Imagine the scene – it’s Week 3 of the year’s 2nd Quarter. You know how important it is that the first month of the Q is a successful one, as it helps build momentum or maybe even carry the momentum forward from a successful Q1. Everyone is expecting you to deliver a strong performance, because that is why you do it. It’s what you love doing – delivering performances through others; helping them succeed and being successful yourself as a result. But there are more than a few “moving parts” in this machine and just like a conductor of an orchestra, you need to know who to lean on and when... Otherwise the music quickly turns flat…
Motivational calls, interrogation of forecasts, role playing client negotiation, following up that event you went to or that campaign you ran – the list never ends and it is relentless. However, there is one thing that appears on the to-do list for every commercial person who they know will cost them time and money (the former being the most valuable resource any of us have) and only has a limited chance of delivering an ROI. That thing? Problems with your staff.
How many times have you been distracted from the important tasks, the ones you know are most likely to contribute to generating revenue, when one of your staff calls in sick the day after a bank holiday weekend? How did it make you feel the last time you wanted to treat your staff with an event (staff night out or something similar), but one person in the team seems to be permanently unavailable? What about that employee who is regularly rude to colleagues, who in turn come to you with their issues?
From experience I can confidently say it is a minefield! I prefer to set expectations with my teams about such matters and if any don’t hold up their end of the employment “bargain”, I’ll have an honest conversation with them. But what happens if that doesn’t work? What if someone is determined to make a formal complaint about the employee who is persistently rude? This is where Qdos can help.
If you have policies in place for such an event, that’s a good start. Make sure you get them reviewed regularly by a commercially minded professional who understands what your business is about and how you like to operate. It is really easy to identify what not to do, but having processes in place that genuinely reflect who you are and what your company is about, is much more powerful and something that can lead into employee engagement (HR speak for “getting the most out of your staff by making them happy”).
So, if you’ve found yourself getting distracted from the things you really need to be doing and you’ve had experiences where staff have caused you a headache which you’d like to avoid in the future, contact us and see how we can help. See also HR outsourcing, health and safety, HR training.
