Business Blog

Why staff leave organisations, it’s not money

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Team development

Why are your best people leaving?

Research from the Saratoga Institute indicates of the top seven reasons money isn’t one of them.

  • Mismatch between person and job
  • Not enough training and feedback
  • Feeling undervalued or unrecognised
  • Loss of trust in leadership
  • Too few growth opportunities
  • Job or workplace not as expected
  • Stress from overwork

So what’s the answer? Learn how to select staff better by improving your interviewing skills, see our eBook How to Prepare and Conduct Staff Selection Interviews. Ensuring the right people are placed in the right jobs and understand their role and future in the organisation.
Improve your training by first understanding what training is required see our eBook How to Conduct a Training Needs Analysis.
By improving your training by providing training for the right things, your staff will be more empowered, included and understand where their future lies.

Work Less do more

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There is evidence that working fewer hours is more productive. Perhaps it’s to do with fatigue but it’s equally likely to be; if you know you can only be there for seven hours, you might be more focused on your tasks. Too many managers attribute merit and value to workers who put in long hours, rather than examining their productivity or effectiveness. Read what The Economist Newspaper had to say on the hours issue here .
For my money, people who work long hours are inefficient; managers who favourably judge employees who work long hours are lazy, ineffective managers.

What music should I play in my shop?

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It doesn’t matter what music you choose, someone will love it, someone will hate it.
What you like, in the way of music, is no guide to what your target market likes. There isn’t a type of music that is universally liked, in the past ‘muzak’ was widely used in lifts and other public areas. Supposedly bland enough not to offend anyone, yet pleasant. However, just about everybody hated it. If you are going to use music in your store use a variety of songs and artists played at random, and keep the volume to a level that doesn’t offend anyone. So that mother and daughter shopping won’t pass by because mother’s “Not going in there with that racket”.
Read more in our eBook ‘How to Increase Retail Sales’

Training in the 21st Century

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To remain competitive, companies need to offer training and career-focused education throughout people’s working lives. Low and high-skilled workers alike for the best chance of success. But the practicalities are daunting for a start what training? There are numerous companies offering specific training: LinkedIn Learning, Amazon, Pluralsight, plus several Universities. Before you spend large amounts of money on specific training, what training is needed by your staff? How do you assess what training is required in your organisation and for which people? Our Training Needs Analysis eBook guides you step by step through the analysis process.

Are Robots stealing your job?

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It’s a common idea that robots will soon steal our jobs, even though there is little or no evidence to support the notion. The Luddite weavers in 1811 thought weaving machines were going to cause mass unemployment, the advent of the tractor has reduced agricultural employment to reduce by 95% since  1910; yet employment participation remains stable.

Employment 1890 to 2016 -David Autor

 

Jobs are lost due to automation within an industry but are made up for by jobs in new areas. Education is our defence against robots, no one can predict what the new jobs of the future will be, remaining flexible in our abilities will allow us to take up the new jobs in the future.

Economist David Autor discusses this issues in depth in a recent TED talk

Poor Management

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The low productivity of British workers has several possible culprits. Inefficient family-run companies are sometimes blamed, as are poor workforce skills. But whereas these problems are well documented, another factor is glossed over: the mediocre performance of British bosses. John van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, argues that the standard of British management is “significantly below” that in leading countries. Read more in this article from The Economist

You can improve your management skills with our range of training eBooks from our shop.

Earn more money through investment

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There are only three legal ways to earn money.

  1. Invest in working longer hours, but you are limited to 24 hours, 7 days per week.
  2. Invest in earning more per hour. Top professionals can earn thousands per hour.
  3. Invest large amounts of money, tough to do if don’t have a large amount of money to begin with.

For most of us option two is the only sensible option to earn money. So how do you earn more per hour?
Training. Improve your own business skills and climb up the pay scales or improve the profitability of your own business, with eBooks from our shop

Restaurant no-nos

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Recent research indicates there are two little known reasons why restaurants lost business:

  • dirty tables
  • music too loud

Keep in mind with the ageing of the population, for many in the older age groups, these two problems are a turn-off.

How to supervise staff

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I believe the title manager is misleading those appointed to the role of manager; into believing their primary function is to manage or supervise staff/people under them. By extension, it is then interpreted to mean control. This stifles staff, inhibits innovation as well as lowering motivation. Once all staff are under control doing things according to your procedures; you are effectively are operating with just one brain, where as you could have been working with multiple brains.

Managers need to lose “I’ and ‘me’ and replace them with ‘we’ and ‘us’.
Managers need to lead staff rather than supervise staff. Good managers draw out the best from each and every staff member. It’s vital managers acknowledge staff contributions. Most importantly, managers need to make decisions arising from the multiple inputs from staff and dismiss those staff who don’t contribute. It’s tempting to think the title’ team leader’ would be better, but that title has been polluted by misuse by ‘managers’ who use the team leader title instead of a pay rise and confine the title to use in the lowest ranks only.

Leading a team should be a source of great pride and hard work. Paying attention to what each member can add to achieve the team’s goals, moving people into roles that suit their skills. Understanding what skills are needed by your staff is often the first step. Our Training Needs Analysis manual describes how to do this in detail.

Read more …

Coming Labor Shortage

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By the year 2030 almost all western countries of the world will experience labor shortages. Seems hard to believe doesn’t it. Simply because of already existing workforce demographics that can’t be changed, in other words a mis-match of skills. Worse still, skilled labor will be the most affected. In just 15 years business will experience both a shortage of skilled staff and/or a mis-match of skills.
Can technology bridge the gap? Probably not. The automotive industry is one of the world’s most automated, yet their labor force has not seen much reduction. The technology seems to just generate new, previously unheard of jobs.

So what to do? Start workforce planning now plus institute training programs to realign staff skills. Once this crisis starts happening workforce planning will be more important than financial planning to the survival of your business. Workforce demographics show businesses will start to feel the pinch in just five years – 2020. Start learning how to train staff now. Learn how to assess training needs now. If you don’t get ahead of the game you may not remain in the game.