Tag: Productivity

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.

Managing Mental Wellbeing During Times of Uncertainty

How many times have you heard the word “unprecedented” in the last few months?

We’re guessing an unprecedented amount of times!

While everyone has experienced stress in some form or another during their lifetimes, the levels of uncertainty on both a global and personal basis are indeed unparalleled.

Life as we know it has changed, and there’s an undercurrent of stress bubbling through almost every aspect of life. As we transition through these changes, it’s vital to take care of our mental wellbeing as much as our physical.

This is how you can check in with yourself and your team in these uncertain times.

Mental Wellbeing During Times of Uncertainty

Stress and Productivity

To some degree, stress can be a useful motivational and productivity tool. If you are cramming for an exam or prepping for an interview, the short-term freak-out can give you the push to get things done! However, stress has a different effect on everyone, and chronic stress is not conducive to good mental or physical health.

Right now, we have stress coming at us from all areas of life: work, family, money, health, and the change of all our usual routines. Over time, these worries can interfere with sleep, digestion, immunity, and make us irritable, sad, angry, or just super anxious.

If you are pressuring yourself because you should be making the most of your “extra time,” by using this pandemic to catch up on tasks, trying to maintain business as usual, or even as a time to start a side-business, write a book, or become a yogi – it’s time to give yourself a break.

While being hyperproductive may work for a percentage of the population, it isn’t the case for everyone. It’s more than okay to just survive in the best way you know how.

How to Cope With Stress

Rule number one: cut yourself some slack! You don’t have to be the best remote worker, the best home-school teacher, the best cook, or the best anything! The world is going through an enormous shared trauma experience; there’s no right (or wrong) way to survive.

Having said that, there are a few ways that you can protect your mental wellbeing.

Exercise is scientifically proven to boost your mood and can help stave off depression and anxiety – as is time spent in the great outdoors. Whether you are still working from home or you’re back in your workplace under Alert Level 2, make time to move and feel the sunlight on your face every day.

Prioritise! Don’t let overwhelm cripple you. Instead, make a list of everything you need to do, prioritise the essentials, and let everything else go.

Your body needs to be reminded that it doesn’t have to remain in a state of stress for the duration of the pandemic. Take time out to do whatever calms you – meditate, breathe, jog, read, watch Netflix, dance around the living room to Spice Girls hits…

How To Help Your Team Build Resilience

Besides the fact that your business may have been thrust into working from home or adapting your operations, every employee has added stress and anxiety that are difficult to separate from their work-life for now.

It’s essential that you understand these pressures and support your team in building resilience as they (and you) transition through the levels.

Some people might be struggling with isolation and loneliness. Whereas others may be struggling with sending kids back to school, or afraid about returning to work safely. So everyone will need extra connection, reassurance and flexibility over the coming months.

Now is the time to check in with everybody more frequently. Do it via phone or video call, individually and as a team, to ensure that everyone feels connected and heard.

It is important that senior staff and managers role model resilience and healthy work practices in uncertain times. Communication must also be transparent and respectful during these times.

Perhaps the best piece of advice we can give is something we have heard from New Zealand’s very own management team time and time again over the last few months – be kind.

Are you worried about the mental wellbeing at your workplace? Then get in touch with us here at Spice HR today. We are experts in handling team morale during uncertain times.

Why Good Communication Is So Important

Communication begins the second we’re born.

We soon discover that making loud noises usually gets us what we want! Hopefully for most of us, our communication skills become much more advanced from then on. Though, you may meet the odd person who seems to still operate on this premise.

In business, as in life, communication is essential for survival. Done effectively, it helps your team be happy, creative, and productive.

Think about all the positive attributes you want your team to possess – trust, loyalty, efficiency, passion for the job (and the business as a whole), and commitment. Good communication is essential in creating each of these factors.

Let’s dive a little deeper into why good communication is essential to your business.

Why Good Communication Is So Important

Creating Buy-In

If an employee doesn’t understand or buy-in to the values and purpose of your organisation, they are unlikely to go the extra mile in any aspect of their role. So basically, you end up with someone who clocks in and out and does the bare minimum.

However, when you are able to effectively communicate your company’s “why,” you start to build a sense of belonging.

When employees understand how their role contributes to the bigger picture, they will take more pride in their work and serve as powerful advocates for your business. The side effects of buy-in include engagement and loyalty.

Increasing Productivity

Productivity is a key component of a successful business. Without being productive, you and your team are just wasting your own time… and company time.

One sure-fire way to increase productivity is to work on communication within your organisation. To do their job well, employees need to understand what is required of them. With the right information, they can do that job faster and more effectively.

Foster A Positive, Happy Workplace Culture

Nothing builds resentment faster than not listening to your employees – which equates to not valuing or respecting them. Communication is not a one-way street that only goes from the top-down. You must allow two-way communication. That means giving employees an avenue to voice their ideas and opinions without fear of being shut down.

It’s incredibly empowering for people to trust that if they bring a concern or idea to a manager, they will be heard. And who better to know how to improve the way things are done within your organisation than the people doing them!?

Building Cohesive Teams

Small issues can quickly develop into major HR issues in a workplace environment. Good communicators know how to listen without overreacting, which is essential in preventing misunderstandings and conflict.

Teams that work well together naturally create good morale, which, of course, is great for productivity!

Inspire Innovation and Creativity

When you encourage everyone in your organisation to openly share ideas, you foster an environment of innovation and creativity. Your employees are your biggest asset. They know the business inside out and potentially have so much to offer.

But if you make them feel as if their voices aren’t important, they’re not going to share these insights with others. Instead, foster an environment of open sharing. You never know what your team might come up with!

Building Trust

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Trust affects engagement, culture, and ultimately, productivity, so you don’t want to lose it. Communicating clearly helps managers to be transparent, which in turn builds trust throughout the entire organisation. Down the line, this translates to transparency and trust among your customers and clients.

Encouraging multi-directional, good communication within your teams shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be one of the foundations of your business strategy. If this is an area you think needs some work, trust us –it’s well worth the time and effort to improve.

Luckily, the Spice Gals are here to help you develop great communication within your business. Get in touch with us today if you want to discuss the power of communication further.