Category: Growth

How To Become An Employer Of Choice (And Why You Should)

Do people want to work at your organisation?

Or probably the bigger question, rather than just wanting to work there, do they want to stay long term as it’s just a fantastic environment that can’t be beaten elsewhere?

If you can answer yes to both of those questions, then you have conquered an immense challenge and become an employer of choice.

If you think you might have some work to do or simply want to delight your staff, then this is the article for you.

We are going to discuss how to become an employer of choice and how to stay one so that your business can reap all the benefits that come along with this. Let’s dive in!

How To Become An Employer Of Choice (And Why You Should)

What Is An Employer Of Choice?

Being an employer of choice means being a company that is highly regarded by job seekers and employees. It is a place that stands out from other businesses as a preferred place to work due to the positive work culture, opportunities available and strong employer brand.

If you have managed to be recognised as an employer of choice, it means you have successfully created an environment where your team are engaged, motivated and satisfied with their work.

Ultimately, as an employer of choice, you will be able to attract and retain top talent, have low employee turnover rates, and have a great reputation in the job market. As well as that, you’ll typically enjoy greater productivity and loyalty from your team. You will be seen as a desirable employer and people will actively seek you out, aspiring to work for you.

Sounds pretty good, right? So, here are some of the ways you can foster this feeling at your workplace.

Your Brand, Their Choice

When it comes to being an employer of choice, reputation is everything. So, you want to develop a strong brand highlighting your company ethics, employee growth opportunities, a great culture, and stable finances.

How can you do all of that? Try some of these tactics:

Core Values

What makes your organisation different from other companies? It is your value proposition. So, part of building a strong employer brand is articulating what is unique about your business and why people will want to work with you.

Identify your core values, mission and vision and weave them into everything you do. Develop strong communication channels and ways to recognise your team’s achievements when they demonstrate these core values and help your business work towards your collective goals.

Purpose

A strong HR team can help to shape a company’s purpose. A purpose is about more than generating productivity and the work that your team will output. A purpose is about building a strong employer brand, displaying your ethics and giving your team something to connect with.

When the company and the team align behind strong values and a purpose you all become invested in something you believe in.

Connecting your company’s purpose to environmental, social and business goals and making those goals a part of your employer brand gives your company a powerful way to make an impact on the world and attract better talent along the way.

Growth Opportunities

Becoming an employer of choice will help you to retain quality team members. But, in order to retain those people long term, you will need to provide opportunities for growth and development. That can mean the chance to enhance their skills in certain areas, work on projects in their field of interest, and even ways to advance their careers.

Make sure your business offers training programs, mentorship and clear paths for progression.

Remuneration And Reward

It is important to back up your strong company culture and values with attractive remuneration. Obviously, you want to offer competitive salaries that align with (or better) industry standards. But it’s not all about money. There are other ways you can give your employees great benefits, such as flexible working conditions, rewards programs, and tailored incentives.

Being A Modern Employer Of Choice

In your quest to become an employer of choice, it’s vital to take stock of the current market conditions and what people are looking for in 2023. As we mentioned above, one of the fundamental changes we’ve seen is the importance of purpose in today’s organisations.

There are several driving forces behind this:

Demographic Changes

Both Millennial and Gen Z employees prioritise values and purpose more than the previous generations have. It’s not simply about the work they are doing, it is about the impact the business can have.

Meaning is becoming a key differentiator for company’s to retain and attract talent. A clear purpose not only helps to attract the right kind of talent, but it helps to engage your existing talented employees and boosts productivity.

Automation

We’re sure every one of you could list a boring or mundane task that you have had to complete in your working career that drove you up the wall. Thankfully, with the advancement of technology and the rising popularity of automation, those tasks might just be off your plate now.

Automation allows for repetitive, manual tasks to be handled by technology, rather than team members. And as these tasks are generally the first to be automated, they leave behind the more meaningful and rewarding tasks. Again, this gives your team the opportunity to work for a stronger purpose than data entry!

COVID

Yep, we mentioned the C word. While Covid provided a rather tumultuous season in our working careers, it actually helped a lot of people to realign their priorities when it came to their personal lives and career. As a result, the dramatic shift in feeling is that a company should have a purpose to make working life more meaningful.

Globalisation

Geography is no longer the barrier it once was. In days gone by, you had to live locally to the company you worked for or be willing to travel there. Now, it is easier than ever for companies to recruit staff or to have staff work from anywhere in the world. And there are compelling reasons to do so.

Globalisation means greater international collaboration and being able to work for an even wider purpose. So, this should be incorporated into your communication, onboarding, engagement and management strategies if you can make this happen.

Becoming An Employer Of Choice

As you have probably gathered, a strong HR presence is going to be key to becoming an employer of choice. The people are your company’s’s most important asset. And creating a strong purpose for them to unite under is the first step to becoming an employer of choice.

It can seem like an imposing task if you aren’t sure where to start. Luckily, the Spice Gals are here to help you. As experienced HR professionals and business owners ourselves, we understand the importance of uniting your team under a collective purpose.

Let us help you define and implement that purpose so that you can become an employer of choice. Book a time to chat with our team and take the first step towards purpose now.

When Automation Meets Human Leadership

It’s no secret that we are living in a world of developing technology.

And one of the biggest advancements in recent times is automation.

Incredibly helpful for streamlining processes and creating capabilities, automation is a useful tool that can aid with HR functions in your business.

However, it is important to remember that ‘Human’ is right there in the name when you are talking HR!

So, let’s explore what happens when Automation meets human leadership and how you can strike the right balance in your workplace.

When Automation Meets Human Leadership

What Is HR Automation?

HR automation refers to the use of technology and software to streamline and automate various Human Resource processes. This can include tasks such as record management, employee onboarding, performance management, payroll, and other administrative tasks.

There are a variety of HR automation tools available, with the most popular being an HR Information System (HRIS). These tools can help businesses save time and reduce errors by automating routine HR tasks, enabling employees to self-serve certain HR functions, and providing managers with better insights into employee performance and engagement.

Some of the benefits of HR automation include improved efficiency, increased accuracy, reduced administrative burdens, and better compliance with employment laws and regulations. Additionally, by automating certain processes, businesses can free up their HR team to focus on more strategic initiatives, such as employee development and engagement.

How To Use HR Automation

HRIS can help enhance engagement and productivity when it comes to the HR functions in your organisation. An HRIS can offer transparency and real-time data to allow for better feedback and reward and recognition.

Here are some of the benefits of using an HRIS in your business:

Easier onboarding

An HRIS can help to streamline your onboarding process as many of the manual tasks (like paperwork, orientation scheduling and sending welcome emails) can be automated. This can save your HR team time and creates an efficient process where nothing is missed. Onboarding progress can also be tracked, ensuring new team members are always fully onboarded and ready to start work.

By having a central platform that employees, managers and new hires can communicate through, it reduces confusion and ensures everyone is on the same page. Generally an HRIS also integrates with your other HR systems, such as payroll and recruitment platforms, so it makes it easy to have your new team member accurately set up in all the necessary systems and onboarded effectively.

Better training experiences

Even though automation is a big part of an HRIS, you are still able to personalise training programmes within the system, allowing managers to create tailored learning plans for individual team members based on their roles, skills and development needs. This is especially helpful as it means each training module is then relevant and useful to the individual employee, creating a more effective learning experience.

Having an HRIS that your team can log into means training material is easily accessible in one location, and everyone’s progress can be monitored.

Performance reviews

The automation capabilities of an HRIS can streamline your performance review process. Automate the tasks of scheduling review meetings, sending reminders to employees and managers, and collecting feedback from the right people to create an efficient, consistent and standardised review process.

Your system can also help you deep dive into performance data to identify high performing employees and areas of improvement. This helps with remuneration and creating plans for additional training and support where needed. Helpfully, this can also integrate with your payroll system too!

Having the review process standardised allows for timely feedback to be provided.

Staff engagement

You can use an HRIS platform for sharing employee appreciation and recognition. You can also track and monitor employee engagement outside formal review times via pulse surveys.

A wealth of data

Over time, an HRIS becomes a repository of HR documentation and employee history. It means you will always be able to lay your hands on specific HR detail when you need it.

It also allows for quick and easy reporting on HR data, creating the opportunity for analysis and prediction of trends that might influence your people strategy.

This data portal is not only of benefit to HR, it also has self-service elements to ensure leave requests and employee information remain up to date.

Keeps people connected

Workplaces have evolved in the last few years. While we used to all sit side by side in the office, things are quite different now. So, your HRIS can be used as an internal communication hub. This provides a seamless connection for all team members, whether they are in the office, working remotely, or a hybrid of the two.

Considering Human Leadership

Technology is clearly a massive part of our daily functions. But, we can’t rely solely on robots yet! There are simply some things that AI and automation systems cannot do. We still require strong human leadership to complement technological advancements.

Employees still want to be able to connect with their leaders on a human level. They don’t want leaders who are emotionally distant. They need connected, empathetic leaders who value investing in relationships with their team members.

Part of that is creating an environment of positive role models. It’s also about creating a great team vibe and leaders who provide personal and timely feedback on employee performance. Finally, today’s team members don’t simply want to work for managers, they want to collaborate on projects together and work for common business goals.

Leaders may need further training in soft skills to facilitate all of this. This will help them to develop trust and share accountability with their team. Remember that “Human Leadership” prioritises employee wellbeing and corporate culture. There is no longer a cookie-cutter approach to managing humans.

Balancing Humans And Automation

Creating the perfect working environment is about balance. You want to incorporate the benefits of automation that an HRIS offers, but ensure that your team is still backed by strong human leadership.

Need some help striking that balance?

Then the Spice Gals are here to help you do it. Have a chat with our team today!

How To Create Inclusion With Cultural Diversity In The Workplace

The world is an amazing place. Packed full of rich cultures, there are people from every corner of the world who have something unique and beautiful to offer. 

Which is why celebrating the richness of the world’s cultures is the focus of World Cultural Diversity Day. Held every year on 21 May, its purpose is to generate social cohesion and promote intercultural dialogue to help achieve peace and sustainable development.  

So, with this important day looming, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to explore the importance of embracing cultural diversity in the workplace. 

Let’s look at what workplace cultural diversity is, why it is beneficial for your business and how you can create an inclusive workplace culture for all. 

How To Create Inclusion With Cultural Diversity In The Workplace 

Recognising Cultural Diversity In The Workplace 

New Zealand is an incredibly diverse place. We have a large range of cultures, ethnicities and religions living in our beautiful country. Recognising this cultural diversity in the workplace is not only essential, but it can also be very beneficial! 

Employees from different cultural backgrounds work alongside each other every day. So, it’s imperative to recognise the needs and values of the different cultures, ethnicities and nationalities amongst your team.  

Successful businesses are increasingly those that recognise the importance of promoting cultural diversity in the workplace and who take deliberate steps to create inclusive environments, allowing team members of all backgrounds to thrive. 

What Embracing Diversity Can Do For Business 

There are many reasons to embrace cultural diversity in your workplace. Firstly, as we’ve already mentioned, we live in a diverse society, so any number of cultures can be represented in a workplace. Recognising and embracing that allows people to be comfortable in their workplace and allows them to be at their best every day. 

When people are comfortable, they thrive. Being part of a diverse and inclusive environment creates increased creativity and innovation, improved problem-solving abilities, and a better understanding of different perspectives and ideas. Creating a welcoming workplace culture that values diversity promotes a place of respect for all team members. 

Aside from the team culture aspect, it is important to note that many younger employees (who make up a growing proportion of workers) hesitate to join organisations with poor ethics and diversity. So, it could actually be detrimental to your business to ignore the diversity that no doubt exists in your workplace! 

The Benefits Of Workplace Cultural Diversity 

Cultural diversity can bring many benefits for both employers and employees. Some of the key benefits are: 

  • Better understanding: Working with people from different cultural backgrounds brings the opportunity to learn from each other and gain a better understanding of different customs, beliefs, and values. This can lead to an overall greater cultural awareness and more sensitivity, which can improve communication and collaboration. 
  • Improved customer service: Having employees who understand and can relate to different cultural groups can be a real advantage in terms of customer service. Customers will feel more comfortable and valued when they encounter employees who share their cultural background or are sensitive to different cultural needs. 
  • Greater innovation: A diverse workplace brings together people with different backgrounds, skills, experiences, and perspectives. This can lead to greater creativity and innovation as employees are consistently exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. 
  • Improved problem solving: As well as innovation, diverse teams are often better equipped to solve complex problems. That is because they bring different perspectives and approaches to the table. This can result in more effective problem-solving and decision-making company-wide, giving your business a competitive advantage. 
  • Employee retention: When employees feel valued and respected for their unique contributions and perspectives, they are more likely to be engaged and committed to their work. This can lead to higher levels of job satisfaction and lower turnover rates. 
  • Increased profits: Being known as a culturally diverse company earns you a great reputation, both as an employer and as a company of choice for customers. People who align with your company values will choose to shop with you, potentially leading to increased profits. 

How To Embrace Cultural Diversity In The Workplace 

Creating a harmonious, culturally diverse workplace doesn’t have to be hard. Here are some of our best tips to make it happen: 

Company Values 

Consider ways that you can tie your organisation’s core values to your employee’s personal principles. This will give them a strong connection with your business. Not only does this help to create cultural diversity in the workplace, but it can also increase engagement within your team and improve staff retention. 

Conscious Recruitment 

When you recruit consciously, you are aligning your hiring process with your organisation’s mission and long-term goals. It involves looking at each candidate in depth, not only to assess their skills, but also how they would fit into your organisation as a whole and whether they believe in your mission and align with your values.  

The great thing about recruiting in this way is that you can share your values around cultural diversity to avoid bias when hiring. 

Celebrate Different Cultures 

We can all learn a lot from each other whether it be skills, knowledge or cultural experience. By celebrating different cultures in your workplace, you can integrate and recognise other cultural values and points of view for greater understanding and communication. 

Encourage inclusion by hosting shared cultural lunches and recognising specific festivals or other significant dates. Not only are you promoting learning and acceptance, but you can all have a great time while doing it! 

Adopt Flexibility 

You may find that people from different cultures have different needs in the workplace. So, adopting flexibility will allow you to cater for everyone. Get to know your team members and ask them what their individual needs are. Then, come up with a way that each employee can maximise their opportunities while still adhering to their culture. Remember, one size does not have to fit all! 

Encourage Communication 

We may not all speak the same native language, but we can all still achieve excellent levels of communication. Ensure you have a workplace that creates spaces for open and honest conversations. Address conflict as soon as it arises and encourage awareness and respect amongst your team. 

Consider Cross-Cultural Awareness 

You may even choose to undertake a cross-cultural awareness programme within your organisation. This is a form of training that helps all your team understand and respect the cultural diversity that exists within their workplace. It helps address language barriers, and specific cultural communication styles while promoting being open to the differences in each culture without stereotyping or bias.  

Embracing Cultural Diversity 

Diversity is part of what makes the world a fascinating place and promoting inclusion in your workplace can have many benefits for employers and employees. 

So, if you are ready to embrace diversity in your workplace, we are ready to help you do it. Chat to the Spice Gals today about how to create an environment of inclusion. 

Staff Retention: Why It’s The Key To Your Business Success

As an employer, what should be your biggest goal this year?

Bigger profits? More sales? Adopting AI?

While these things might be important, we strongly believe you should be putting your focus on another area of your business … staff retention.

Staff retention will be crucial for your organisation’s success as it helps to build continuity, reduce costs, increase productivity, improve customer service and SO much more.

So, how do you achieve good staff retention?

Let’s look into that concept now.

Staff Retention: Why It’s The Key To Your Business Success

The Importance Of Staff Retention

Good staff retention is excellent for your business, especially during the trying times we are currently living in. Here are just a few reasons why that is:

  • Saves Money: Recruiting and training new team members costs a lot in time, physical spend, and potential downtime for your business. That spend does not need to happen if you retain your current skilled staff.
  • Boosted Productivity: Experienced team members are more productive than brand new ones as they have a better understanding of your business goals and objectives. They are also more familiar with your culture and processes, allowing them to get on with their work quickly and effectively.
  • Great Customer Service: Being with an organisation for an extended period of time lets you get insight into the needs of the customers. This insight helps your experienced staff to deliver top level customer service; in turn, building customer trust and loyalty.
  • Knowledge Retention: By retaining your experienced employees, you also retain the knowledge they have developed while working with you. This knowledge is difficult to replace and can be critical to the ongoing success of your business.
  • Team Cohesion: High staff turnover is not good for team morale. It creates disruption and a situation where a continually changing set of personalities needs to find a way to work together harmoniously. Staff retention builds a more stable and cohesive team allowing for powerful collaboration.

These elements will be vital to the long-term success of your business.

Encouraging Good Staff Retention

With a potential recession looming, the last thing you want to be doing is replacing good employees because they are not feeling heard or valued. If your key employees walk out the door, then it will cost you a lot of time and money to replace them.

Retaining your key talent should be top of your priority list!

Here are just some of the ways you can do that:

Stay Interview

The Stay Interview is here to stay! But what is it? Well, a Stay Interview is when employees sit down with their managers to discuss their job satisfaction, goals and motivations. The purpose of the interview is to gather information about what is keeping them in their job and what factors might cause them to leave in the future.

The interview can be conducted at any time that the team member is working with an organisation. Its aim is to address any issues or concerns your employees might have and to set actions that will remedy those issues.

By taking the time to gain feedback from each of your employees, you can identify any areas of the business that might be problematic. Then, you can take steps to improve those areas and retain your vital team members. Those steps could be anything from training opportunities and providing more support to a change in job responsibilities or work environment.

Progression Pathways

With less time spent in the office, some skills are becoming obsolete and other roles are evolving. Employees are returning to the office after working remotely for some time. You will want to ensure that the role they were employed for still exists in the same capacity and whether their skills are still right for that job.

It’s time to take a deep dive into your business and the people you have working with you to create the right structure for everyone. You want to make sure each role is best suited for the employee undertaking it! So, talk with your team about valid career pathways so that everyone is in the best-fit role.

A really helpful tool for this is Extended DISC assessment. DISC is a form of psychometric testing that establishes each employee’s personality type. You can use the results to aid personal growth and to improve self-awareness, communication and teamwork. Here at Spice HR, we are Extended DISC Accredited Practitioners, so can help you get a true understanding of what makes your team tick.

Let Them Be Heard

Sometimes in an organisation, it can feel like there’s a disconnect between the team on the ground and the management team. Communication is the key to fixing any perceived divides.

You want your employees to feel heard, so the first step is to listen. This can be done in a range of ways. It can be as simple as a 10-minute one-to-one meeting where you give individual employees your undivided attention, or as complex as a companywide engagement survey.

Don’t forget that you actually need to do something with the feedback you receive from your team. Take steps to action any practical requests and look for ways to address issues.

Bring The Benefits

There are plenty of ways that you can implement initiatives that don’t cost a whole lot but can increase productivity and engagement hugely. Some of these are:

  • Flexible start and finish times
  • Create a wellbeing space in the workplace with accessible resources
  • Wellness challenges
  • Recognise awesome work with a company shout out page, brag board, or ABCD (above the call of duty) card
  • Offer mentorships with complementary colleagues
  • Discussions about career pathways and leadership opportunities
  • Offer longer break times
  • Bring your Pet to Work Day
  • Regular virtual meetups with fun activities like games or quizzes
  • Increased autonomy
  • A feedback box for input and suggestions from team members
  • Lunch with the boss days
  • Offer a 4-day workweek if that’s a possibility for your business. While team members are in the office for fewer hours, research has shown that their productivity is usually higher with a whole day of downtime up their sleeves.

There are also further benefits you can offer, but these ones will carry a cost for your business:

  • Extra leave
  • Give them their birthdays off work
  • Subsidised childcare
  • Bonus schemes
  • Professional development and training plans
  • Health insurance
  • Increased superannuation contributions
  • Regular remuneration reviews
  • Regular team lunches or outings
  • Wellness initiatives like courses, vouchers or partner discounts
  • Tickets to shows or sports games
  • Personal house cleaning
  • Employee anniversary celebrations

Encouraging Staff Retention

As you can see, there’s a lot to like about staff retention. But there is an awful lot that goes into retaining your high performing staff members.

So, if you know you need to retain your team, but would like a little bit of help doing it, the Spice Gals are here to help! Experts in people management, DISC assessment and building successful team morale, we can help you introduce simple retention initiatives that work.

Get in touch with our team today.

How To Perfect The Hybrid Working Experience

There aren’t too many good things that came out of the pandemic. But, there is one thing in particular that was positive – and that is an evolution of thinking about the way we work.

By being forced to stay in our homes throughout the lockdown period, we proved that we didn’t necessarily have to be in an office space to work effectively.

And as the restrictions eased, hybrid working became a thing.

Now, more than a year on from lockdown, people are still embracing hybrid working to achieve better balance and to better utilise company resources.

With a new way of working on the table, you have probably had to examine your traditional processes. Hybrid working is here to stay, so it’s time to perfect the experience for your team and your organisation. Here’s how you can do it.

A New Way Of Working

What is hybrid working? Well, you’re probably already doing it with your teams without using the fancy term!

Hybrid working is a flexible working arrangement where your staff work some of the time in a traditional office space and some of the time at a remote location, usually their home. The degree of flexibility should be based on the needs of the organisation and the individual workers.

It is this varying level of flexibility that makes hybrid working so amazing … and also quite hard to manage – especially if everyone is operating on different hours and days!

That’s why it is vital that you master and perfect the hybrid working experience so that it operates well for your business and for your employees. Here’s the steps to follow to do that:

Step 1: Review Current Arrangements

If you are like most New Zealand businesses, you probably threw together some basic hybrid working parameters back in 2020 and have been weathering the storm ever since. Chances are, those hastily set up working arrangements could do with some updating by now.

The first step is to review what you already have in place and assess how it has been functioning. Is it serving your business well and are your employees benefitting from the flexibility? What’s working really well and what could do with some refining?

Have a chat with key management and some of the employees who are using the flexibility of hybrid working to get their input. That way, you’ll have information from both sides of the working arrangement – business and individuals.

Step 2: Make A Plan

Now that you have your feedback, it’s time to create some clear guidelines about how hybrid working will function going forward. While the specifics might be slightly different for the individual depending on their role and level of responsibility, having some guidelines lets everyone know what the expectations are.

Remember that you want to create an arrangement that works for both the business and your employees. You want your employees to still feel like they have autonomy over their workload, but at the same time, working hours need to be productive and produce the right results for the business.

Step 3: Document It All

Once you have created your plan, it is important to document the hybrid working parameters so that they are widely understood and can be enforced.

Things that should be discussed and documented are start and finish times/working hours, the locations used for working (and if team members have all the resources they need at each location), and expectations around how working from home should be – dress standards for meetings, digital security etc.

Other Considerations

Another thing you might want to offer your team is ‘Flexications’. Working from home is one thing, but could your team work from a different country? A Flexication is the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world, mixing holidaying with work. It allows location-independent work conditions so that your employees can work from literally anywhere, completing their work obligations while adventuring in their downtime.

In terms of remote working, a Flexication doesn’t have to be much different to working from home from a business perspective. You just need to be clear on employee expectations like time zones and how this will be managed, ensure they are covered by Health and Safety procedures, that reliable WiFi and server access is available, and that privacy policies are met.

Why Go To The Trouble?

Setting up hybrid working parameters may feel like a lot of work. And you might wonder if it is worth all the trouble. We can assure you, it is if you do it right.

Offering hybrid working can help your staff to feel valued and respected. This often means that they are more engaged in their work and ultimately, more productive. It also helps you to be recognised as an employer of choice and encourages great staff retention. All of these things help to create great results for your business.

Perfecting Hybrid Working

To harness all of the positive aspects of hybrid working, you need to make sure you address the potential negative aspects. With people in the office at different times throughout the week, it can have a negative impact on company culture and how your team interact with each other.

It’s important to keep your employees engaged despite the distance. You can do this by planning deliberate social connections such as regular virtual or on-site team meetings and regular one-to-one check ins. Encourage collaboration with cloud based communication and document sharing tools to actively keep teams connected.

Make mental health a priority as it is easy to feel isolated when you are predominantly working remotely.

Also, ensure the current workspace is an enticing place to return to so that your staff actually want to be in the office as opposed to the comfort of their own homes.

Hybrid Help Is Here

Here at Spice HR HQ, we embrace hybrid working for our team. So, we’ve personally been through the process of setting hybrid working parameters that suit everyone, but still generate great company results.

So, if it’s time to review your current hybrid working arrangements, you can count on the Spice Gals to help you create parameters that are good for your business as well as your team.

Reach out to us today to chat about perfecting hybrid working at your place.

Future Proofing And Upskilling Your Team For The Year Ahead

The new year is always a great opportunity for a new start. 

It is a time when most businesses set goals. But this year, your goal setting might look a little different. 

2022 was a more challenging year than anyone anticipated. We were expecting it to be our return to normalcy and a time to find our feet again. 

Instead, it was something quite different. Many of us reached the end of the year tired and burned out. 2023 looks like it may hold a whole new set of challenges, so let’s explore how you can future proof your business and your team by having a people focused approach for the year ahead. 

Future Proofing And Upskilling Your Team For The Year Ahead 

Set Your Focus 

In previous years, your business goals were probably based on practical elements like growth and revenue targets. While you might still be setting these kinds of goals for 2023, it is also important to think about your key asset – the people element of your business. 

Everyone has experienced a rough couple of years. While Covid restrictions have been lifted, life has not returned to the way it was before. As a result, people are tired and they are looking for more in their lives than simply going to work to earn a living. So, you’ll need to keep this in mind when setting your focus for the year ahead. 

Your workplace should be a destination that people want to come to each day. Consider how you can make it a great, welcoming space and uphold a positive team morale. One way to do that is to build a focus on investing in your internal staff to retain the great talent you have. 

Here are some ways you can do that. 

Invest In Your Team 

If you have amazing people in your team, your 2023 focus should be retaining and developing that talent. Why? Well firstly, you want to keep that great team! 

Obviously, it is far easier to retain the amazing staff you have than it would be to hire new employees. Apart from the monetary cost to your business of advertising, hiring and training new staff, there is also an opportunity cost of losing great people. You may not be able to recruit others of the same caliber or those that work together as well as your current team do. 

Plus, investing in your team is greatly rewarding. Not only do the employees you know, like, and trust gain greater skills and further their professional knowledge, but they also become more productive, loyal and motivated. This can only mean good things for them and for your business. 

So, how do you do it? 

Upskilling For All 

In the last few years, it hasn’t felt as if there’s been much time for progression. The focus has been more about treading water and staying afloat to weather the current storm.  

With many businesses starting to look to the future, what do you want that to look like for your team?”

The answer should be a happy, healthy, empowered team who enjoy their work. Some of that comes down to creating a great team environment to work in. But, another element is the chance for progression. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean promotions for everyone. Progression of skills and opportunities is also really attractive. 

Types Of Upskilling 

This 2023, factor in how you can upskill your staff. This can include team-wide skills training via workshops, conferences and training days. But, it can also include encouraging your staff to pursue individual interests via short courses and study programmes. These could be both free and paid courses to support the progression and growth of your team. 

A vital area to include in your training programme is financial literacy. While this might not be pertinent to an employee’s professional role, it will certainly help them in a personal capacity.  

Current economic predictions are quite bleak, so helping your team navigate the impending situation is not only responsible, but helpful for maintaining a calm workplace that is free from as much stress as possible. 

Training The Trainers 

Much of the internal training within a company falls to leaders and management. So, don’t forget to factor in training for the trainers!  

Of course, that means the usual forms of professional development that you would usually have in place for your leaders. But, it also means exploring what it means to manage a team in a post-pandemic environment. 

Consider what new ways of working mean for your company. Things like handling hybrid working and leading a remote team might be new for some of your management team. They might have leadership skill gaps that need plugging.  

Implement training and development to address these areas and support them to confidently lead hybrid or remote teams and everything that comes along with working in 2023. 

Ready to tackle 2023 head on? As we mentioned above, this year is likely to be a lot more people-focused than in previous years. You may find you need to revisit your HR policies and procedures. 

If you need help with policies and procedures, upskilling, engagement or any other HR related questions the Spice Gals are here to help you! 

Let’s Check In With Our Mental Health

As Mental Health Awareness Week approaches in New Zealand, the focus of many companies turns towards ensuring their teams are checking in with their mental health. 

This is now more important than ever! 

Sure, we are hopefully over the worst of the pandemic restrictions, but the ongoing repercussions are most definitely being felt. 

So, let’s explore what you can do to check in with your own mental health, as well as the mental health of your team. 

Let’s Check In With Our Mental Health 

Do You Have The Right Support? 

Many people have developed strong skills of resilience in the last few years. Resilience was a vital tool to help navigate the choppy waters of Covid and everything that the virus brought with it! 

Whilst resilience remains an essential skill, we cannot rely on this alone. There comes a time when everyone reaches their maximum point of resilience and it’s important to make sure the right additional resources are in place. 

Consider who you know that could provide key support. It could be a spouse, friend, family member or co-worker. If none of those are suitable, then there are plenty of other options for external support.  

Creating Healthy Habits 

A big part of maintaining good mental health is forming the right habits. Now, that doesn’t simply mean eating healthily and getting enough sleep. Whilst those things are certainly important, you also need to consider your mindset and working relationships.

Relationships in the Workplace

You have probably heard that you draw a lot of energy from the people that surround you. So, it is vital that the people you spend the most time with have a positive influence on you.

Of course, this is not always possible. You may find that you have someone in your team or workplace that you don’t see eye to eye with. Obviously, you can’t cut these people out – even though you might want to! Rather, mindfully manage the interactions you have with them using the following tips: 

  • Actively listen 
  • Stay calm 
  • Stick to the facts 
  • Keep the interactions positive
  • Show empathy – try and see things from their perspective
  • Don’t take things personally
  • Take a pause when you need to 
  • Focus on the result or end goal that you’re after

Mindset 

Mindset is another large component of good mental health. Having a positive state of mind can really help to improve wellbeing, productivity, and confidence. So, how do you create good mindset habits? Well, here are some of our favourite tips:  

  • Squash the negative self-talk and celebrate wins – no matter how big or small
  • Stop comparing yourself to others – accept yourself for who you are and recognise the value you add
  • Be mindful and appreciate the good things in life 
  • Recognise and accept your emotions to process them easily 
  • Only focus on what you can control
  • Learn from your mistakes 
  • Practice a ‘glass half full’ mentality

Building Workplace Mental Health Awareness 

Whilst it is great to recognise and celebrate good mental health during Mental Health Awareness Week, we really want to encourage workplace practices that last all year round. 

Here are some great ideas to consider: 

  • Introduce ME Days: everybody has days where they simply don’t have the energy to adult! A ME Day (or mental health day) is the perfect solution. It’s a day kept separate from annual leave, where your team members can take time off. A day to recharge the batteries, if you will! 
  • Wellbeing committee: show your team that you value wellbeing by setting up a committee dedicated towards it. This allows nominated staff and management to consult on wellbeing issues to create a positive environment for everyone in the workplace. 
  • Wellbeing programme: get serious about improving and maintaining good mental health at your workplace by establishing a formal wellbeing programme. The programme could include all the things your team value – flexible working hours and conditions, onsite fitness, healthy food options/education, assistance programmes… whatever works for your people. 
  • Five Ways to Wellbeing: The Mental Health Foundation of NZ has created plenty of useful 5 Ways to Wellbeing resources to download and implement within your workplace.
  • Workshops: The cool thing about professional development is that it doesn’t need to be role specific. There are plenty of types of training centred around resilience and psychological safety that can truly empower your team. 
  • Employee Assistance Programmes: Alongside traditional EAP Providers, if your budget doesn’t stretch that far check out the Xero Assistance Programme. This offers Kiwi small business owners, their employees and family members access to free and confidential counselling and support until the end of the year – regardless of whether you are a Xero customer, or not!  In addition Xero ,have a lot of useful free support resources for businesses – check them out!  

Supporting good mental health should be an essential focus for all NZ businesses. If you feel as though you need help developing or expanding your workplace wellbeing programme, then the Spice Gals are here to help. Get in touch with us today. 

 

How To Boost Workplace Wellness This Winter

Winter wellness – it’s all about rugging up warm, getting that flu jab and staying home from work if you’re unwell, right? Well, that’s part of it.

But have you thought about how you’ll care for the mental wellness of your team this winter – particularly at work?

Deadlines, demanding customers, COVID-19 worries, long hours, remote working – the list of things that can knock our wellbeing at work is endless. And the long, grey winter months can make it all feel so much worse. But improving our mental wellbeing is priceless.

So, how can you ensure you are being an ethical leader and creating an environment of winter workplace wellness? Read on to find out.

How To Boost Workplace Wellness This Winter

Why Workplace Wellness?

Good mental health at work and good management go hand in hand. There’s evidence that workplaces with high levels of mental wellbeing are more productive. According to WorkSafe NZ, focusing on mental health in the workplace is essential because:

  1. It’s good for business. When people are happy in their environment, they are more productive, take less sick leave, and are more likely to remain in their jobs for longer.
  2. It’s a legal obligation under the Health and Safety at Work Act (which is as much about mental health as physical health!)
  3. It’s a moral and ethical obligation for all of us to do the right thing by one another.

Workplace wellness creates a better working environment for everyone, so it becomes a pleasure to be at work despite the dreary weather outside!

Navigating The Winter Blues

The winter blues are a well-known phenomenon. They are most heavily felt throughout the workplace. As the temperature drops and the weather worsens, it is harder to get those sunlight hours that our bodies desperately crave.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to acknowledge that your team may be feeling those winter blues and have a plan to combat their impact as much as possible. One of the easiest ways to do that is to regularly check in with your team – individually and in a group setting.

Encourage open lines of communication so that your team can discuss issues or problems they are facing, have constructive conversations so that they can build resilience, and develop perseverance.

A Guide To Improving Mental Wellbeing In The Workplace

Here at Spice HR, we believe that good mental wellbeing at work is crucial, which is why we support the Five Ways to Wellbeing developed by New Zealand’s Mental Health Foundation.

Whilst these are general principles, they can be practically applied in the workplace. Here are the five areas your team should focus on for great workplace wellness this winter:

  1. Connect

Listen and talk, be present, feel connected. Speak up when you need to, and listen to others. Keep the communication lines open by encouraging discussion

2. Give

Give your time, knowledge, and presence – an essential part of connecting!

3. Take notice

Recognise the good things that your team are doing and the things that spark their creativity and joy. Even the little things count. Appreciate them!

4. Keep Learning

Embrace new experiences, see development opportunities, and provide ongoing learning experiences for your team members.

5. Be Active

Encourage your team to keep active throughout the day even if their role requires them to be at a desk. Do what you can, help them enjoy what they do, and don’t forget to move your mood and your body! Just move – no matter how you do it!

Here at Spice HR, we think that number 1 is particularly crucial: Connect. Many struggling with mental wellbeing try to hide their feelings, afraid of other people’s responses. If you create workplace cultures where people can be themselves, they will speak more freely about mental health concerns and reach out for help when needed. It all comes down to open lines of communication.

Are You An Ethical Leader?

Part of supporting good mental health in the winter workplace is ensuring you behave like an ethical leader. That means taking the time to build a healthy workplace environment for all of your team members.

Ethical leaders tend to choose people over financial reward. While economic growth is essential for many businesses, you will struggle to achieve your goals if you don’t have the buy-in of your people. That means balancing your decision-making to ensure you are doing the right thing by your employees and doing what is best for the business.

There are plenty of ways you can do this. But ultimately, it comes down to creating an environment in which people want to work. An environment that embraces excellent communication. One where people’s opinions and ideas are respected, management show transparency and shares information, and staff feel heard.

Ensuring your team leaders and management have a sense of empathy is vital to supporting their staff appropriately.

Ready To Spice Up Your Workplace Wellness?

Achieving great workplace wellness can be challenging at any time of the year, yet that challenge increases significantly during the winter months.

Need more guidance to improve mental wellbeing in your workplace? Reach out to the Spice Gals!

Spice HR support small and medium businesses who need help getting HR frameworks in place – and we love helping businesses boost staff wellbeing.

So: stop right now, thank you very much – and drop us a line!

Why It’s Vital To Understand Your Team And How To Do It

Can a computer programme really help you understand your team? When it’s based on proven behavioural psychology concepts, utilises complex algorithms, and is successfully used by tens of thousands of organisations worldwide – yes, it can!

The key to building a successful team is understanding your people.

There are several ways you can do this, but Stay Interviews and Extended DISC© assessment tools help you do just that.

These assessments help leaders intentionally and intelligently understand employees while empowering workers to communicate with one another effectively.

Let’s take a closer look at what stay interviews and Extended DISC© are and and how they can help you understand your team.

Why It’s Vital To Understand Your Team And How To Do It

What Is A Stay Interview?

You’ve heard of an Exit Interview, right? Well, a Stay Interview can be even more valuable than the exit variety! At a Stay Interview, you sit down with each team member to gather information about what they value about their job and what can be improved.

By understanding what your team values, you can work to improve things in your workplace. This is going to raise employee retention rates in the long term. You may also discover some helpful tips from your team members that you can easily implement to improve culture, processes and more.

Not only that, but you are creating open lines of communication with your team, building their trust and engagement. Conducting a Stay Interview can be more effective than an employee survey as you are creating a two-way conversation situation where you can both bounce ideas and create opportunities for clarification or to answer follow up questions.

Stay Interviews are the in-person way to help you understand your team better. But, what about technology solutions?

What Is Extended DISC©?

Extended DISC© is a psychology-based assessment tool that helps organisations understand – and therefore better manage – their staff.

Based on the theory developed by psychologist Carl Jung, the Extended DISC© system is one of the most popular behavioural assessment tools in the corporate world. Extended DISC© provides insight into how individuals think, communicate, and interact using a series of questions and algorithms.

According to the science behind the Extended DISC© system, people can be divided into four central behavioural styles, indicated by the following letters:

  • D-style (Dominance)
  • I-Style (Influence)
  • S-Style (Steadiness)
  • C-style (Correctness)

The results of these assessments help shape an understanding of each individual’s strengths, challenges, and communication styles.

How Extended DISC© Assessments Can Help Your Team

Great teamwork doesn’t happen by accident. It takes patience, intention, insight, strong leadership, and the right mix of personalities to build a cohesive team.

In people management, everything boils down to personality and behaviour. Communication issues, conflict, poor performance and low productivity can often be traced back to personality clashes, misunderstandings, or incorrect role fit.

Extended DISC© offers a way for individuals not only to understand themselves better but also understand others more deeply. With these insights, leaders are better able to place employees in the right roles within their teams and manage them in the ways that mesh best with their Extended DISC© profiles.

Extended DISC© assessments help you to empower your team members to better understand their own conscious and sub-conscious behavioural styles. Discovering Extended DISC© as a team is even more valuable. Each staff member can identify and empathise with other behavioural styles, which improves communication and minimises the chance of conflicts.

Overall, job satisfaction increases, and increased performance and productivity comes with a more positive workplace culture.

Get The Best Out Of Your Team

One of the most valuable leadership qualities is the ability to get the best out of your team.

Everyone responds differently to different situations: some of your employees might do their best work under pressure, while others may perform poorly. One person may appreciate a heated debate with a colleague, while another individual could find the exchange stressful and negative. Some people are natural leaders who crave the opportunity to grow, yet others are happy to take a back seat and perform the job they’re comfortable with.

There is a place in your team for all these personality types, but you must be able to recognise each one to create a team environment that meets everyone’s needs.

Extended DISC© is a fantastic team-building tool as it can help you understand the dynamics of your team, identify where the key strengths lie and determine what gaps need to be filled.

A Valuable Workplace Asset

Alongside the in-depth Personal Analysis for each staff member, the Extended DISC© Team Analysis is invaluable.

Here’s how Extended DISC© describe it:

“The Team Analysis gives you an easy to use framework to understand complex issues quickly, solve problems and improve performance. It helps you align your business or team strategy with the behavioural characteristics of your team members.

The Team Analysis combines the results of the Personal Analysis results of your team into one report. It shows the team dynamics, the strengths and development areas of the team, and how the team members are adjusting their behaviours in the existing work environment.

Some popular applications of this tool include team development, strategic decision making, leadership development, organisational development, turnover reduction, conflict resolution and succession planning.”

 

What Does Team Building Look Like In 2022?

In the past, managers have made educated guesses while hiring and building teams and hoped that their people gelled well. But in 2022, team building doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Tools like Extended DISC© provide concrete, usable data to support leaders in building and managing highly effective teams.

DISC© provides a reliable framework to help make decisions and adjustments around people management while empowering staff to take responsibility for their interactions with each other.

Team building aims to create stronger bonds between team members and help them respect their differences while working towards common goals. There is no singular “right” way to achieve this – every team is different, and what works for one may cause havoc for another.

Post pandemic, managers face additional challenges when creating a strong team, such as hybrid work arrangements and remote workers. Team building may not happen as organically as it does in an office environment.

Today’s leaders need to be more intentional about providing opportunities for workers to interact – through structured exercises as well as more informal activities.

Want to know how to best manage the different personality types within your team?

Spice HR are Extended DISC© Accredited Practitioners and can help you with personal growth, team building, leadership, and recruitment. We are also masters at helping you maintain an excellent team culture with tools like the Stay Interview.

Contact us today to find out more.

How To Tackle Hiring and Onboarding New Staff Remotely

Many things became redundant during a pandemic – travel, music festivals, alarm clock sales (yes, really!) and for many, the good old office work environment.

But businesses still need to keep moving forward. They still have to serve their customers, source their supplies, and recruit and train new staff – only, all these “business as usual” processes look a lot different now than they did pre-COVID.

At Spice HR HQ, we’ve experienced changes too: our dynamic duo has become a beautifully rounded team of five.

We personally experienced what it’s like recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new staff remotely – a process that may be daunting for those new to the world of managing remote employees.

In this blog, we’ll explore how recruiting and onboarding are done differently over lockdowns and post-COVID and offer some insight on how to approach it with your business.

But first, we’d love to introduce you to the newest Spice Gals on our team.

How To Tackle Hiring and Onboarding New Staff Remotely

Let’s Talk About Spice

2021 was a year of growth for Spice HR, which meant we were able to bring a few fresh faces onto our team.

Pre expansion, you would be communicating with the original Spicey duo, Nicole and Nichola – but now, your documents and emails may be crafted by Justine, Bianca or Nina.

Let’s do a brief intro so that you can put a face to each new name:

Justine

Justine has more than 20 years of management experience, bringing a wealth of knowledge to the team. She has a passion for helping others thrive and for encouraging equity and inclusion. She believes there are always opportunities for improvement, continued personal growth, and doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.

Nina

Nina has a new HR degree under her belt, along with a past life as a manager. She has a passion for all things HR and has come on board to help our clients with their HR projects. When she’s not neck-deep in HR, Nina is running around after her toddler or out and about exploring the best places to grab a bite to eat.

Bianca

Bianca is our Spicey queen of all things admin. With 20 years in the workforce to back her up, she’s the one taking care of all the details and making sure everything runs smoothly. Like any good Spice Gal, Bianca is always up for a challenge and will often dive into the world of HR to lend the rest of us a hand. Like most Aucklanders, Bianca is looking forward to jumping on a plane and travelling again when the opportunity arises.

There you have it – with five members, we’re now officially as big as the actual Spice Girls and well on our way to Spice Gal World Domination!

Our newest team members have been onboarded and enveloped in the warm glow of our spicey culture. If you’re wondering how that works in times of lockdown and remote work, keep reading for some insight.

Things To Consider When Hiring and Onboarding New Staff Remotely

While the fundamentals of recruiting and onboarding remain the same, the process may look a little different. Due to lockdowns or location, some managers may not meet their employees in person before hiring, but that doesn’t need to be an issue.

In fact, thanks to digital advances driven by the pandemic, it’s now easier than ever to take care of hiring and onboarding new staff remotely. Let’s take a closer look at each part of the process.

Recruiting Remotely

The right fit remains one of the most important aspects of recruitment. And getting the right fit means effectively marketing your employee value proposition. To attract an employee who embraces and enhances your culture, you must be able to describe and demonstrate that culture.

This goes further than just your job advertisement or position description. Put some thought into how your brand appears from the outside looking in, via social media, your website, and word of mouth from previous and current staff.

Share pictures and videos online of how your team collaborates, even in a remote work environment. Talk about your camaraderie in an authentic way, and work on building genuine connections between your existing employees to organically build a great culture that’s visible to all.

Virtual interviews are often more efficient than in-person interviews and can be less daunting for candidates. Zoom or Teams are usually the go-to methods here, and most people are more than familiar with how they work by now!

When it comes to paperwork, it’s now possible to do it all digitally. Even contracts can be signed virtually using a tool like DocuSign or HelloSign. That means a faster, more efficient hiring process. And if you’re lucky enough to have an HRIS, then it’s all automated for you!

Onboarding New Staff Remotely

How does onboarding new staff remotely work? You can’t give them an office tour and introduce them to your team during a morning coffee break, so what’s the procedure?

Well, setting expectations is still crucial, so it’s important for managers to communicate with a new hire before their first day on the job. This is an opportunity to provide any documents or materials that they need to understand how your business works.

Share your values and culture in ways that feel appropriate; written documents followed up with a Zoom call for a more in-depth chat is a good start.

You’ll also need to share copies of your code of conduct, employee handbook and any other documents that can help your new hire integrate into the business smoothly.

How Do You Onboard Remotely?

One on one and group video calls will be needed to introduce the team, and these should continue regularly to ensure that camaraderie and connection develops between your employees.

You may even want to set up a mentor or “buddy system” so your new hire has a closer relationship with a specific person (whether that’s their direct manager or a colleague) – someone who’s on-call to help them navigate their new role.

Bear in mind that it can take a little longer for someone to integrate into a new work environment remotely. They don’t have the opportunity to interact with managers and colleagues as organically as they would in an office environment.

Give them the time and resources they need, and don’t assume that if they’re quiet, they’re doing just fine. Managers must be proactive and check-in, ask for feedback, and be ready to provide more support if needed.

Spicing Up Your Hiring and Onboarding

It can be tricky to navigate the process of hiring and onboarding new staff remotely in this world of post-pandemic business.

If your business needs some support to recruit and onboard new team members – remotely or otherwise – the Spice HR team are here to help.

Contact us to find out what we can do for you.