-nothings. They haven’t bothered to get out of bed or leave five minutes earlier. It is not because there has been a home emergency, or a car accident that they couldn’t foresee. To make sure they know that you think they’re lazy, when they come in flushed from running up the stairs ready to apologise, say to them “late night last night was it?” and walk off.
7. Don’t acknowledge their work. In some ways this is an even better way to alienate your staff than refusing to praise them. When they complete a task, don’t mention it at all. That way they’ll feel that that report they spent 3 months writing hasn’t been read and is of no use to the company.
8. Forget their name. This one’s brilliant. They’ll be so baffled as to why you can’t remember their name when they’ve been in and out of your office for the last six months that they’ll forget to correct you, and then they’ll feel so worried about the ensuing misnomers that they might just hand in their resignation the next day.
9. When they go on leave (which you personally approved), send them an e-mail each day asking why they haven’t shown up for work. It’s a great cause of stress when they get back!
10. Pass off their ideas as your own. You can’t praise them because that might make your staff feel valued. So even if you think they’ve suggested something clever, dismiss it and at the next meeting, paraphrase it for yourself. Whereas previously they may have thought it must not have been a good idea, this strategy has the added bonus of making them hate your guts.

So there you have it! 10 simple steps to losing staff and alienating your employees. Please feel free to add to this list, there are those out there desperate for these tips!