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Practical tips to evolve employee performance

Posted: 22 Nov 2019 12:00 PM PST

As businesses across the globe are becoming more agile and the concept of work is evolving as well, a lot of real-world problems are arising for employers.

There are a few issues that top the list namely:

  • How to schedule work across offices around different locations, cities and even countries
  • How to encourage collaboration when teams work in different corners on the globe and across time-zones
  • Measuring or gauging employee performance VIA time (clocking in or clocking out to be more precise) when schedules and duties differ

The concern here is that with agile work, a lot of employees no longer work from standard offices and are performing their tasks from off-site, work-from-home, or remote locations; working odd hours, without access to infrastructure to provide a time-based evaluation. As such slacking off has become a concern for employers, both because it is happening and because you think it might be happening as well (which is worse because it puts you in a bad spot mentally).

So, its good to understand, what your options are as a manager, or as an employer. To help keep expectations clear and build transparent models of gauging employee performance, here are a few tips that can help engage with your human resource:

1. Non-invasive performance review mechanisms

First things first, your employees are the engine that drives your corporate machine. They are the lifeblood that pumps through your industrial veins; so it is important to acknowledge their concerns and build an environment that is communicative, transparent and welcoming.

It is good to be straight with your employees, I have experienced horrible examples where some of my past employers didn't understand me coming in late and didn't acknowledge me going home late either.

Part of my job was dealing with international customers, across time-zones. Something that caused me to sit in late and something I would make up for across my other workdays. Our employees are taking time away from their families to be with you. Their time spent with you is an investment, so help them better manage it. Be clear with them and open up communications – Tell them that employment is a performance-oriented task and as such their performance is subject to evaluation, coaching and improvement.

A good way to do that is to sit down regularly with your employees and chat, ask them how their work-days are proceeding and if they require any support, this will help you get a sense of their work direction and also help set up a non-invasive performance review mechanism.

2. Set up skill-based expectations

It is a good idea to match employee skills with organizational expectations. You may have star performers who are spending time in the trenches waiting for a good opportunity to come along that helps them shine.

This is where your Human Resource (HR) departments come in handy. Regular surveys and employee round-tables help you get a sense of where employee morale lies, it also helps you explore individual talents and get a sense of employees waiting to be discovered.

When you've built an environment where employee strengths are matched with organizational expectations, you've built a recipe for success. According to Harvard, setting up "the organization of your dreams" and I paraphrase: is about adding value to your employees, instead of merely extracting it and the work itself is intrinsically rewarding.

If you've built an environment that acknowledges employee strengths and build work for them around that, you've built a dream company around your dream team.

These sessions are different from the ones you should regularly do with your employees/staff. Those are done to keep people motivated and in check. These are done to help plan successions, transfers and/or promotions.

3. Employ systems that help measure and achieve productivity goals

Now that a conducive work environment has been built, it is time to employ tools to assist with respect to both measuring performance (not as a way to judge) and to improve it as well. Since I have been mostly consulting clients on how to improve their internal and external processes – to help boost efficiency and market reputation. Here are a few tools that I recommend to people and advise businesses to at-least try:

  • I've been using Slack, and it's a pretty good tool to organize conversations and encourage collaboration. It's a pretty nifty tool to help build structured internal communication and helps employees work better and faster which keeps the productivity flowing and in check.
  • Another brilliant tool to manage employee schedules is Monday.com. I love how customizable it is. It feels non-invasive and assistive. The idea is to build systems that are natural and welcoming, that don't feel like the border police.
  • Another key area that is often overlooked is time-management. A lot of clients come to me with this exact problem: how can we employ systems that are non-invasive and real-world? They are seeking systems that maintain timesheets and monitor attendance while employees are working across geographies trying to meet employer interests. I recommend Deputy to all my clients who manage store-front teams/front-line staff. It's a very good tool that helps employees report back very organically. 

The objective is not to make employees feel like their performance is being monitored, it is about building enough trust for them to acknowledge that transparency and self-improvement is in everybody's best interest.

4. Coach and motivate till it hurts

It's very important to keep employees motivated. As a consultant, the one thing I wanted to do was to turn a typical HR head into a Head of Happiness – that is the title that I've thought of adopting one day when my own startup sees the day of light.

The reason for the entire Head of Happiness pitch was my inspiration with the city of Dubai and promise to turn Dubai into the happiest city on the planet. That among other things is the vision of Dubai's leadership and its visionary leader His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, someone who understands that the future is built in the present.

To build such visions and to help your employees see the bigger picture you have to make them understand what the bigger picture is in the first place. That is why with most organizations that I coach, I spend the most time on its people.

Because people will translate your ideas into reality and to keep them moving forward you have to coach and motivate them. Coaching is all about imparting the right amount of wisdom to boost productivity and not overburden the individual. Motivation is both monetary (in the form of appraisals – bonuses, incentives, promotions etc.) and non-monetary (in the form of retreats, offsite trainings, employee appreciation etc.)

Summing it up

Sometimes, in business, we lose sight of what's important, why we took the leap in the first place. I have this final piece of advice for all you folks out there; sit down once in a while and review what your purpose was. Did you really want to be the best soap maker on the planet or was it something simpler? In an effort to achieve profits and to maximize the business potential we sometimes deviate from our core and that (though we might fail to acknowledge it) makes us unhappy in some form or the other.

Your purpose is important for your employees as well, your absolute focus gives them the confidence that their careers and their lives are in good hands, that confidence lets them focus on what's important performance.

How to Build a Culture That Will Help Your Small Business Grow

Posted: 22 Nov 2019 10:00 AM PST

Leaders have long known that company culture can make or break productivity, profitability, and overall business value. At the intersection of workplace culture development and legal operations, there exists a part of every organization that could truly be considered the lungs of the company. How well your team works – cohesively and individually – matters greatly to every facet of your business. And if your company culture is lacking, well, your entire organization is going to have real trouble going the distance. 

The modern workplace calls for more than talent, it calls for extreme trust and a level of transparency most employers aren't yet used to. Business leaders are being asked to share more than ever before, establishing open lines of insight and collaboration from the very top to the very bottom of the organization. It's safer for the company, legally speaking, and it's what today's incoming workforce is demanding. Don't believe me? Today's average cost to replace an employee is about one-third of that person's salary. Add to that the cost of lost productivity, and the average employee turnover at the standard small business can lead to an actual financial crisis. 

Good hiring, followed by good onboarding and good retention, is a critical endeavor for just about every scaling business. Here are some of the top ways to build a culture that helps you grow. 

Hire for culture as much as for skill

You can and should make culture part of your hiring process. There are many questions you can ask during the interview process that will help you determine if and how a prospect will fit with your organization from a culture perspective. For example: 

  • What do you value most at work? 
  • What do you like and dislike about working with a team versus working by yourself on projects? 
  • Can you give an example of when you went above and beyond to help a colleague? 
  • Can you give an example of how you handled an interoffice conflict?
  • Can you give an example of a failure and what you learned from it?
  • Have you ever felt out of place at a previous job? Why? What did you take from that experience?

Interviews are also a good time to discuss with job candidates your company's core mission and beliefs. It's important that candidates know about your policies, your values, and how you address common workplace issues like work-life balance, recognition and achievements, and conflict resolution.

When I make a hire, I like to share what makes me proud of our company, and I make sure to be very transparent about how we prioritize culture. It also gives our job candidates the opportunity to evaluate us just as much as we're evaluating them. After all, company culture isn't just a two-way street — it's the merging of numerous lanes into one superhighway. 

Promote the trust collaboration

When your company is in growth mode, your foundation is shaky by default. Even companies that have implemented processes and invested heavily in talent can't avoid growing pains. I teach clients to implement what I refer to as "the trust collaboration,", where teams are encouraged to have open, vulnerable communication in environments that promote safety and trust.

This usually means establishing protocols in your handbook that talk about how your trust collaboration is defined and executed. The last thing you want is for employees to feel they're being ambushed or put in a situation that makes them uncomfortable. 

The purpose of a trust collaboration is to empower team members to acknowledge the efforts and accomplishments of their colleagues while sharing their challenges without fear of retribution. I've found that opening the door to letting employees talk openly and transparently in a safe environment can minimize workplace drama and improve productivity. 

Along with giving space to air grievances, I strongly encourage finding opportunities to celebrate and glean best practices from others' hard work, successes and even failures (because that's where learning happens). This kind of environment fosters a level of collaboration that most employers want. 

Transparency across the board

An old-school saying I hear a lot with clients is "loose lips sink ships." It's a common phrase in larger organizations, the root of which has to do with the idea that when information is leaked from the top, it turns into rumors, and chaos ensues. The old-school answer was to ensure that those "in the know" kept their mouths shut when it came to everything from changes in leadership to financial performance. 

My answer to this is to do the opposite to a certain extent and embrace transparency. Hear me out.

You don't need to tell your team every time you're concerned about sales performance or are having an off-the-cuff conversation with a potential investor. Team members don't need to be burdened with those details. However, when you are transparent and share that Q2 revenue was below projections and Q3 isn't looking good, a few important things will happen. One, your team will know that leadership trusts them enough to be open and include them in what's happening. Two, you don't risk information being leaked and spiraling out of control to the point that it isn't accurate. Three, you will find that ideas to solve the problem can come from all areas of the company. Perhaps one of those ideas will turn things around by Q3.

Most importantly, when leadership is transparent and communicative, the rest of the company is, too. Closed-off communications and business practices can lead to an environment of uneasiness and even resentment.

When communication is poor, employees tend to fill in the gaps, often with less-than-favorable assumptions. There is no doubt that companies with heightened transparency and collaboration foster engagement and equality, which leads to much higher productivity. 

Demonstrate accountability

Another old-school businessism I don't subscribe to is the notion that failure isn't an option. 

Here's the thing: Failure is the only option. If you aren't failing, you aren't learning. An organization of humans who fear making mistakes is destined to fail. Plus, your turnover will be sky high. Embrace the fact that mistakes will happen – every day – and lean into a culture of accountability. Own mistakes, openly learn from them and grow. It's not enough to put this on a poster in the hall, you must live it. 

Accountability within an organization starts from the top, with transparent performance standards that apply to everyone, including leaders. If I don't model what it looks like to be accountable, then how can I expect my leadership to do this and the people they manage?

A culture of accountability also feeds into the safe, trusting environment that's so important to productivity. Create a workplace where people feel they have the space and the freedom to do their absolute best, mistakes included, and you'll find your recruiting costs ticking to $0. 

Your employees are the lifeblood of the organization, and when they're working together harmoniously, that's when awesome things happen. You can always provide more training or additional resources for your team members to get better at their jobs, but you simply can't train for a culture fit.

Prioritize culture fit during the hiring process, promote the trust initiative across all departments and levels of your business, and make sure you practice the culture you preach.

Four Ways to Reduce Your Business's Carbon Footprint

Posted: 22 Nov 2019 08:00 AM PST

Running a profitable business is hard. Running a profitable business that is carbon accountable is even harder.

But just because our current free-market economic system does not make it easy to run a sustainable operation doesn't mean your business should surrender to climate crisis. Climate change will devastate populations, ravage economies and significantly raise the cost of doing business as resources become scarcer and more expensive. From both a humanitarian and business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense for us to take a stand against uncontrolled climate change by negating our company's carbon footprint.

Beyond dwindling resources, there are other practical reasons to enact policies that reduce your business's greenhouse gas emissions. For one, as the climate emergency escalates, international governments will likely begin to introduce more stringent environmental policies – meaning that if you can neutralize your carbon footprint now, your company will be ahead of the game. In addition, research has found customers prefer eco-friendly brands and has linked a positive impact on the planet with employee satisfaction and morale.

Major corporations like Microsoft, Google, Lyft, and Salesforce are already committed to going carbon neutral, as are smaller companies like Burts Bees and Diamond Foundry. If you want to join them as a pioneer towards sustainability, here are four powerful first steps business leaders can take to make their company more carbon accountable.

Move towards zero waste

The current way we conduct business – that is, through production, transportation, consumption and disposal of materials – accounts for 42% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Implementing a zero-waste approach is a short-term, powerful action that can pay off immediately for the climate.

Moving towards zero waste begins with an assessment of your business's current waste generation, management and disposal. During the audit, you can identify where waste is being generated, how often, and where it goes. From there, you can set waste diversion, prevention, and reduction goals and institute policies to achieve them.

When developing waste-reduction strategies, focus your efforts on reducing, reusing and recycling – in that order.

Other types of zero waste could include going paperless whenever possible, donating old electronics and office furniture, and using packaging material that is reusable, compostable or recyclable. Refiling and recycling ink and toner cartridges should be a priority in an office zero-waste strategy – these vessels are incredibly resource-intensive to manufacture and take thousands of years to decompose.

Harness renewable energy sources

Renewable fuels have become more prevalent over the last several years, largely due to climbing oil and gas prices and growing concerns about climate change. Given the finite nature of fossil fuels and the likelihood of international climate change regulations being enacted in the near future, companies should start measuring and reducing their energy consumption now. Not only will this yield environmental benefits, but give your business a competitive edge when climate policies go into effect.

While taking action may require an initial investment, harnessing green energy sources like solar power will save your company money in the long term.

If you are seeking to buy or lease renewable energy equipment for onsite installation at your workplace, solar panels are the most obvious and likely the most practical option. In addition to providing your property with clean, sustainable power, installing solar panels may qualify your business for a federal tax credit.

If you don't own your property or have limited space, you can look into purchasing renewable energy from your power supplier. Some power companies offer the option to buy "green" service for a small premium in exchange for electricity generated from renewable sources. Depending on the part of the country you are in, you may also be able to choose your own electricity supplier. In states that allow competition among electricity generators, you can opt to work with a supplier who specializes in producing energy from renewable sources.

Cut business travel emissions

Be it air, car or train, modern transportation modes are among the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In the U.S., the transportation sector accounts for 29% of total greenhouse gas emissions each year. By reducing emissions and expenses related to business travel, you can minimize your company's impact on the environment while potentially increasing your bottom line.

If you don't think there is such a thing as business travel emissions, just ask the GHG Protocol, an organization that is tasked with measuring such emissions. Large corporations such as IBM have adopted standards from the organization to help meausure their carbon footprint. Travel companies themselves even help to cut down on emissions.

Encourage your employees to bike to work by providing a space for them to change and shower. Facilitate carpooling among colleagues with commuter-matching programs and incentives like preferred parking spots. When flying, book the more fuel-efficient economy seats on direct flights.

Of course, the best way to reduce business travel emissions is to not travel at all. Consider allowing employees to work from home to cut commuter emissions. Whenever possible, hold virtual meetings and training sessions rather than flying. This would also include paying to have a speaker come to your location for training as opposed to sending people offiste for training.

Educate and engage employees

Finally, one of the most powerful ways to make your workforce more carbon accountable is to actively engage your employees in the cause. Disheartened by bleak forecasts and jaded by constant corporate greenwashing, it's easy for individuals to give into climate despair, the sense of powerlessness that keeps us from addressing problems with the environment in a meaningful way.

To combat environmental discouragement and help empower employees to see their own power to affect positive change, educate your team on carbon accountability by making it personal. When employees understand why they are being told to change long-time habits, they are less likely to resist new eco-conscious policies.

In order to inspire your team members to take ownership of their carbon impact, encourage input on workplace energy-saving ideas at staff meetings and by setting up suggestions boxes. Consider instituting a corporate matching program where you financially replicate employee donations to eco-friendly nonprofits. Enroll your team in an environmental subscription service like Forest Founders, which enables users to use a personal dashboard to track and negate their carbon footprint by planting trees through a network of nonprofits like the National Forest Foundation (NFF). Carbon tracking subscription services can help gamify the process of carbon accountability and witness the power of their own environmental impact firsthand.

Nature and capitalism don't have to be at odds. By minimizing the carbon footprint of your business, you can cut energy costs, improve employee morale, build your brand's reputation as a leader in sustainability and even increase your bottom line – all while protecting the resources and planet we need to operate and thrive.

How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business

Posted: 22 Nov 2019 05:00 AM PST

Many people primarily use social media platforms to network and keep in touch with family and friends. Studies show that approximately 3.2 billion people worldwide are social media users with one in every three people actively present on Facebook, which accounts for over 2.32 billion users. Marketers, producers and business owners see the gold mine in using social media platforms as a tool to reach out to the target audience worldwide.

As a business owner, it is imperative to have a presence on all popular social media platforms as a means of promoting your business. According to Oberlo.com, 73% of marketers believe in the effectiveness of using social media to promote their businesses. Similarly, studies conducted by Global Web Index in 2018, revealed that 54% of social media users check out a product or services on social media before patronizing such goods or services.

Using social media tools to promote your business goes beyond having a large following on popular social media platforms or making a few random posts once in a while. Specifically, it involves:

  • Commiting more time social media usage

  • Working on a target audience

  • Using relevant hashtags where necessary

  • Posting engaging comments, and more.

Here's how you can develop a strong social media presence to promote your business on all social media platforms.

1. Set specific goals you want to achieve

Before committing to a social media platform to grow your business, have a clearly defined goal of what you want to achieve. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is my goal for creating social media pages?

  • Who is my target audience?

  • How do I reach out to these target audiences?

Your responses to these questions will depend on how well you're familiar with major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and others. You should be 'SMART' about your goals, which means your goals should:

  1. Focus on creating leads that will target a specific audience 

  2. Have a yardstick for measuring the level of achievement attained. For example, you should give yourself a target of the number of new followers you want to achieve. 

  3. Delegate. If you run an organization, you should be able to assign specific tasks to your team members. Or you might have to hire a social media specialist to help you in achieving your goals.

  4. Be realistic. Before setting your goals, you should focus on what is achievable given the resources at hand. For example, you can set a realistic goal of gaining a hundred new followers

  5. Be time conscious. You should set a specific time frame within which you want to achieve your goal. For exmaple, you can give yourself a timeframe of a month to get your hundred followers.

2. Interact with your audience and understand their needs

Interact with your audience regularly and let them see the human side of you. Be more concerned about their posts and comments, and react accordingly. Respond to an audience who shows interest in your post, and they'll be willing to follow and read your posts.

When interacting with your audience understand their needs and be more intimate with them. You should be able to figure out what they want to read about, and not just promoting your brand. 

Also, creating engaging posts and comments about other aspects of your business will portray you as an expert and an interesting person to follow on social media platforms.

3. Link your social media accounts with your websites

Link your social media accounts to your websites. When making a post on any or all of the social media platforms, add a link to your website to generate more leads. Also, have social media icons for visitors to your website to follow your social media pages.

4. Share your social media accounts

Let the people around you be aware of your business presence on social media networks. However, do not share your social media account in a 'spamming' or annoying style. 

Make your presence known on popular social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Snapchat and your audience will be willing to share your content with others.

5. Use keywords and hashtags on your social media accounts

When using keywords for social media, focus on using keywords related to your business. Use words that are commonly searched for on Google. 

Also, using trending hashtags related to your business on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn will attract more users to your social media platforms. However, do not overuse hashtags. 

6. Include your social media links in your email

When sending out emails, add your social media links to your email account. This will likely make people curious and more likely to check out your social media pages and website.

7. Entice your audience with games and gifts

When developing quality content for your social media platforms, include questions and games to make your posts engaging and draw more attention, likes and followers. You can also use the reward system like giving away free ebooks, discounts for products and free trials to entice your audience to earn more followership.

8. Maintain a regular pace of posting

Your audience will look forward to your posts if they are captivating and engaging. Posting regularly at consistent intervals will give your audience content to look forward to. You can publish your posts at regular intervals, for example, twice daily, five times weekly and so on. You can schedule your posts using automation tools to save more time and make your postings appear regularly. Therefore, maintaining a regular pace of posting will give your audience and customers reason to connect with you on your social media handles.

9. Make findings of what social media is suitable for growing your business

Find out what it takes to get more likes and followership on your social media platform. Here are some interesting facts and figures about the type of audience you can find on popular social media networks:

10. Use "Frequently Asked Questions" on your social media platforms

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) can help your audience, clients or customers resolve issues or complaints. You can use FAQs relating to complaints you have solved in the past or use questions likely to be asked by your audience. Your audience will always spend more time on your social media page when you use FAQs to help them answer questions about your business. 

11. Optimize contents for each social media platform

Social media platforms are quite different, which is why you need to optimize your posts to meet each social media requirements. Use different posts on each social media platform to share the same message. Use pictures and videos for Instagram, brief texts of not more than 150 characters for twitter, videos for Snapchat and find out what works best with each social media platform.

12. Have a plan

If you already have an idea that works well in getting you more followers and generating new leads, stick with it. Strategizing, planning and keeping in tune with the evolving social media trends will help you gather and retain more followers on the social media network.

Every thriving business has a strong presence on all major social platforms. Following the tips we've shared here will also help you to create a robust social presence for your business.
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