/U;/U/People;/U/U – USA;/U/U – AUS;/U/U – NZ;/U/U – UK;/U/U – ZA;/U/U – AUS/16-10;/U/U – NZ/16-10;/U/U – UK/16-10;/U/U – USA/16-10;/U/U – ZA/16-10;

Whether it’s your new freelancer, that bearded enigma constantly lurking near the coffee machine, the contractor who keeps avoiding your calls, or your permanent staff who continually check their emails, every five minutes…poor employee productivity can have disastrous consequences for your business.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you knew what was going on in your employees’ heads…so you could fix the problem? Well, we can help! Here are 10 secrets your staff desperately want you to know.

Secret 1: “I’d work a heck of a lot harder if you just showed me some appreciation”

We get it, you’re busy. You don’t have time to dish out praise left right and centre or host an elaborate awards ceremony every month. But your staff are your greatest asset and showing them a little love every now and again is crucial to creating a happy, motivated workforce.

Recognition doesn’t have to be a massive affair either. Here at Xero we appreciate employees on the regular by singing their praise on Yammer, our internal chat network, or simply getting up to go clap them on the back.

So what should you do?

• Take some time to celebrate little wins; for example a public shout-out in your team meeting, a handwritten thank you note or even a gift voucher (the more personalised the better) can be all be great options to help your staff feel valued.
• Encourage others to do the same. This is how you’ll build a supportive, positive environment in your workplace.

Secret 2: “I don’t want you to try to be my friend”

Remember that Friday drinks where your staff were trying to let loose…you tagged along, and the night quickly degraded into small talk and awkward silences?

*Cringe*

Friendly, supportive employee-manager relationships are one thing, but beingfriends with your staff is another. Your employees need to vent sometimes, and constantly being around their manager means they’re continually reminded of work, can’t quite let loose and be themselves.

So what should you do?

• Read the signs; be aware of your team’s body language. Is it closed off and stand-offish or open and welcoming?
• Wait for an invite before jumping into a staff event
• Accept that there’s a limit to your relationship and it’s probably there for a good reason…! Think twice before adding them on Facebook or other social networks – it can be up there with a mum friend request in terms of awkwardness!

Secret 3: “I want a bit more flexibility to fit around my lifestyle”

Gone are the days when you can dictate your staff work 9 to 5. More and more employees are looking for better work arrangements, and companies which don’t cater for this will quickly suffer.

So what should you do?

• Provide the option of working remotely
• Negotiate a happy middle ground e.g. 2 days in the office and 3 days off-site
• Take advantage of technology that makes this a reality, whether it’s migrating to a cloud based project management system like WorkflowMax, or utilising communication tools like Skype, Google Hangouts, Slack etc.
• Educate and empower your staff on all the tools available at their disposal which will help make “flexible working” a reality (check out Stay on Task Working from Home: 8 Powerful Time Tracking Apps for some tips and tools!)
• And finally… be supportive of whatever is going on in their lives – whether they’ve moved further away from the CBD or they’re using their lunch breaks to train for a marathon.

Secret 4: “Your feedback style really sucks”

It’s so much easier to be a critic than a celebrator – Maria Sharapova, Brain Pickings

Focusing solely on the negative in a performance review is never a good idea. You don’t want to leave your employees to deal with the crushing weight of everything they need to improve before the next review rolls around or set such unrealistic goals that they feel disheartened and depressed thinking about whether they’ll even be able to accomplish them!

So what should you do?

• Use a “Commend, Recommend, Commend” formula, which sandwiches the negative in between two positive affirmations – for example, “Dave, I love how you’ve taken ownership of Project X, but I’d like to see you bounce ideas around with the team a bit more before you go with a particular idea. On the whole great work – the client’s loved how you’ve kept them in the loop the whole way.
• Practice active listening
• Provide a safe place where they can share what’s on their mind
• Make sure you let them know where they can find support. Make sure you let them know where they can find support. Xero offers staff access to the EAP programme, which offers employees access to emotional or physical support (at no extra charge) for a wide range of issues such as stress and pressure, depression and anxiety, bullying and harassment etc.

Secret 5: “Stop sugar-coating things”

Do you try and make everything sound nice and fluffy, glossing over bad feedback or failed projects? Do you pretend everything is perfect or provide only half truths to staff?

If you really want to create a thriving workplace environment where your staff are motivated, productive and happy, you need to build trust and create transparency.

So what should you do?

• Be genuine in your communications. Be straight up about stuff (while being tactful).
• Make sure you bring staff along on the journey, continually share progress/updates and milestones and check-in with them on the regular!

• Host group brainstorming/planning sessions so everyone has an input
• Keep an open door policy and encourage open, honest communication

Secret 6: “I hate that you have favourites”

In one of his recent stand-ups, Canadian-Indian comedian Russell Peters joked about parents loving their children equally, but liking one better than the other. Unfortunately in the workplace, this can often be true. But if as a boss you show favouritism towards a particular employee or team, it will quickly breed resentment, make other staff unhappy, competitive or downright keen to leave.

So what should you do?

• Try to create project teams with a diverse set of skills – that way you won’t be tempted to push similar kinds of projects to the same people.
• Encourage staff to take the initiative and put their hand up if they want to pursue a project
• Conduct regular feedback/surveys to check the over-riding mood/sentiment in your organisation
• Offer opportunities to upskill your staff in directions they want to pursue

Secret 7: “I don’t feel like I belong to something bigger”

If employees feel like they’re simply “pushing pixels” and not working towards a bigger goal, or making a meaningful impact in some way, this can quickly lead to a lack of effort, enthusiasm… and all those issues we talked about at the start.

So what should you do?

• Have an induction for new starters; this is a great opportunity to introduce your organisation’s history, culture, purpose and values.
• Shout about your organisational mission – don’t have it tucked away somewhere where no one remembers what it is! For instance, make a manifesto, slap some posters around your office, have it clearly outlined on your website and make sure staff understand what it’s all about!
• Connect projects to the bigger company goals – so staff know exactly how their individual tasks contribute to the bigger picture!

Secret 8: “I feel stressed all the time…I just want some balance!”

The lack of a good work life balance can quickly take its toll on staff; if you’ve been noticing a lot of zombie faces, excessive coffee-consumption or more frequent dipping into the liquor cabinet when working late nights, it’s time to assess what’s going on. Because an environment like that isn’t sustainable and will quickly induce creative burnout.

So what should you do?

• Encourage staff to take their lunch breaks and yes, venture outside.
• Host a wellness week (some ideas include nutrition seminars, breakfast on the house and a quick bootcamp)
• Offer flexible working hours and the option of working remotely.
• Express lunchtime yoga sessions
• Try mindfulness and meditation education

Secret 9: “Timesheets are such a pain!”

Okay, you probably already had an inkling that your team hates filling out timesheets, but if you’re using a primitive system to capture staff’s time, such as paper forms or even clunky spreadsheets, more time is actually wasted chasing staff down or trying to remember what time was spent on what jobs. It’s hugely inefficient.

So what should you do?

Make time-tracking as easy as possible by considering online time tracking options, such as WorkflowMax, which apart from an all-in-one project management system, has 6 different time tracking options available.

Secret 10: “Quit micro-managing me”

Your staff don’t want their manager breathing down their neck at every turn; they want autonomy. But if you constantly hover over them, reminding them about deadlines and checking in on progress several times a day, you’re likely to stifle their creativity, making them feel like they have no room to grow and develop.

So what should you do?

• Trust your staff; you’ve hired talented individuals to do a specific job. They’ll be fine!
• Encourage responsibility and ownership over projects
• Set milestones for project teams to be held accountable to
• Host regular check-ins – weekly 15 minute sessions for progress updates and reviews
• Let your staff know you’re available if they need assistance

Tell Your Employees About the Performance Review in Advance

Make sure that your employees know that you will be conducting a performance review and tell them on which date it will be happening. When your employee is mentally prepared for a performance review, they may take the time to look into how productive they’ve actually been and it might spark interest in them to do their best in the workplace at all times.

“A recent survey from the Society for Human Resource Management found that 72% of organisations conduct formal appraisals only once a year, whilst only 2% of employees gave their employer an A grade for their performance management.”

Have a Specific Goal in Mind for Each Candidate

You need to make sure that you know what you will be accomplishing in this meeting. Does your employee need to improve upon certain skills? Do they need a raise? Should they take a break for a while? Don’t lump all of your employees into the same review system or checklist. Each employee’s work performance will differ and so should your review about them.

Some Key Points to Cover

Some of the most important points to cover during a performance review are the following:

• Do the employees day-to-day actions align with the businesses objectives?
• Is the employee held accountable to their duties and expectations?
• Are there documents to support your employees work habits?
• Does the employee need to be recognized or awarded for performing well?
• Is the employee compensated clearly and fairly for their work initiatives?

Ask Them if They Have Any Questions

Sometimes, employees can be so consumed with new information that they may not have time to think about the questions they wanted to have answered. By asking them if they have any questions at any point during the meeting, it will allow them to let the information sink in, and be able to have an easier conversation about their thoughts. When you are conducting a performance review, make sure that it’s not a one-way conversation and that you are open to your employees feedback and concerns.

Brainstorm a Plan Together

It’s important that you can both discuss a plan for a course of action moving forward. Does the employee need to work a little harder? Let them know that you will be monitoring their performance a little more closely and give them dates as to when they can expect another review.

Maybe your employee has been asking for a raise; this would be a great time to let them know if and when that could come to fruition and discuss why or why not. Try not to leave any questions or problem unresolved and instead, come up with a plan or solution that has actionable goals and timelines. Focus on SMART goal setting: (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely)

Make Sure You Summarise What Needs to Be Done

After the performance review has taken place, make sure that your employee understands what has been discussed at the meeting. Let them summarise their thoughts about the meeting and make sure that they don’t leave with any questions unanswered. This meeting should be for the benefit of both the employer and the employee.

When the Meeting is Over

Don’t let the open-ended discussion end there. Let your employees know that they can come to you at any time with any concerns that they may have. Discuss which method works best for you to respond in a timely manner (i.e. via email, meeting or phone conversation).

Remember that the information that comes out during a performance review shouldn’t be a surprise to your employees. Your employees should know how well or how poorly they are doing on an ongoing basis to ensure maximum workplace productivity and to keep an ongoing dialogue about workplace expectations.

Happy to go the extra mile

Engaged employees really care about your company and what they’re working on. They don’t have to be pushed, and they happily go the extra mile. They believe in you and your company vision.

Employees tend to be happier if they are in jobs or roles that match both their interests and their skills, and feel that they are making a meaningful contribution to their employer and even society as a whole. Importantly, engaged employees are appropriately recognised and rewarded for the contribution they make.

Bottom line benefit

As a business owner or manager, you can see the benefit of happy, engaged employees on your bottom line. According to Gallup, companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share. Engagement also influences other HR areas such as retention, performance, and employer branding.

Yet despite the huge impetus to get employee engagement right, Gallup research also shows as many as 87% of employees worldwide are not engaged.

Follow through really matters

While the employee happiness survey is a critical component in benchmarking the level of employee satisfaction from year to year. It, in itself, is not the end game.

An employee survey has no hope in influencing employee engagement if you do not act on the results.

Here are our five tips to help make your employee happiness surveys really count.

1. Don’t ask too many questions. Ask the right ones.

As a rule, a short survey, is a good survey. How many questions you ask, depends on your company and what you do. But you should focus questions around key areas such as:

• Management and leadership
• Manager-employee-co-worker interaction
• Alignment of individual goals with business goals
• Recognition

You need to ask enough questions to get a good handle on employee sentiment and morale, but you don’t want to the survey to be too onerous for employees to complete.

2. Ask a number of open-ended questions

It’s important to encourage your employees to express their true feelings and opinions without repercussions. So, anonymity is crucial. Asking open-ended questions in your employee happiness survey allows you to draw out golden nuggets of information that you just can’t elicit with a standard ratings question.

3. Communicate the value for employees

Your employees may think that completing the survey is a chore, and a bit of a time waste of time, if they see no perceived value. For your employees to see value, they need to believe that you’ll action the responses and bring about positive change where necessary.

4. Report the survey results and your plan of action

Announce the results of your employee happiness survey to your employee and be sure to let them know how you plan to respond to that feedback and what changes are going to be made. More importantly still, make sure to follow through on it and regularly communicate the progress.

5. Conduct surveys frequently

There is no doctrine that stipulates you can only survey your employees once a year. In fact, you really should measure culture at least once a quarter. As long as you’re only asking a few questions, you publish the results, you act on the feedback, and there’s clear value to your employees, you can conduct surveys more frequently.

Act on your employee survey responses

Far too many businesses simply focus on measuring engagement without acting on the responses. Remember, the worst thing you can do with your employee happiness survey is to ask for feedback and then do absolutely nothing with it.

1. Be clear on dos and don’ts: Let your employees know what you consider to be appropriate and acceptable behaviour. Do this at the start and be consistent. If everyone is on the same page, then any disciplining will be a lot easier.
2. Let people tell their story: Be a good listener. Sometimes people just want to be able to get things off their chest, so put on your Agony Aunt hat and be there for them.
3. Find out the real issue: Dig deeper into any conflicts that come up. Do you notice any patterns? If something – or someone – is popping up often, then that should give you a clue about how to solve the problem.
4. Act quickly: If you can nip disagreements in the bud before they become a full blown fight, then you’ll earn your employees’ respect and trust.
5. Be accommodating: Sometimes we just have to accept that not everyone is going to get along. If that’s the case in your business, consider reshuffling shifts to keep the peace.

But why is this study important to HR? Well, when you look at holistically, often the reason small businesses don’t have an HR department or resource is because the focus is on growing their business through marketing or sales. This often leads to more resources being put here, both financial and non-financial. However, I’d argue that a key strategy to grow your business is actually through your people, culture and HR processes.

And this is not to say that as a business you don’t see the value or important in having an engaged workforce, it’s just hard to prioritise that with your limited time. You probably get home late, have to balance your accounting ledgers, run invoices and now having to do HR admin tasks is just another thing that you would rather not do.

No business owner wants to deal with all the messy HR stuff; that aggrieved worker, the one with bad body odour, puts in the minimum they can to get away with it and so on.. All of this would be resolved by having an HR resource.

In recent years you have probably noticed, in particular in the technology sector, companies are turning their culture into their greatest asset and differentiator. Turning the notion of culture inside out and screaming it to the world. This not only helps you attract the best talent, but it also helps you attract new business.

People want to do business with people, not cold corporate websites. When you humanise your corporate brand, it shows the external market why they should be working with your business. Bryan Kramer, a bestselling author and world reknowned expert in Marketing and Advertising, coined the term ‘Human 2 Human’ selling. He argues that we do not sell to business nor consumers but indeed humans and need to appeal to them on a personal level as opposed to being cold and simply talking about numbers.

HR for small business has never been so important as a key differientiator in the market.

An HR resource in your business would ensure you have the best possible outcome in interactions with staff and they can use that expertise to keep your team engaged, working actively on improving the work environment and team spirit while you get on with growing the business. Let’s face it, recruiting and training is costly and the impact on efficiency and profit by high staff turnover is well documented.

In fact, research conducted by Deloitte in 2015 found that two-thirds of millennials expect they will have moved on from their current employer by the end of 2020. Nearly half (44%) say, if given the choice, they would like to leave their current employer in the next two years.

The problem this poses for businesses is, of course, the risk of investing significant time and money recruiting, onboarding and training a candidate who ups and leaves within 24 months.

But rather than cutting back on staff investment, or avoiding hiring millennials at all, the question business owners should really be asking is: ‘How do I adjust my employment management approach to account for this shorter tenure culture?’

Here are my tips for businesses to get the most from millennials:

Recruit Effectively

Getting your recruitment right is critical in the new world of work! Traditional recruitment approaches focus on matching candidates against a list of required skills. This is all well and good if you want to hire experienced staff, but it’s unlikely you’ll find a graduate that can tick every box on your list of criteria.

Instead, look for candidates who are the right cultural fit for your organisation. Do they share the same values as your existing employees? Are they genuinely interested in what the business does and have a desire to see it succeed?

Skills can be taught and developed. In fact, millennials rate the opportunity to progress/become a leader as the third most important factor when deciding on an employer (behind salary and good work/life balance). Providing professional development opportunities for your staff will make them more likely to see you as an employer of choice, who is willing to invest in them, and in turn increase their loyalty.

Are You a Great Place to Work?

Do you have people lined-up around the block to work with you? Are you receiving unsolicited job applications daily? If not, why not? If you want to recruit the best, you need to make your workplace worth their while.

I’m not saying every office should be like the Google Headquarters, with ping pong tables, nap rooms, petting zoos, etc, but you do need to consider what your employees value most about their workplace. It could be the flexible hours, the proximity to parking, or the Friday afternoon drinks, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find your most loyal employees like the way you do business.

Deloitte found that millennials value businesses that have a high employee satisfaction and treat them fairly/loyally. They believe that long-term business success is achieved through ethics, trust and honesty. They also want to work for businesses that have strong customer loyalty/satisfaction, and whose products and services make a difference to people’s lives, as opposed to businesses that are profit driven and focused on the bottom line. In fact, 56% of millennials have ruled out working for a particular organisation because of its values or standard of conduct.

Before applying for a job, a millennial will conduct online research into their potential employer. One too many negative social media reviews or an absence of aligned values on the company website may deter millennials from even submitting their resume. Or, if they do take the job, don’t expect them to hang around if things don’t change.

Utilise Technology

Even if you have a great workplace and jobs that are incredibly rewarding for your staff, you will still have to deal with replacing employees. The reality is that today’s workforce is not prepared to make a lifetime commitment to one single employer. Which means to be successful in the current employment market, businesses need minimise the cost of recruitment, onboarding and HR administration.

The best way to do this is through technology. Software can manage the entire recruitment process for you (so there’s no need to hire an external agency). Employee Self Service systems can handle all your HR admin tasks and give your employees more control. Digital induction and training courses can be customised for your business and save you time and money. The list of digital HR solutions available for small businesses is endless.

Technology is also something millennials know a lot about. If they see that your business values and invests in new technology, they’re more likely to see themselves working for your business for years to come.

Recognise the Benefits

Finally, it’s important to recognise that young people bring their own benefits to an organisation. They have an energy and enthusiasm that is often infectious; this is their first ‘real’ job and they’re no doubt keen to make their mark. Give them the opportunity to share this enthusiasm with the rest of your team – just because they’re new doesn’t mean they don’t have good ideas.

Speaking of good ideas, a set of fresh eyes within the business can be a great way to identify inefficiencies or redundant processes. Within their first three months at your company, ask your new employees to identify three things they would do differently. You just might be surprised at the results.

The bottom line is millennials are the workforce of the future. How you choose to adapt your business to engage with this next generation of employees will set the scene for your future success.