The HR Advisor

Designing your employee recognition programs to align rewards to the employee’s performance is standard practice. After all, you want to encourage your team to make a significant contribution to business growth and profitability.

But what if you have a reward structure that is based on employee performance and yet your revenue, team morale or business performance has not improved?

Could we be missing the mark and rewarding our employees for the wrong things?

17 months ago, in the aftermath of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein, the #metoo campaign exploded across social media. Highlighting the prevalence of sexual abuse against women has frankly been an uncomfortable truth for society - yet a truth which needed to be accepted before we could move forward.

If we look back across this last year and a half, despite some friction that was expressed as a result of such a social awakening, one would have to recognise that the #metoo movement has transformed the way we deal with harassment in organisations and in the wider community.

Workplaces are made up of people with different opinions, values, interests, ideas and communication styles. However, when differences are not accepted or are poorly understood, conflict results.

Diversity is a cornerstone of successful organisations, as is a passionate endeavour for continuous improvement. An organisation’s values, culture and leadership determine how conflict impacts on both individuals and teams.

Managing employee performance can be complicated. Every situation is unique, and despite feedback, informal counselling, additional support and training, an employee’s performance or behaviour may remain at a standard that is unsatisfactory.

While it is unlikely your business will be able to completely remove the need to manage employee performance and behaviour, there are tried and true steps you can take to improve productivity and reduce instances of underperformance. 

Begin by asking yourself these key questions and then take the suggested and necessary action to create a best-practice framework.

While flexible work arrangements have been the hot topic of the last decade, the question remains; how genuinely willing are employers to give it?

Being truly flexible requires a significant mindset shift for employers. It hands over control to the employee to determine how they work; whether it be from home, part-time, job sharing or non-typical hours. True flexibility provides employees with an element of freedom to design their work-life around their personal life and define work preferences which allow them to give their best. 

At this time of year, the office is a buzz of excitement for the Christmas period. With corporate gifts, Secret Santa, the office Christmas party and upcoming holidays, there is no shortage of things to prepare for.

However, failing to meet your HR obligations is not a risk worth taking. To help you avoid an HR disaster, here are our top HR tips for the festive season.

In business, there will almost certainly be cases where you have an employee who is underperforming or acting inappropriately. Issuing written warnings is a mandatory part of the performance management process; either driving performance corrections or supporting the decision to terminate.

A warning needs to communicate the performance deficit of the employee, reiterate the expectations of the organisation and communicate the consequences if improvement is not achieved.

The chances are that you have an employee right now that is not meeting the required standards of performance or behaviour. Such employees have a direct impact on the productivity and the profitability of the organisation and depending on their role, may have consequences ranging from lost clients to safety risks and workplace accidents, to the resignations of fellow staff members.

Prevention is better than cure in the case of poor performance. So, while you may be in a position where you need to be able to take corrective action, keep in mind that developing strategies to minimise performance management matters is the goal. Employee engagement is one such practice which should be a top priority for your business.   

One of the easiest ways to know whether it is Monday or not is to spend some time on social media. You will undoubtedly see a series of memes cursing the start of another working week. Sure, I can see the funny side in most of them, but what is most striking is the number of likes, shares and comments on these flagships of disengagement at work.

Deloitte research¹ found that engagement requires an empowering and highly inclusive work environment. However, such a level of inclusivity is a rarity; only 11% of companies have such work environments. It comes as little wonder then that this same research found 85% of executives rated employee engagement as a top priority – even though only 46% of companies are prepared to handle the challenges that employee engagement presents.

As an Australian business owner or manager, your compliance responsibilities are far-reaching. From accounting, to HR, to operations, all facets of your business have legal requirements that you need to ensure are met.

While this is still a confronting concept for many businesses across the country, there are more and more organisations now approaching their legal and ethical obligations with a best-in-class mindset, resulting in them greatly exceeding many of their base compliance requirements. Why? Because they recognise the tremendous upside of doing so, particularly in the area of HR.