Are you being too nice?

 Managing performance is tricky…and giving feedback can be daunting. It is an especially sticky point for new joiners.

It isn’t surprising that most employers want to encourage and support new joiners and give them time to settle in. You don’t want them to feel downhearted straight off the bat.  But are you being too nice?

We shared a post recently about new starters not getting feedback early enough which you can read here.

They say that you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. That is certainly true, but I’m sure that overfeeding bees can’t be good either…

I had no idea what happens when you overfeed bees so I Googled it! It was pretty obvious actually. If you over feed bees the colony outgrows the hive and they end up abandoning it in search of a bigger one.

In this instance this is a pretty poor choice of analogy…it would be better if the excess honey made the bees get stuck in the hive, making them unable to move on.

You’re probably wondering what I am going on about…

If you give new recruits too much time to settle in before they get any feedback and focus solely on encouragement, they can end up stuck with damaged relationships and undermined credibility if they are actually making significant mistakes from the get go.

The longer this period is allowed to continue, the more likely reputational damage is done and that will stick with them.

The obvious answer to this is to give new recruits feedback as soon as possible, but there is a fine line between giving good, constructive feedback and making someone feel singled out and like they aren’t doing a good job.

So how early is too early?

The 60-day mark is roughly the right time to start giving feedback. The new recruit has had enough time to become familiar with the business and their colleagues but it is still early enough to catch any early indications of issues they might have.

The process doesn’t need to be excessive; it can be bespoke for your business requirements

We shared a post recently about how to give good feedback with some hints and tips, which you can recap on here.

We always recommend 360 feedback, which we talked about here.

Find out how we used 360 feedback for our clients

To find out how Reality HR can support your business growth and help you with managing performance, give us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a callback.

 

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/4025/

What to do about poor performance

 The best tip I can give you about dealing with a poorly performing workforce is to spot the signs early on and act upon them as soon as possible.

You’re probably thinking that this is both obvious and easier said than done!

Well actually, there are a few easy steps you can take to make sure that you can do a pre-emptive strike against poor performance.

• Assess and Act – One of the best courses of action to find out why your employees are experiencing poor performance is through appraisals. By making it clear that you aren’t blaming anyone but rather want to help improve the situation, you can reassure employees and convince them to be candid, helping you to discover the root cause and build trust in the process.From this point, you can organise further meetings with individual employees and work towards a resolution.

• Poor objectives – Sometimes poor performance can be down to simply not having any solid objectives, meaning that the work employees are performing holds no relation to where they are going.By clearly setting out a set of objectives and aligning them with the work that employees are doing, along with the usual motivations and rewards, you can get your team on track and organised.

See how we resolved this for another business

• Missing skills – Sometimes a workforce is unable to work more effectively because they are being held back by missing skills. A workforce that isn’t appropriately trained will not perform at its best. A good personal development plan can help to identify where skills might be missing and what training they need.

• The office – We have talked recently about how it can be difficult to get work done in the office. This can be down to a number of reasons, which you can read in the link above, but it can also be something as simple as employees being too hot or too cold. Ask your employees if they find the office a comfortable place to work.

• Unrealistic goals or expectations – If unrealistic goals or expectations are set, this can really demotivate your team and also cause an undeserved reputation for under performance.

• A hidden Darth Vader – Sometimes one bad employee can impact a whole team. This can be a bit trickier to address and may require a good exit strategy.If you have regular performance appraisals, you can easily keep track of all of the above and nip the big issues in the bud before they bloom into a much bigger issue.

To find out how Reality HR could support your business growth and help you with performance appraisals, call 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a callback:

 

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/what-to-do-about-poor-performance/

What to do when you’re over paying

 You might find yourself in the unfortunate position of paying your workforce more compared to the current market.

This can happen for a number of reasons, including COLA. The 3% increase from Cost of Living Adjustments can put your business at risk of overspending if you don’t pay attention to market trends, especially if you have good staff retention.

But even if you are diligent with aligning your increases based on merit, if your managers are not calibrated properly with their performance appraisals, you might end up with a team of top performers paid well outside the market.

It is important to find out the causes and adjust your pay and benefits accordingly so that you don’t end up with a short-term solution, that doesn’t address the underlying problems.

1. The red ring of death – No, I don’t mean the dreaded circle of red lights that indicates your XBox 360 has just kicked the bucket. Red circled employees are ones who are being paid outside of the maximum range for their job. As such, the most used strategy for overpayment is to simply freeze the base pay of red-circled employees.But before you do that, you should really evaluate those employees to try and identify some trends that might indicate why this is happening. Are they on the same team? Were they hired around the same time? Freezing base pay is best reserved when overpayment is happening across the business.
2. Fortune favours the brave – A good strategy for when you do need to freeze base pay is to move onto performance-based incentives. Communicate that base pay will be frozen but then align a good pay and benefits scheme to your business goals and achievable objectives. This will keep your top performers performing without compounding your compensation problem.If you are in the fortunate position of having a whole team of top performers but they are all above market, why not target higher in the market for base pay and try and reduce the amount of red-circled employees?
3. Consider some alternatives – If freezing base pay doesn’t fit your business style you can make some smaller adjustments, like how you give out increases or put more of your budget towards low market employees. You are probably thinking “Why would I want to do that!?” Well, it simply means you will have less budget for those in a high market. Although you will still have red-circled employees, you are slowing down wage growth and overspending.
   
   You can also consider decreasing base pay, evaluating your current career paths, assessing your current policies, and training your managers.

To find out how Reality HR could support your business growth and help you develop a pay and benefits scheme that suits your business gives us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a callback

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/youre-paying-2/

Improve your emotional intelligence

We shared a post recently that looked at emotional intelligence and IQ, which pretty much showed that EQ is far more desirable in the workplace.

There is a huge amount of research out there that backs this up and shows how powerful emotional intelligence can be for success in work and life.

Cary Cherniss published a paper called “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence” which you can view here.

Here are a few of the findings:

• Out of 515 senior executives, those with high emotional intelligence were more successful than those with relevant previous experience or high IQ.
• Sales reps at a computer company were 90% more likely to finish their training if they were hired based on high emotional intelligence than other criteria.
• At L’Oreal, sales people with high emotional intelligence sold $91,370 more than other salespeople.

So what are few qualities that emotionally intelligent people have?

• Confidence – There is a fine line between being ‘The Man’ and just being a smarty pants. Emotionally intelligent people tend to tread this line with swag! They are confident in their decisions minus arrogance, which can affect their team negatively.
• Compassion – Leaders with compassion care about their employees and are always willing to provide a helping hand.
• Authenticity – Authentic leaders are good at communicating and stick to their guns. This means they have a clear idea of what they want to achieve with their team and inspire the motivation and loyalty in others to reach those goals.
• Respect – Respectful leaders treat everyone the same and respect themselves and others.

The best thing about emotional intelligence is that it can easily be improved through training and experience.

Read our Management Training case study

How?

The key is self-awareness, which we talked about in our previous blog here.

But there are also a few quick tips you can try:

1. Be positive – Motivation is vital to emotional intelligence. One thing you can do to improve your motivation is to not let work life get you down. Always think, “how can I do better next time”, instead of focussing on negative emotions and try to keep on smiling. Eventually, your brain will start to do this automatically. I have a little book on my desk titled, “You are doing a freaking great job”. Every now and then I will pick it up and read some of the funny and inspiring quotes to turn my frown upside down in the face of a challenge.
2. Take note – You don’t need to turn into Bridget Jones, but taking a quick note of how you are feeling throughout the week and associating those feelings with situations will give you a better understanding of yourself and improve your self-awareness.
3. Praise others – This is part of having good social skills. It is a fine art but praising others can really help improve emotions all round and will make everyone including you feel good and inspire loyalty.
4. Copy someone else – Don’t be afraid to look at someone who is better at handling their emotions than you and try to emulate their behaviour. A role model is great for improving empathy.
5. Hold your hands up – When you make a mistake, just admit it. It is not easy but you will find that you will earn a lot more respect from others by being honest than by making excuses. This is a core element of self-regulation.

To see how Reality HR could support your business growth and help your team develop their emotional intelligence, give us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a call back:

 

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/improve-emotional-intelligence/

85% of your financial success is due to personality

We post about emotional intelligence all the time. It is an HR buzzword and that’s because it is so important in the world of business.

The good thing is, with some good management training and coaching, anyone can improve their emotional intelligence.

So what is emotional intelligence?

It didn’t become popular until Daniel Goleman wrote his book Emotional Intelligence back in 1995, but the original definition comes from Peter Salovey and John Mayer:

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the collection of abilities used to identify, understand, control and assess the emotions of the self and others.

What is the difference between EQ and IQ?

Well IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a score based on a standardised test that looks at a range of skills including abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, arithmetic, vocabulary, or general knowledge.

In the business world, you might be thinking that this is surely more important than understanding the touchy feely emotions of others?

Wrong!

Take a look around you, at all the people you work with. Chances are they are all as smart as you. Also, consider that some of the skills measured in IQ tests may not even be relevant in the workplace!

Emotional intelligence, however, is something that sets people apart from the rest and if you have a team of emotionally intelligent individuals, well you are laughing.

You don’t have to take my word for it; there are plenty of numbers to back up my claims. Research performed by the Carnegie Institute of Technology found that 85% of financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. The other 15% is due to technical knowledge.

Bet you didn’t expect that!

So what exactly constitutes emotional intelligence?

In Goleman’s book, he talks about five specific components of emotional intelligence associated with different abilities to do with managing emotions.

1. Self-awareness – This is essentially the ability to identify and understand your own emotions and how they affect the people around you. Leaders with good self-awareness are capable of identifying their own strengths and weaknesses and behave with humility.
2. Self-Regulation – This is the ability to think before you act and also manage negative mentalities. According to Goleman, this covers a leader’s flexibility and commitment to personal accountability as well. They rarely clash with others, make rash decisions, and stick to their values.
3. Internal Motivation – Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals and have extremely high work standards. Best of all, they do it with a positive, chipper attitude.
4. Empathy – This is the ability to recognise the feelings of others and how they affect their behaviour. Leaders with empathy can put themselves in someone else’s shoes meaning they can help develop and challenge their team, give constructive feedback, and are good listeners.
5. Social skills – These skills are your day-to-day things like working in teams, managing difficult people and situations, and forming relationships. Leaders with good social skills are great communicators, open to good and bad feedback, and are great at motivating their team and gaining support from them. They are good at diplomacy and tend to set an example with their own behaviour.

Having read all the above it is obvious that these skills are incredibly desirable and you want these kinds of people in your team.

Read our Management Training case study

The good thing is that emotional intelligence isn’t necessarily innate. You can upskill the team you have and develop their emotional intelligence, through some good management training.

To find out how Reality HR could support your business growth and help your team develop the skills they need, give us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a call back:

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/emotional-intelligence/

Is the office the best place to get work done?

It may or may not surprise you that a number of people find it difficult to actually get work done in the office.

Managing performance can be tricky to get right. Given the amount of time and money that businesses spend on their office environments these days (Google being the most extreme example), you can easily find yourself in the red.

Jason Fried, a software entrepreneur, gave a TED talk called “Why work doesn’t happen at work”, which you can watch below:

The key culprits for poor productivity are not necessarily things that you might expect, like people sneaking onto facebook or twitter, or taking a cheeky cigarette break. It can actually be down to something as simple as the communal working spaces.

The government has focussed on flexible working a lot in recent years which can be a good solution for managing performance, but most employers still prefer the whole team working together in a communal office. The trouble is it is very easy to interrupt your colleagues in this kind of environment.

Read our Managing Performance case study

Jason Freid talks about interruptions from the dreaded M&Ms. No, he doesn’t mean that your employees have a secret addiction to chocolate covered peanuts that prevents them getting any work done. He actually means Managers and Meetings.

We shared a post about meetings with some tips which you can recap here, which also includes some tips.

Another time waster is Emails. The trouble is emails are the best way to communicate to your team to avoid physically disturbing them from their tasks, so it is really important to appropriately manage your inbox. We shared a post about this with some tips that you can read here.

So the three key culprits to managing performance are interruptions from managers, meetings, and overloaded inboxes; so simply put, all the little things that prevent people from getting ‘in-the-zone’. When your day is broken up by so many interruptions, you end up with only small bursts of time to try and really get stuck in and work. Jason Freid explains that you can’t expect someone to get creative in fifteen minutes, and that is definitely correct.

As well as the tips in the links above, you can also get a bit more creative.

Jason Freid’s suggests for example, “No Talk Thursdays”. Essentially, actually designating time in the office in which no one talks to each other.

You might think this a little extreme, but wasted time costs businesses a lot of money, and that is no joke.

Flexible working could also be a good approach to take. Read more about managing remote working and creating a flexible working culture.

You may even find that simply getting some management training could help your managers to more effectively work with their team and improve productivity.

These are all things that Reality HR can support you with. To find out what we can do to support your business growth give us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a callback

 

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from Reality HR Limited http://www.realityhr.co.uk/blog/flexible-working-managing-performance/