People
 

(6 Topics)

What business owner hasn’t wished they had people who could work more cooperatively to sort out things for themselves and come up with effective solutions? Maybe to even be feeding ideas back into the business about how to improve things?

To get people operating this way you need to turn your group into a team. And to do that you need to know how to build a business culture that will encourage teamwork to happen. But that’s only part of the story - the leader has to know the skills that will maintain team morale.

Return

2.        Downsizing As A Cost Cutting Strategy

Companies consider downsizing and cutting costs for many reasons. A major factor will always be that they find themselves in a period of economic downturn. In this situation, companies will have to scale back on their growth expectations or may even struggle just to maintain their current size. However, companies may need to cut costs even in good years. For example, they may have to deal with increased supplier prices, excess capacity or a fall in client orders.

In order for it to be effective, downsizing should be done strategically. Poorly managed downsizing can hurt productivity. It can leave your organization with demoralized and less efficient team members.

This topic explores the human resources issues with downsizing, how to map your business activities to identify activities you might eliminate or outsource and how to manage the change with your team.

Return

Every employer faces the challenge of selecting the right people to join their team, then getting them productive as quickly as possible.

In small businesses especially, the need for productivity is critical. Time is money and the more time it takes for a person to learn his or her job, the more it costs you in lost productivity.

This BGR will give you some valuable insights into how you can identify the people who are ‘right’ for your business, then focus on getting your new team members productive from the start.

It covers the critical induction period and tells you how to set up a ‘Buddy’ system that will communicate essential knowledge and the culture of your business to new team members.

This is a companion product to the BGR ‘Recruiting the Right People’ that covers the fundamentals of sourcing candidates, interviewing and testing them, and complying with the labor laws that apply.

Return

4.         Money Ain’t Everything! Smart Ways To Recognize And Reward Your Team

There are a number of ways of looking at remuneration. You might think of it as a negative-a cost to your business. On the other hand, you could look upon it as an investment given that the right compensation package can help you attract and keep good people in your business. This topic looks at several innovative ways of structuring remuneration and reward systems that are not simply about money.

Surveys consistently find that money is only one reason that people take, or stay in a job. Some of the other reasons fall into the category of rewards. This means that you’ve got room to move when you’re setting salaries and wages or giving raises.

Learn about how to adopt good positive management practices and reward your team well, so that you’ll be under less pressure to offer salaries at the top of the range while, at the same time enhancing employee performance and boosting the productivity of your business.

Return

5.       Recruiting Good People

Having skilled competent people on the team represents a real competitive advantage – you will be able to produce higher quality product and deliver better customer service than competitors. And importantly, it will give you the opportunity to step back and work ON the business instead of needing to constantly manage everyone and being caught up working IN it.

However, recruiting top performers is one of the most difficult tasks a business owner will undertake and will only be successful if a number of best practice recruiting routines are followed so as to become more efficient and more aggressive in locating good candidates and selecting the applicant with the qualities you really need.

This seminar discusses how to improve procedures for:

• Sourcing candidates

• Selecting candidates from the applicants

• Interviewing applicants to establish actual skill level

• Testing for the necessary skills

• Using a probationary period to establish the fit of the new employee before final commitment

• Meeting labor law requirements for recruitment and hiring practices

Return

6.       Using HR Appraisal for Performance Management

To keep their business pushing forward an SME owner/manager must deal with performance problems, develop talent, make the tough decisions about removing poor performers, and distribute pay equitably. All this can be done without implementing a performance management system likely to arouse resentment and controversy – yet a system that:

• Holds employees accountable for results

• Encourages and supports open, honest feedback between employee and employer

• Provides a convenient mechanism for developing talent

• Can, if required, incorporate a compensation process that is based on performance and pays the high performers more than it pays substandard performers

This BGR covers how to implement a system that will achieve all of these objectives.

Return