Becoming the Boss: Your Business Journey to a People Powered Business

The universal journey of leadership in business

It’s a classic tale we hear from leaders in small to medium businesses across all industries: I started this business because I had a great idea, I love what I do, I saw an opportunity and I went for it – but I didn’t realise that meant I was the boss.

What we often see is small to medium business owners who are indispensable to the day-to-day operations of their businesses. This means that taking time away for them becomes challenging if it isn’t non-existent. As leaders in our businesses, we might even feel that we have to operate like this or we might fail.

Surprisingly, one of the best measures of success is the freedom your business affords you. What this requires, however, is that you stop operating like a business owner and start approaching your business like you’re the boss, the CEO, the leader.

While small to medium business...

Hire right in a tough market 

What are you doing to attract the right applicants in a tough market?

Hiring right in a tough market isn’t anything new but we are experiencing a particularly challenging period for attracting great applicants to roles across the board.

If you’ve hired recently, or are in the process of hiring right now, you’ll know what we’re talking about.

Where before you would be inundated with applications, right now it’s looking more like a dried-up oasis. Even the bad applications aren’t coming through. You don’t always want to hire anyone as a stop-gap because they could create more damage to your business and team in the long-run. It’s still incredibly important to be considered and strategic with your recruitment processes.

Business owners and managers alike are frustrated, desperate for help and uncertain about how to continue without finding the right staff (or any staff) for their under-resourced teams....

5 Key Elements to Effective Onboarding

Do you know the core principles of effectively onboarding your new hire?

Did you know that onboarding effectively can drastically reduce the speed at which your new hire is functioning at full capacity?  This timeframe can be reduced down from the typical 12-18 months down to 2-6 months.

According to SHRM, the first 45 days of employment account for up to 20% of worker turnover while Sapling HR credits poor onboarding experiences as doubling the likelihood of the employee finding another position.

Effective onboarding is critical to engaging your new hire in their new role and for your business or organisation. This can increase the likelihood that your staff will stay on longer and be performing their best sooner rather than later.

According to ClickBoarding, interactive employees who engage in a structured onboarding program are 69% more likely to stay for three years.

There are 5 key elements that a business of any size can...

How are you increasing the chances of keeping great team members onboard?

If you employ or manage staff in any capacity you’ll know what a sucker punch it can be when a great staff member turns in their resignation, perhaps out of the blue, or even hints at the idea of moving on.

Finding great staff is like winning the lottery but keeping them long-term can prove tricky depending on a variety of factors. Post pandemic, we’re seeing trends that reveal keeping great staff is becoming even more challenging but there are some essential things you can do to keep great people in your team, longer.

Why do you want to keep great staff in your team in the first place?

The most obvious reason would be because they’re great. You can trust them, they are reliable, they show up and they do great work and you don’t have to worry about them – what’s not to love about keeping great staff?

The great players in the team you already have are part of what...

What are you doing between your new hire’s offer acceptance and start date?

If you employ staff, engage contractors, or rely on people to help deliver your products or services, then you know that sometimes there’s a gap between the acceptance of an offer and your new hire’s start date.

This is what we in HR call the High-Risk Pre-Start Date Zone.

What exactly is the high-risk pre-start date zone?

It’s the period of time between when you extend an offer of employment and your applicant accepts, and their actual start date.

This period of time will vary from applicant to applicant, and a trend that is growing is applicants taking an extended period of leave, up to six weeks, added to their typical four weeks’ notice period at their current place of employment before they get started with you. While not every applicant will take almost three months to begin work, it does happen.

During this zone of time, typical behaviours can be an email the night before...

The most successful recruitment campaigns rely on you as the business owner or manager being able to choose from a great list of quality talent, a perfectly suited shortlist, who are all skilled for the role you are hiring for – and ultimately are a great fit for your team.

But have you ever found yourself without this stellar shortlist? Instead, you may have found yourself with only one or two applicants, neither of whom are ideal, but you’re desperate, so you’ll probably hire one of them. Or you have a lengthy list of people you’re considering, but none are ideal, they are ok, they have applied, but they are a mish mash of skills, experience and suitability.

The thing is, in order to achieve a high-quality shortlist of applicants to choose from, it’s imperative that your candidate attraction strategies, including any advertising process, social posts or invitations to apply are targeted, aligned to your requirements and engaging to your...

In a competitive market where applicants are in short supply and the struggle to even find one person who might be suitable for your role is real, it’s easy to think that there is no need to screen and assess applicants. Well, there is no one to screen, or so few applicants so what’s the point, right?

Actually, wrong. You see, despite there being far fewer applicants to chose from, the importance of making the right hiring choices hasn’t changed. The reality is you can’t outrun a bad hire. So even if there is only one applicant, hiring the wrong person is guaranteed to cause you more frustration, more stress and cost you more than hiring no one at all.

When we had only a handful of applicants to select from, screening effectively is even more important because in these moments we can lose focus and clarity on what’s really important, out of desperation, overwhelm and stress. We waiver on the previous non negotiables, and start to consider...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are second guessing yourself, feeling like you’ve gone crazy because you are certain you are clear on the conversation you had with an employee, yet they seem certain the conversation didn’t happen. Or perhaps the discussion is acknowledged, but the message you were sure you delivered simply seems to have been forgotten, misunderstood or completely misinterpreted?

You find yourself going around in circles and ending up back at square one with any required change or improvement seeming to never be getting any start or momentum.

Here’s the truth, we never think we need notes of those meetings, discussions or incidental ‘chats’ we have had – until we do. We think we will remember them in vivid detail, because they are so clear in our mind in that moment, but we have so much more on our plates as business owners and leaders, that the reality is we won’t remember. Like everything...

Whether you have a tiny shortlist of applicants, or you’ve been absolutely drowning in resumes and are feeling completely overwhelmed, making the right hiring decision is critical to your businesses success.

When we find ourselves with only a limited list to select from, we can often start to flex the boundaries and parameters that we were hiring within. Sure, they don’t have the experience, but it’s better than nothing. Or you have a gut feel that they won’t really be a great fit but you’re so desperate to fill the role you ignore your gut and push forward based on skills and experience.

Conversely, when you are absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer volume of applications you have received for any one role, it can be incredibly hard to get clear about who is really the stand out applicant, and what to focus on when shortlisting, or how to choose when interviewing.

In small to medium sized businesses, when you are growing your...

Understanding how to motivate your team can be one of the biggest challenges business owners, managers and leaders face. Finding the right people for your business is just the first step, once you have the players in place, getting the most out of them, motivating them and pushing for greater productivity and motivation is an ongoing pain point which can often feel like some sort of secret witchcraft.

For many managers, when thinking of ways to motivate staff, our automatic default is to entice them with some form of incentive, or show them recognition with some sort of gift, reward or show of gratitude. Some people even think that the bigger the gesture, the more expensive the gift or reward, the higher the motivation should be. Then, after outlaying the money, expecting a huge return on their investment by achieving high motivation across the team, they are disappointed, frustrated and resentful that their efforts have had no direct impact, and in fact can sometimes appear...