Maverick Mastery®

One of the tragedies of modern training and development programmes is that not everyone in the senior management team is given the equal opportunity to enhance their skills. In the age of equality it is often the case that HR professionals aren’t considered equally for training opportunities – however, this isn’t solely the fault of ‘unenlightened’ companies but HR professionals themselves.

Often with reducing budgets HR professionals choose to spend the diminishing training resources on other members of the team sometimes due to altruism or sometimes due to the misguided belief that they would never be able to justify the spend on themselves.

This can be a factor of HR not being seen as credible or serious by the organisation, even if the company funds the CIPD (seeing it similar to other basic skills training like CIMA), negotiation skills or conflict resolution training may be harder to source. Sometimes the senior team expect HR to somehow just ‘have’ the knowledge to succeed in their role without any significant training. In this, senior HR professionals are similar to CEOs (competency assumed, further training not required!), which although flattering can be disadvantageous to your career but even worse damaging to the organisation.

Almost all companies where the CEO or MD voice dissatisfaction with HR a common sentiment is that the HR professional is competent and good at their job, just that somehow they just don’t add value or are able to ‘step up’. What they are struggling to articulate is that they want more from HR than just transactional duties or ‘best practice’, they want to see HR as equal partners in the business – in the same way as Finance or Marketing.

No one expects the Finance Director to just put together the management accounts so why should the HR Director just ensure that employees are paid correctly?

There is more to running the company that just ensuring that the basics are done, and there is nothing wrong in seeking help to enable you and the company to succeed. If it’s acceptable that key individuals (like the CEO or the Marketing Director) are mentored to make them more effective and productive then my challenge to senior HR professionals to consider whether mentoring is an effective solution for them achieving the personal and/or organisational goals.

Senior HR professionals and a need for a HR Mentor

There are a number of reasons why a senior HR professional would consider mentoring rather than hiring an interim or consultant to come into the organisation and facilitate change for them. One of the reasons is that the task in hand requires the HR professional’s input and not a ‘stranger’ to the organisation. This could be due to credibility, culture or trust.

Another is professional development or a need to rapidly learn the key skill being transferred by the mentor whilst you are working on the project in hand. Finally executive coaching is not appropriate for the task in hand. Mentoring works well for more senior professionals who have the core competencies but just don’t have the specific knowledge for the task in hand.

Here are some examples of where HR mentoring has enabled HR professionals:

• Taking HR from a transactional, administrative department to an embedded, added value one

• Supporting HR become more credible to the business

• Embedding the HR Business Partner model into the business

• Enabling the HR professional to ‘step up’ and be seen as an equal partner in the business

• Having an objective person outside the organisation to discuss things with and if necessary seek guidance

Senior HR professionals that require an external mentor is best suited by someone who has a strong HR and operational background who is able to facilitate the transfer of knowledge with credibility and efficiency. It is important that this expert has knowledge outside of the HR arena.

Your mentor enables you to have the ability to confide in someone outside of the company, who is an objective sounding board. Often it’s lonely at the top! If you are the most senior HR professional in your organisation there is often no one to confide in. You are unable to share your concerns or frustrations fully with your team – whether that’s your own HR team or the senior management team.

You face many important strategic decisions and it can be beneficial to work with someone who has been in your position and knows the path that you need to take to secure success. Enabling your department or your team to ‘add value’ can sometimes benefit from an external mentor or consultant who not only has the ability to make this change happen, but can guide and advise you if you wish to facilitate this change yourself.

In the same way that training spend is invested in the professional development of the CEO and the other members of the senior team, HR professionals need to ask for the investment that they believe they need. It is perfectly acceptable for senior HR professionals to use external mentors to enable them to complete either specific tasks or enable them to facilitate big changes such as increasing the skill of the HR team or enabling the HR department to become more credible to the business.

After all, the future of the organisation is at stake

Most companies understand that enabling individuals to work in teams can be a sure fire way to improve the company’s performance. When an air of competition is allowed to permeate the culture it can become rapidly unhealthy leading to aggressive working practices that disable cooperation and productive and efficient work performance.

It is understandable, therefore, that companies want to ‘fix’ failing teams or find ways to improve the performance of teams following mergers or mass redundancies as soon as possible. Unfortunately, companies can often seek a ‘quick fix’ and by doing so determine that a team building exercise over a day or so will solve the problem.

Most people’s perception of a teambuilding day is something akin to a military intervention with either assault courses, with complex problems to solve or paintballing where you are encouraged to compete against fellow work colleagues. These type of events can pose concerns around being very male orientated, difficult for disabled employees to participate and can reinforce stereotypes.

Often these events are seen as a desperate attempt to improve motivation and morale and without good communication the event can be stalled prior to anyone’s attendance on the course. A lot of employees are fearful of what to expect at one of these events and are often reluctant to spend time with their colleagues. It is important to dispel an anxiety prior to their attendance.

Here are the most common reasons why team building events often do not work:

• There is often misunderstanding as to whether the company wants to build a team for a specific purpose or to engender a team working environment. This is an important distinction. When a company is considering teambuilding events they are usually hoping to create a lasting environment that enables employees to understand each other better and to improve their performance in the team. It is this goal that is often not factored into the team building event.

• The team building event is not aligned to the company’s objectives. For example these events concentrate on the attendees having fun and not on achieving set goals. They often do not look at the desired competences required by the company.

• The event may focus on competition over all else. Whilst in a hiring situation competition can provide a useful insight into someone’s character, within a teambuilding setting it can be divisive and destructive if appropriate care has not been taken. This is often because completion brings out the worse in people. It’s possible that having seen someone at their worse you no longer want to work with them!

• The team building event is a one off event without any changes to the company structure, mind set, culture or procedures. This is where organisations believe that a one off event (building bridges out of planks for example) will be the only solution to improving the performance of a failing team. The team becomes confused as to the purpose of the event.

• The team are very busy and would rather concentrate on clearing the outstanding work rather than ‘running through fields’ with their co-workers. They can see the team building event as another example of ‘the management’ not understanding the pressure that they are under.

Recently we were hired by a HR Director who wanted us to deliver a leadership training course that had a large team building component to it. When questioned it became clear that team building wasn’t the biggest issue that he was apprehensive about. He was concerned that the new management team, whilst technically competent were too used to working in silos and not as a consistent strategic team. The biggest issue with the management team was their inability to lead their teams and be able to consider the impact that their decisions were making on the rest of the company. The consequences that the company were facing was reducing market share, increasing employee turnover, poor morale and managers that felt uncomfortable with their enlarged management roles. This was having a significant impact on the profitability of the company and the managers’ poor leadership was having a ripple effect across the company and impacting on the once positive supplier relationship.

In order to enable the company to have more empowered, effective leaders and to reduce the downward trend and have an improved team we designed and delivered a leadership course that also had team building at its core. This meant that rather than having team building sections – we concentrated on increasing the leadership competencies of the team by ensuring that a team working atmosphere was fostered. Having an evening component as part of the course enabled the attendees to relax with each other, put into practice the behaviours that they had learnt and enabled the team to begin to grow together.

It is important to have effective and productive teams working within your organisation. Whenever you are considering running team building interventions to ‘fix’ problem or failing teams, you should consider whether your intervention will meet the strategic and operational of the business.

There are many reasons why a company decides to train their employees although it is not always because they believe it is the best way to improve the skill base of the workforce. This is often because many companies believe that generic training can solve a whole host of performance deficiencies – this is often an expensive mistake.

For example, when assessing company performance the senior team may see the following:

v A loss of market share

v Reducing customers

v Increased employee absences

v Poor customer service

v Bad morale and worker inefficiencies

The most common solution proposed to solve these things is employee training. On the face of it this appears to be an acceptable solution, after all if the employees were appropriately skilled they would enable the company to retain customers and innovate. Employees that receive training that they perceive they need are more motivated, have improved morale and are more likely to enjoy work, reducing their number of absences.

For companies that are profit or cash flow focused then they will radically cut training or cease it altogether. These types of company see training as either a luxury that they can no longer afford or a way to reward high performing employees.

The problem that I see is that businesses in difficult times appear to decide on two things when it comes to training:

v To reduce ‘non essential’ training

v To increase ‘technical’ or soft skills training

Reducing ‘non essential’ training usually means that the company does not implement the learning and development plans agreed with employees at their last performance review. Often how this is communicated to employees is by a mass message that says the company needs to reduce costs and will therefore be putting ‘non essential’ training on hold. It isn’t as common as it should be that this impersonal message is followed up by a personal conversation with the employee’s manager who can put this into context for the employee. This usually means that the employee feels undervalued by the company and is unlikely to trust the company’s future messages when they either relate to them personally (ie ‘next year we will definitely ensure that you get the training that we agreed or there is no money in the budget for a proper pay rise this year but next year we can address your performance properly’) or more generic messaging that ‘our employees are our biggest assets’.

Increasing technical training when reducing ‘employee centric’ training is often seen by the employee as another example of how poorly the company treats them. They can feel that the company is only ‘doing it for themselves’ which often means that there is reduced benefit of the employee attending as their learning isn’t maximised. When increasing soft skills training I see progressively more of a ‘sheep dip’ approach being utilised by companies. This is an expensive misstep as it often increases the costs to the business as the training is not tailored to their particular needs – but has the knock on effect of taking employees out of the business for a day or so to attend the course.

Now more than ever companies need to concentrate on the business and do the right training inventions that will work for them. Expensive gap analysis to determine training needs is often not necessary. An informed look at performance reviews, disciplinaries and grievances, customer complaints and strategic direction can be all that is necessary to determine training priorities. Competent HR practitioners can work with the Operations team to ensure that there is a good match between business need and employee fulfilment.

Training and HR practitioners should ensure that they never buy off the shelf training for their company. One size does not fit all, especially when you factor in company culture, risk awareness and industry setting. All training should be bespoked and delivered by credible trainers that who not only know their subject manner well, but are able to converse knowledgeable on the issues that the employees are facing. Attendees must be chosen carefully to ensure that the right people receive the right training for their needs.

Sometimes the best training intervention for particular employees will be either a coaching or mentoring solution, rather than attendance on a training course. Most companies initially believe that internal coaching or training programmes will deliver best value compared to using external providers. This only holds true in company cultures where the employers are trusted by the employees and that they have good systems in place that match the mentor/coach to mentee/coachee appropriately and where there is true learning and development. Often attendance onto a mentoring/coaching programme is by reward rather than need, which can affect the credibility of the scheme.

Where there are trust issues or competence issues with the company or mentor/coach then an external practitioner is a must. Often timely intervention in this way is more effective than attendance on a course. Where there is little trust the employee will not engage with their internal coach/mentor which means that a solution to their real issue is not found and that the company has wasted the valuable time of two employees.

In times of difficulty there is often a need to ensure that employees are skilled, competent and willing to learn to ensure that the company is one step ahead of the competition and are working within operational budgets. The best way to ensure that this takes place is to be innovative with training interventions ensuring that there is close alignment with the business objectives and training delivery.

Being more credible to the business is often the aspiration of many HR practitioners although they can frequently find this to be elusive. Often HR tends to focus on pushing best practice agendas rather than focusing on what the business actually needs. Many HR practitioners believe that the title HR Business Partner means taking a ‘centralised’ HR mindset and practices to the business rather than being seen by the business as an effective practitioner who can provide strong business advice to help them meet their objectives. HR is the practitioner’s specialism in the same way that finance or marketing is a specialism for other practitioners.

Get the basics right and practice what you preach

The business can expect you to get the HR basics right and that you have enough capability and integrity to ensure that you deliver higher competence levels than you expect from line managers. For example, a basic HR competency is ensuring that the HR Strategy is totally aligned with the business strategy. Always remain objective and holistic in your outlook, avoid group think and a silo mentality.

Spend some time outside of HR

To be credible it’s very important to have spent some time in your career working in other business areas so that you are able to understand and have experience in how business works (from a non HR perspective) and the difficulties that CEOs and the senior team face. Having solid operational experience enables you to have credibility and confidence when you proffer solutions to the business.

Learn to live in the grey – there is no black and white

Often there are no right or wrong answers only gradients of risk, so when you are advising the business be sure to recommend your preferred solution whilst notifying them of the risk or otherwise that they may be facing. Be sure to let them know that it is their decision not yours whilst being supportive and assertive if necessary. Live outside your ‘policy’ and where necessary rewrite it if it no longer suits the business.

Admit what you don’t know and pay attention

Never be afraid to admit what you don’t know and ask lots of questions to clarify the situation for you. One way to build understanding of the business is to do an ‘appreciation’ of it. This can mean spending time ‘on the shop floor’ understanding what it is like to work in that department as well as the particular components/needs of the department that is necessary for it to function well. For some functions/areas of the business you can get a good appreciation of it by asking pertinent and searching questions. Seek to find linkages so that you can build a holistic picture of how things work across the business. It is possible to see connections that are missed by ‘the line’ because they are solely focused on their on area of the business. It is here that you can add real value.

Focus on the outcome and not the process

One of the areas where credibility can be lost is when the process is being stuck to rigidly with scant regard to the achievement of the outcome that you are hoping to achieve. This can happen with any process not just HR ones, so be prepared to discuss with the business any concerns that you have that the processes in place are not designed to deliver the right outcome. A good example is bonus objectives that encourage managers to ignore good leadership principles in favour of attracting big bonuses.

Help the line achieve their objectives

Regularly ‘sit down’ with the line to understand what their objectives are, what are the drivers to their achievement and what obstacles that they face. Work together to find solutions that will enable the line to succeed in their endeavours.

Key points

v Ensure that you spend some time out of HR so that you can learn and understand business and be able to view things from a non HR perspective

v Live in the grey and understand that nothing is black or white – even HR policies!

v Focus on outcomes rather than processes

As the debate surrounding economic green shots of recovery on the horizon continues, organisations are being reminded by talent management expert Judith Germain to not lose sight of nurturing their most troublesome talent® in preparation for the upturn.

Despite the fact that they often do not utilise their talents effectively, Judith Germain, MD of leadership development company Dynamic Transitions is keen to remind organisations of the importance of their mavericks in helping the business to recover from the recession and why it is so important to recognise and manage the traits of their most troublesome talent®.

“The recession means that organisations need troublesome talent® more than ever to survive, and these individuals need understanding because they are different from the rest of the talent pool. Unfortunately the huge focus on redundancies and managing ’survivor syndrome’ of recent months could mean that many managers have taken their eye off these hugely valuable but high-maintenance team members,” says Germain.

According to Germain, mavericks tend to be the top performers in companies and within business but often displaying common traits such as low boredom and impatience, meaning that they often have trouble articulating what they want or what they mean.

“A more holistic approach to talent management is more likely to enable the manager to nurture and develop their troublesome talent® who are often ignored or excluded from management development programmes due to their personalities or ability to cause disruption within a structured organisation. Whilst your maverick at work is very articulate, they may have problems communicating with others in a way that their audience can understand and accept. If you ask your troublesome talent® whether you are doing a good job, and they feel that you are not, expect to receive blunt, to the point feedback on your shortcomings,” reveals Germain.

Germain is also concerned that senior management may have lost sight of their role in nurturing talent and could end up switching back to the old ways of talent management where HR carried all the responsibility for talent management initiatives.

“Historically, there has been a general lack of accountability for leadership development by senior management and many organisations had realised this was an outdated approach, just as the recession hit. Managers need to be aware that it is no longer just HR’s responsibility alone to develop talented individuals – troublesome or not – they must be nurtured by senior management. Mavericks should not be ignored and companies that do, run the risk of slipping behind global competitors who recognise their part to play in piecing the business back together as the economy improves,” says Germain.

Ends

A good training course delivers its objectives, is interesting and interactive and allows for the differing learning styles of the attendees. The success of the course will require an effective trainer who can impart their knowledge whilst retaining the attention of the learners. Understanding human behaviour is often a requisite to being able to deliver a course that can exceed the expectations put upon it.

First things first

When you are delivering training it’s important to understand not only what your required outcomes are, but also what the organisational goals are, the prevailing context and what the attendees were told about the course before they arrived. You are more likely to have a higher proportion of difficult people on your course if attendance was mandatory and not seen as necessary by them, and/or an organisational environment where major change is happening (eg redundancy).

Understanding the expectations of the attendees and whether they are likely to be hostile to your training intervention is therefore vital. If this is a possibility then it’s important to design the content of the course accordingly and deal with their potential hostility upfront and immediately that the course starts. A ‘safe’ way to do this is when you ask the attendees what their objectives are for the training course. Our experience shows that at this stage the attendees often articulate any resentment to being on the course and how they feel about the organisation. This is a fantastic opportunity to discover their objections, listen to their issues and calibrate them to the need for attending the course. This is why knowledge of the organisational context is important. It is imperative that this section on understanding their objections and you addressing them should be kept very short. The last thing that you want to do is spend significant time discussing their objections as it will have a destabilising effect of the morale of the group and your ability to deliver the course well and on time.

It is very common (and to be expected) that there will be at least one member of the course who will feel the need to demonstrate their expertise and challenge your authority or credibility in running the course. A good trainer would have used the five minute introduction phase of the course to establish they credibility and to flush out the individuals who are likely to be ‘lively’.

Delivering a lively, interesting course – mindful of the attendees behaviour

Some trainers mistakenly believe that delivering training in environments where some hostility is shown means they are entering a battle zone! The problem with this theory is that within every training environment there will be some hostility! The actions of the trainer can therefore make it substantially worse.

A good trainer does the following subconsciously:

• Analyse the attendees behaviour to discover which ones fall into the subsequent categories

• The ‘know it all’

• The ‘sceptic’

• The ‘been there done it’

• The ‘enthusiastic puppy’

• The ‘maverick’

• The ‘follower’

• The ‘academic’

• The ‘life long learner’

• The ‘demotivator’

• Adjust the course delivery and perhaps content to suit the training characteristics of the attendees

• Seek interaction and ensure that all learning styles are catered for

• Deal with each attendee according to their ‘training characteristic’ (for example the ‘maverick’ needs to be treated differently to the ‘follower’

• Are able to smoothly and flexibly shift their own style to meet the needs of the group

• Deliver a course that meets the objectives of the learner and the organisation

An example of dealing with a difficult training characteristic – the ‘maverick’

I define ‘maverick’ to mean wilful independence and it is this training characteristic which is probably the one that causes trainers the most difficulty. Mavericks have a high sense of self confidence and self esteem and believe that they are more intelligent than others. This can be a heady mix when they are faced with a trainer that has not established their credibility or is delivering a course that they consider to be boring or inappropriate for them.

The following are likely indicators that you are facing a maverick:

• You are asked a number of questions that are disrupting and show that they believe they know more than you do on the subject

• You are shown disrespect by the attendee (this can be on a continuum from mild to extreme)

• They show their displeasure through body language and audio clues (eg heavy sighs and rolling of the eyes)

• You are challenged constantly and other attendees or yourself are undermined

• They refuse to participate in the course or the exercises

Interventions to use with the maverick training characteristic

• Establish credibility upfront and immediately

• Discover their objectives/objections for being on the course (and build into the course)

• Find a way to avoid making them look stupid (if you fail you are likely to make running the training course extremely difficult)

• Ensure that you do not lose control or appear uneasy

• Provide boundaries and structure (when you need to enforce your control, do it quickly and do not dwell on it – avoid trying to make the maverick lose face in front of their peers)

• Be clear on the objectives of the course, and how the course will run. What are the components of the course?

• Give them something to do – eg ensure they lead on some of the exercises

• Recognise them (whilst ensuring that they do not dominate the course) and appeal to their intellectual ability

Training courses present the trainer with an opportunity to engage with all members of team, even those who seem to be resistant to whatever you are trying to teach them. Remember that a one size fits all approach is unlikely to be successful as is approaching resistance from a defensive position! It can be easy to spend the majority of the course then fighting your corner, but by using some of the techniques mentioned above, you can be better placed to deliver a lively and interesting course which has benefit for all those in attendance.

When the business environment becomes more challenging companies tend to concentrate on hard measures such as reducing costs, increasing profits and downsizing often ignoring the sometimes intangible measures such as the management’s ability to be successful leaders, as a possible solution to how a business could weather the storm. This can be a flawed approach and can be extremely detrimental to the health of the business.

Having effective and productive leaders are imperative for an organisation’s success and ability to be agile in competitive and changing environments. This is often the reason that many HR departments insist that leadership training is the way forward to rectify the deficiencies in the organisation’s capability.

When the HR department advises the management team that they need leadership training this is often met with derision and a reluctance to attend, or worse still if they do attend, assessment following the training shows that in the mid to long term there is little to none improvement in leadership competence. This has a long term adverse effect on the business and the ability of employees to reach their potential and add value to the business.

Senior management buying in to the training intervention is essential in ensuring that it stands more than a fair chance of being accepted and embedded into the organisation.

Some of the ways that HR can embarrass itself when sponsoring leadership training

• Buying off the shelf training not aligned to the business

• Leadership training that concentrates on techniques not business

• Over reliance on one type of learning

• Using a trainer that lacks credibility

• Ignoring social intelligence as a key competency

One of the reasons that most managers refuse to attend leadership training is because they do not believe that it is relevant to their needs and they feel that after many years of managing people they are already effective and proficient managers. This perception is probably backed up by years of good Performance Reviews (where leadership ability/competency has never been assessed) and a reward structure that encourages poor leadership and a reliance on task completion over leadership ability.

It can be tempting to just buy in training that has not been aligned to the business – assuming that all leadership training is the same. It is imperative that you assess with the supplier exactly what you need to achieve and how the training can support the business objectives. The provider should also understand the culture of the business and ensure that the training embeds the desired culture and change objectives that you feel is necessary. Determination on whether coaching for junior members of the team or mentoring for more senior members will be more effective than a training course should be considered. It may be necessary to supplement the training with coaching or mentoring depending on the need of the business.

A major flaw in many leadership training programmes is that they concentrate on leadership techniques without considering how it relates to good business practice. For example, is the ability to understand Situational Leadership or Action Centred Leadership the training course or is the training course how you can apply Situational Leadership etc to your business day? It is a subtle although all essential distinction and one that will make an important difference in whether there will be any behavioural change or desired performance improvement.

Some trainers prefer to train in the learning style that is more comfortable for them rather than considering the learning styles of the delegates. This can lead to training courses that are biased and only suitable for a proportion of the management cadre. For example lots of activities like role plays for those that prefer to ‘get stuck in’ or case studies that like to problem solve. Training that relies on only one or two methods of learning will ultimately fail its objectives.

Training can ‘die a death’ if the trainer is not considered credible by the trainees. This often means that the trainer needs to have a wealth of relevant experience and the ability to understand not only leadership but business as well. Over reliance on one discipline (HR or business) will leave a training course ‘off balance’ and ineffective.

I see Social Intelligence as the ability of taking Emotional Intelligence and applying it to social situations. It concerns itself with how you interact with others and how you assess the situations/environments around you, to achieve a win/win solution or best agreed alternative solution. Social Intelligence is also about how you respond to the different situations and environments that you find yourself in. This is the essence of leadership and one that is often missed by leadership trainers!

One of our more successful leadership programmes teaches managers not only strong leadership techniques but also how to build their reputation as leaders, how to generate trust and how to role model change. It is the easiest thing to teach a leadership technique, much harder to teach the behavioural competencies that are required to lead. To ensure that your leadership training course works you must consider the following:

• What do you wish to achieve?

• Is the training course biased in how it expects people to learn or behave?

• Is it tailored to my business?

• What else is being taught other than leadership technique?

• How credible is the trainer and do they understand not only the ‘HR’ but ‘business’ as well?

In the current economic climate, the biggest headache for most small businesses is the costs associated with managing and employing staff. Ultimately, this comes down to one key question; are businesses spending too much time carrying out activities that they are not adequately trained to do? Business Mentor and management specialist Judith Germain explains why small businesses need to review the costs of their HR activities and explains why outsourcing non-core activities is so critical in today’s competitive marketplace.

It is inevitable that many entrepreneurs and small business owners will reach the point where they need to support the growth of their business by taking on additional staff, but many are put off doing so by the deluge of rules and regulations covering every aspect of the HR process. As a result, many businesses spend a great deal of unnecessary time and energy on managing their processes instead of running and growing their business.

In this article, we are going to look at the most common HR issues, which cause problems for small businesses and what can be done to ensure these areas are carried out more efficiently.

1. Legislation

Small businesses spend a lot of time trying not to fall foul of the increasing levels of legislation that befall them. Whilst legislation can be a good thing it can have a disproportionate effect on a small business.

For example the Disability Discrimination Act can see small businesses paying huge sums for failing to follow good processes and investigating absence claims properly. Many small businesses do not see the need for establishing absence policies believing that because the business has a family atmosphere there will not be any issues. This is beset with problems as once an employee falls ill, especially if their illness falls under the DDA, then the employee is often encouraged to claim against the employer in pursuit of the huge payouts that is perceived to be available to them. This can cause the business to spend an inordinate amount of time defending a DDA claim which is costly not only in management time but also in professional costs (ie external lawyers).

There is little understanding of the DDA amongst business owners and yet it is one of the most pervasive employment laws affecting businesses. Having a good absence policy can reduce the risk of a DDA claim and it is worth investing in getting such policies drawn up by a HR professional to ensure they meet the needs of the business and the requirements of the DDA.

2. Absence Policies

Whilst absence from work due to sickness is inevitable, businesses need to consider whether the amount of time taken off is reasonable and reflected across the wider business, as there may be underlying issues which are affecting the bottom line that are being missed or masked as ‘absence from work’.

If sickness/absenteeism levels are out of the ordinary (or relating to certain department(s) only) then it could suggest that there is a more serious underlying problem involving the management of the business. This could be due to poor management style, ineffective methods of delivery, low department morale, low motivation etc.

For example, where a department is under threat of redundancy, absenteeism is relatively low and attendance is stable (due to the fear that any days off work could mean that they are chosen for redundancy). But alongside this most organisations will find that there is an increase in absenteeism in other departments as a direct result of the redundancy threat in another department. More often than not this is due to low morale and upset about the pending redundancies.

The key challenge is to look at the company as a whole, and tackle the causes of absence and not the symptoms of it. This could mean a stronger reliance on preventative methods rather than just reactive ones. Thus ensuring that any issues with management efficiency and style as well as employee morale and motivation are identified and resolved at an early stage in order to avoid impacting on absence levels later down the line.

It is worth looking for a consultant who specialises in leadership and development issues who can come into the business and identify and resolve these issues at the core before they have a knock-on effect throughout the entire business.

3. Recruitment

Particularly in smaller businesses, the most crucial task of Recruitment is often undertaken by untrained employees. This can cause a minefield of potential dangers. It’s important to be able to recruit and retain the right employees because replacing an employee on average can cost a business between £5k – £10k.

Remember, businesses may face claims of discrimination in their recruitment process (which are unlimited). One option for small businesses looking to recruit new staff is to hire recruitment agencies to do it instead, as they can reduce the risk and overall cost of the firm doing it itself.

4. HR software for Payroll, Talent Management etc

For many businesses, HR software can bring a number of benefits, the most primary one being a significant cost reduction for the company in terms of administrative time, reduced staff turnover and HR headcount.

Significant improvements in how a company recruits and retains its employees can be established by using Talent Management software as it can provide detailed knowledge of the cause and effect of current and proposed recruitment strategies. Another area where Talent Management software comes into its own is in managing absence. Accurate record keeping, trends analysis and objective assessment can lead to increased attendance, lower costs and avoidance of expensive legislative issues flowing from contravening the DDA as mentioned earlier.

However, HR software should be treated with caution as one of the mistakes that companies make typically when buying integrated Talent Management software is allowing finance, payroll and procurement needs to influence the choice of system with limited input from a HR perspective. This often means that the significant cost savings and performance improvement that could be achieved by having a detailed knowledge of the talent of the organisation are never utilised, because they can be seen as expensive intangible factors for non HR practitioners. This can make the new system an expensive acquisition for small businesses with little practical use in managing the talent of a diverse workforce.

There is nothing worse than spending a small fortunue on a new piece of software only to end up never using it, so it is worth seeking advice from a HR specialist when considering the various HR software options available to ensure that the most suitable option is chosen for the needs of the business.

6. Pastoral Care

Perhaps the most cost effective and efficient means of reducing HR costs is probably the simplest and most overlooked; listening and talking to employees! A happy workforce will be productive, efficient and loyal and simply by looking after staff and ensuring that their needs are met through the business, there will be less absence, less overtime costs and less recruitment costs as staff churn reduces.

Mentoring and Coaching programmes are the most effective way of managing the personal and professional needs of employees and I have come across many situations where a simple miscommunication or misunderstanding between management and employees could have potentially had a disastrous effect on the business if it had not been nipped in the bud during an early mentoring session.

When evaluating the costs associated with managing and running a small business, it is crucial to indentify areas which take up a disproportionate amount of time and detract from the overall growth and development of the business. Outsourcing the more lengthy or risky HR activities such as recruitment, payroll etc can free up valuable time within the business to focus on more critical areas such as the development and well being of employees and their motivation and desire to help make the business prosper.

Managers refusing to embrace leadership training have a misconception that they are already effective and proficient managers due to years of good Performance Reviews where leadership ability and competency have never been assessed, according to leadership specialist Judith Germain.

Judith Germain, Managing Director of leadership consultancy Dynamic Transitions claims that many managers have been managing people for years under a reward structure that encourages poor leadership and a reliance on task completion over leadership ability. Therefore in tough times when strong leadership ability is required, many are falling below the mark and are unwilling to now embrace the training needed to improve.

“Having effective and productive leaders are imperative for an organisation’s success and ability to be agile in competitive and changing environments. This is often the reason why many HR departments insist that leadership training is the way forward to rectify the deficiencies in the organisation’s capability. When the HR department advises the management team that they need leadership training this is often met with derision and a reluctance to attend, or worse still if they do attend, assessment following the training shows that in the mid to long term there is little to none improvement in leadership competence,” explains Germain.

Germain suggests that senior management buy in to the training intervention is essential in ensuring that it stands more than a fair chance of being accepted and embedded into the organisation but in the managers’ defence, Germain says that many organisations make the job harder than it should be by implementing the wrong training strategies in the first place.

A major flaw in many leadership training programmes is that they are bought as ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions which have not been aligned to the needs of the business. Such solutions tend to concentrate on leadership techniques without considering how it relates to good business practice. For example, is the ability to understand Situational Leadership or Action Centred Leadership the training course or is the training course how you can apply Situational Leadership etc to your business day? It is a subtle although all essential distinction and one that will make an important difference in whether there will be any behavioural change or desired performance improvement,” says Germain.

Germain also claims that the over reliance on particular learning styles at the expense of others by the trainer and the trainer’s perceived credibility can also have a detrimental affect on the success of leadership training, as can the ability to embrace Social Intelligence into the programme.

“I see Social Intelligence as the ability of taking Emotional Intelligence and applying it to social situations. It concerns itself with how you interact with others and how you assess the situations/environments around you, to achieve a win/win solution or best agreed alternative solution. Social Intelligence is also about how you respond to the different situations and environments that you find yourself in. This is the essence of leadership and one that is often missed by leadership trainers,” says Germain.

Judith Germain is managing director Dynamic Transitions a leadership company specialising in working with Troublesome Talent ® and improving leadership performance within organisations. Judith provides strategic mentoring for senior executives and business leaders and delivers innovative leadership programmes, leadership consultancy, training, coaching and mentoring to corporate clients. For more information visit www.developing-leadership.com or email jude@dynamic-transitions.co.uk

Ends

The CIPD’s new ‘professional map’ has been welcomed by the MD of leadership development company Dynamic Transitions, who claims that HR professionals have no excuse now to start role modelling key behaviours that will underpin future business success.

Having come from a strong operations-focused HR background, Dynamic Transitions’ MD Judith Germain believes that the new ‘map’ should have a profound impact on the way HR is viewed in the business and will increase HR’s power to help the business align the management of people and processes with the needs of the business.

“HR has for a long time been accused of not understanding the business and concentrating too much on admin and transactional activities rather than focusing on what the business needs. This has led to CEOs discounting the value that HR can add and bypassing them when important decisions have to be made. Too often, HR Business Partnering means advising the business of HR’s objectives rather than helping the business meet and exceed its objectives.”

Germain believes that the CIPD is acknowledging that HR needs to be holistic in outlook and specialist in activity. It now recognises that HR needs to have a set of behavioural competencies including being curious, a decisive thinker, driven to deliver, collaborative, personally credible and being a role model.

Germain is delighted that the CIPD is taking a more business orientated approach and predicts that the move towards strategic-led HR will result in a tighter, more integrated approach to managing people across an organisation that will ultimately improve the quality of leadership in the process.

“It is exactly the attributes identified by the CIPD for HR that also make up good leaders. HR therefore, should set an example to the rest of the workforce, especially as it evolves into this more strategic role. By role modelling these key behaviours, HR can help the business move forward,” says Germain.

Judith Germain is managing director Dynamic Transitions a leadership company specialising in working with Troublesome Talent ® and improving leadership performance within organisations. Judith provides strategic mentoring for senior executives and business leaders and delivers innovative leadership programmes, leadership consultancy, training, coaching and mentoring to corporate clients. For more information visit www.developing-leadership.com or email jude@dynamic-transitions.co.uk

ENDS