Tag Archives: behaviour

What Do Employees Want from Appraisals?

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Many people have had bad experiences of appraisals, so many employers don’t enjoy carrying them out. However, for your business and your staff to progress, some form of regular appraisal is essential.

If you put yourself in the shoes of your members of staff, you can both get more from your time together. There are five things that your employees need to know at their appraisal:

  • Tell me what’s expected of me – talk to me about goals and expectations so that I can work towards them.
  • Give me the opportunity to perform – give me the chance to take responsibility and let me show you how good I am.
  • Tell me how I’m getting on – if you like what I’m doing, tell me; if you’re concerned about my progress, I need to know that too.
  • Give me support guidance and development – help me to grow and develop by giving me what I need to reach my goals.
  • Recognise my contribution – say thank you to show that you’re grateful for all the hard work I put in.

When you can meet these five needs, you’ll be able to carry out a much more effective appraisal, both for you and your employees. On 11 September I’m running a short workshop to help you carry them out even more smoothly. To book your place online, click here.

Setting Objectives for Your Staff

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Setting objectives for your members of staff to reach is a great way to stretch them and to help them to grow and develop their careers. Encouraging them to achieve more is also great for your business. But what’s the best way to set objectives? Should they really be SMART? How do you find a suitable objective for someone who does the same thing every day or has worked for you for 20 years and needs to carry on doing the same? Do you treat new employees the same as long serving ones the same?

What is a work objective? It is a mutually understood agreement about a specific work outcome that a staff member is expected to achieve by a certain deadline. It is not a list of all the activities that member of staff should carry out.

Why set work objectives? Setting objectives allows your employees to understand exactly where their role fits within your company and what their responsibilities are. It helps them gain a better understanding of the value and contributions they bring to the company. Objectives focus on outcomes rather than activities and allow both staff and employer to measure success.

What is the right mix of goals? There are a number of different types of objectives that you can set and you need the right combination for each member of your team.

  • Essence of the job objectives – ones that clearly define tasks that are required to complete the job. These objectives should be very personalised to each individual position and employee. For a long term member of staff, these objectives may remain the same over time.
  • Project objectives – ones that your employee should pursue with a clearly defined beginning and end. New members of staff may need shorter projects when they first join the company.
  • Professional development objectives – what an employee will learn in the next six months or a year that will help their professional growth. It’s important to think beyond skill improvement and consider objectives that develop each employee and help your organization as a whole. New members of staff may meet development objectives quickly; more established members of your team may need more encouragement to think about their growth and development, if they do the same work every day over time.
  • Performance objectives – very basic, but what time your employees should start work, what they wear and how they should behave. New employees may need these goals specifically outlined when they start working for you.

Once you’ve set objectives with each member of your team, you’ll need to review them regularly, when you carry out formal appraisals or less formal ‘job chats’. Work with all your employees and you’ll be able to develop them and your company.

Want to know more about Appraisals? Come to the workshop I’m running on 11 September 2013. To book your place online, click here.

Dealing with Gross Misconduct – How do You do it?

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Gross misconduct is behaviour so bad that it destroys the relationship between you and your employee and it usually results in dismissal. But what exactly can be considered gross misconduct? It’s important to know, so that you can avoid unfair dismissal claims.

Here’s how to identify and manage gross misconduct.

What is gross misconduct?

Gross misconduct is a serious breach of contract and includes any misconduct which, in your opinion, causes serious damage to your business, or irreparably breaks down trust and relationships.

There is no exhaustive list, but it can include theft, physical violence, bullying, damage to property, accessing pornographic sites, damaging your firm’s reputation, inability to work due to alcohol or drugs, breaching health and safety rules, failing to obey instructions, or serious neglect of duty. Repeated minor misconduct, such as being late to work, is not gross misconduct, although it can lead to dismissal after previous unexpired warnings.

Should my staff handbook include examples of gross misconduct?
Include a list of examples of what usually counts as gross misconduct, but state that it is non-exhaustive as you cannot provide for every eventuality. Each case should be looked at individually and consideration should be given to all the circumstances.

What procedure should I go through if someone has committed gross misconduct? When disciplining an employee you should follow your own disciplinary procedure and the Acas Code of Practice. If you don’t follow the Code it may render a dismissal unfair and could increase the amount of compensation an employment tribunal awards against you.

If you believe an employee has committed gross misconduct, you may need to suspend them to allow a full investigation to take place. This won’t be necessary in all cases, but it will usually be appropriate in cases of serious misconduct. If an employee is suspended it should be on full pay.

Carry out a fair and balanced investigation. At the end of it you may decide that no further action is necessary. However, if matters are to be taken further the employee should be invited to a disciplinary hearing where they will be given the opportunity to state their case and respond to the allegations against them. The hearing should then be adjourned for you to make your decision. You should notify the employee of your decision in writing and inform them of their right of appeal.

How can I decide if something counts as gross misconduct or not?  
If you’re unsure, get legal advice. In any case, if an incident is not obviously gross misconduct, it’s always better to go for the lesser sanction than to dismiss someone as such a dismissal may be held unfair. The current maximum compensation for unfair dismissal is £74,200.

If you need any more advice about identifying or dealing with gross misconduct, please do get in touch, to make sure you can avoid and tricky situations.

Happy Staff are Healthy Staff

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Well being and staff engagement are very closely linked. When your staff are happy and engaged with their work, they will be less stressed and therefore healthier. When your staff are less stressed and healthier, they will find it easier to be engaged with their work. And engaged, happy staff are far productive than unhappy staff.

Employee well being is about being healthy, self confident, having emotional resilience, having a sense of purpose, an active open mind and a supportive network of relationships.

When you can look after the physical and emotional well being of your staff, and pay attention their personal development and their values, your business will benefit, as this diagram shows.

 

Source: ‘What’s happening with well-being at work?’ CIPD May 2007

So look after your staff and you will see your business prosper!

How do you make sure your staff are happy and healthy?

What is Motivation and How Can You Improve it in Your Staff?

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Motivation determines how your employees choose to allocate their energy – where they put their focus. When they’re at work, you want them to put their focus and energy onto what they’re doing and onto your business.

Motivation is affected by a number of factors, including:

  • Being treated with fairness and respect
  • Getting pride and fulfilment from their work
  • Feeling that they and their work are valued
  • Confidence in the direction in which the organisation is going.

How does motivation work? There are five components, as shown in this diagram.

 

Source: XpertHR 17 November 2010

Your actions create results; these results are evaluated by other people; outcomes occur as a result of those evaluations; your needs will either be satisfied or not by those outcomes. Positive evaluations or outcomes can lead to needs being satisfied and increased motivation!

So what can you do as a manager, to improve motivation in your team?

Think about your answers to these questions:

  1. Do you treat employees with fairness and respect?
  2. Do you know what motivates the different members of your team?
  3. Do you use this information to play to their strengths and keep motivation up?
  4. Are your team meetings a two way process?
  5. Do you allow the sharing of ideas from members of your team?
  6. Do you share achievements of the company and of individuals?

How many of those questions did you answer No to? If it was more than three then you might have a problem with motivation – or you might see one emerging soon!

Unfair Dismissal Claims – Q and A

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Here are some common questions about unfair dismissal and my answers to them.

Q – What is unfair dismissal?

A – Dismissals are classed as ‘automatically unfair’, regardless of the reasonableness, if an employee is exercising their rights related to the following:

  • Pregnancy, including all reasons relating to maternity
  • Family reasons, including parental leave, paternity leave, adoption leave or time off for dependants
  • Representative and trade union membership grounds and union recognition
  • Discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation
  • Pay and working hours, including the Working Time Regulations, annual leave and the National Minimum Wage.

Q – When is a dismissal fair?

A – Dismissal is normally fair if an employer can show that it is for one of the following reasons:

  • A reason related to an employee’s conduct
  • A reason related to an employee’s capability or qualifications for the job
  • Because of a redundancy
  • Because a statutory duty or restriction prohibited the employment being continued
  • Some other substantial reason of a kind which justifies the dismissal.

Q – How do you dismiss employees?

A – The key points to remember are:

    • Dismissing employees should be the last resort and employers should carry out necessary investigations without unreasonable delay to establish the facts
    • Employers should use a fair and consistent procedure when dismissing employees
    • It’s always best to try to resolve any issues informally first
    • Employees have the right not to be unfairly dismissed
    • Set out in writing your rules and procedures for handling disciplinary procedures
    • Make sure employees and managers understand the rules and procedures for disciplinary issues.

Q – When can an employee make a claim about unfair dismissal?

A – In most circumstances employees will need to qualify before they can make a complaint to an employment tribunal. They need:

  • At least one year’s continuous service for employees in employment before 6th April 2012
  • Two years for employees starting employment on or after 6th April 2012.

Q – How do you avoid costly mistakes?

A – Before thinking about dismissing an employee, stop and think – are you doing the right thing? To make sure that you comply with the law and don’t make any costly mistakes, whether you’re an employee or an employer, get the right advice.

Can You Serve an Unfair Dismissal Claim While on ‘Garden Leave’?

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‘Garden leave’ is a period of time after you’ve been asked to leave your job or you’ve been made redundant, when your employer carries on paying you, but when they don’t want you to continue coming to work. During this time, you’re still employed so you can’t take another job with a different employer.

So can you serve an unfair dismissal claim while on garden leave? Can you appeal against being asked to leave your job?

To serve an unfair dismissal claim, you need to complete the form ET1 to send to the employment tribunal. You can only submit this form after you have been dismissed and worked your notice. ‘Garden leave’ is notice without having to do the work you’re being paid for. If you’re thinking about a tribunal application then you must do this within three months of your termination date. If you’re on ‘garden leave’ then you are still employed, even though you’re not working. This means that if you want to make a claim for unfair dismissal, you can’t do it during a period of garden leave – you have to wait until you actually finish working for that employer and they are no longer paying you.

Your contract of employment will tell you what else you can and can’t do while on garden leave and what your employer will expect from you during that time.

In addition, if you were employed after 6 April 2012, you need to have worked for the company for two years, to be able to claim unfair dismissal. If you started work before 6 April 2012 you have to have completed one year’s service to be able to claim unfair dismissal. (This means that at the time of writing this blog in March 2013, no one will actually be able to claim that they have been unfairly dismissed until 6 April 2014.)

There is more information on all this, including a short video that explains it all, on my website. Click here to watch the video.

Can My Employer Insist I Use My Holiday to do Jury Service?

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As an employer, can you insist that your employees use their holiday allowance if they’re asked to do jury service? This was a question I was asked recently, so here is the answer.

An employer can’t insist that holiday is used for jury service, but they must give members of staff time off to complete the jury service. They are not allowed to refuse to give employees time off when summoned.

The employer may think that it is not a good time for that member of staff to be away from the business and on jury service – if there’s a heavy workload in the business, or if a number of other people are on holiday or off sick, leaving the company short staffed. In these cases, the employee can ask for a deferment of the jury service, but their employee will be called again, normally with 12 months. This may allow time to plan their time away from the business and make other arrangements for cover.

How are employees paid while on jury service? The employer does not have to pay their staff while away from the business. While employees will not be paid for jury service, they will be reimbursed subject to a maximum daily amount if absence from work causes them to lose earnings, have to pay a substitute to do their job or incur any other necessary expense, such as a childminder. People called for jury service can also claim travelling expenses, a subsistence allowance for food and drink and for any loss of National Insurance contributions they may have incurred.

As an employee, if you’re called for jury service, you could decide to use your holiday entitlement for the time that you’re away, so that you are paid for the time by your employer, rather than relying on the court subsidy. However, that is a choice you have to make, about whether or not you want to use your holiday entitlement.

I’ve made a short video about this topic ? click here to watch it and learn more about jury service.

Keep Your Staff Happy to Grow Your Business

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When your employees are engaged with your business, you have a much greater chance to grow a profitable business and keep your customers satisfied.

So what makes an engaged employee? How does their engagement affect your business? How can you achieve engagement with your staff?

As an employer you need to create the right environment to allow engagement to flourish in your workforce. To help you get the basics in place, here are four steps to follow:

1. Create a strategic story – Where are you? Where have you been? Where are you going? As a business owner you probably know this, but do your employees feel part of that story? If they know the story, it lets them see how the work they do fits in with the business’s goals. This isn’t something you can simply put on a poster on the wall to get buy in. You need to repeat the story over and over again to employees and give them a sense of ownership in it. If your story is on the wall, ask your staff to add to it; create a timeline of diagrams, new solutions and innovations leading to your company’s goals. Create a buzz and encourage people to share their ideas, so they can see how their achievements fit into your company’s ‘big picture’.

2. Engage managers – If you try to engage your staff without first engaging your managers you may get limited results. Many employees’ motivation and engagement will depend on how they feel towards their bosses. If those managers are not engaged themselves, where’s the motivation to engage their people? Engaged managers focus their people and enable them to get the job done, treat their team members as individuals and coach and stretch them. When your managers build bigger relationships with people as individuals, those workers will make bigger contributions.

3. Give employees a voice – Listening is a key part in giving employees a voice but it doesn’t stop at the 360-degree survey. A survey might tell you how people are feeling at a certain point in time but it doesn’t tell you why they are feeling like that. Members of staff have insights into why and where things are going wrong. Somebody knows before the event that something is going to go wrong. If they know that they can speak up and be listened to, the problem can be pointed out before it becomes a disaster.

Employees who are able to speak up will share the good as well as the bad. If they feel that their ideas are listened to, they’ll share them, which will increase their engagement in their work.

4. Make sure there is organisational integrity – This means avoiding the “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. If your company’s values are not reflected in the day-to-day behaviours of managers or colleagues, then it will be seen as a corporate spin exercise and will not be trusted by employees. When your values are aligned between staff and managers, then trust is created and so is engagement.

Different companies will need to create different engagement programmes, but if you follow these four steps, you’ll be able to create a strong foundation for any efforts you make to increase employee engagement and develop your business.

Are your employees engaged? Are they giving their all to your business? If they’re not, then come to our workshop on 17 April 2013 in Reading. During the workshop, from 9.30am – 12.30pm, we will look at key ways to improve engagement of your employee, in order toincrease profitability, efficiency and achieve faster growth, and improve attendance, retention and job satisfaction

It is being held at Symantec, Green Park, Reading and costs just £20 +VAT to attend. To book your place online, click here and scroll through the list of events to 17 April 2013.

Poor Performance – Can You Prove It?

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Sometimes as a manager you need to deliver bad news or negative feedback to a member of your staff. You might need to pick them up on an issue of performance that you’re not happy with, or where they are not meeting your standards.

This is not a comfortable thing to do. You need to be quite assertive about it, to be taken seriously – and so that your member of staff doesn’t just argue with you! To help you discuss the issue in the right way, you need evidence of the poor performance. You have to be able to show your team member what they’ve been doing wrong or below standard. Just telling them that they’re not doing what you want them to do, won’t have any impact, if you can’t prove it.

So you need to collect the evidence, so your team member can really understand what they’ve done wrong and how you want them to change. It’s not about collecting evidence just to use against someone – you really need it in order to get the message across and to make a difference.

Is one of your team repeatedly late coming into work? If so, you need a recording system that shows them when they came it late and how often it happens. If your staff clock in and out every day, you have your system. If not, you need to look for another way of recording the time.

Does a member of your staff keep making errors in their work? How many times have they made a mistake and what was the result of it? Again, you need to create a way of recording the error rate and the consequences.

When you can show the proof of poor performance, it is much easier to discuss the issue with the particular member of staff and, between you, work out what needs to be done in order to improve their performance.

We discussed the importance of collecting evidence at one of my interactive workshops. Click here to watch the short video and find out more.

How do you collect evidence of performance issues in your business?