I Can’t Get Good Staff!

Every day clients tell us the difficulties they face in finding good staff.  This has been intensified from early this year due to the COVID-19 lockdowns and JobKeeper subsidy.

So what can we recommend to the business owners and team leaders that have this problem?

Before we start here is a story from our Lead Coach – Alan Short:

In early March 2020 while on a water skiing trip with my friends, we began discussing this “COVID-19 thing” and if we needed to do anything about it.  By the end of the weekend and many discussions later I had decided that in my Fire Protection businesses we needed to do something, and quickly.

When I sat down with my team and told them what I thought would happen, to my surprise after the meeting most of the staff approached me individually … and not to complain!  They were prepared to do whatever it took to get us through this crisis. Some offered to do overtime with no extra pay, others to reduce their work week (to take a pay cut), most simply said “tell me what you need and I’ll do whatever it takes…” When JobKeeper began and part time staff were paid more, they worked more, without me asking.

Contrast this with another business that we have been coaching, they told us that their staff have been refusing to come to work saying things like “I’m going to stay home on JobKeeper…”

Which business are you? Which business would you like to be?

What an interesting story, now lets see what we can do:

One of the key differences between the two businesses is the level of engagement of the staff with the business, Also, for larger businesses it is the engagement of the staff with the team that they are part of.

For most of us that own a business we have never really received any training in how to manage people. We simply learnt on the job or we have simply “picked it up as we went along”.

While this often works, have you ever noticed how:

• You can communicate easily with some staff and others not.
• Some staff feel like you appreciate them and others don’t – even though you treat them the same.

If you have ever tried to learn about leading a team to overcome these issues you often find the resources are theoretical and big picture.  You are a person of action. None of the resources tell you what to do and when to do it. Does that sound familiar?

Our awesome teams at Global Business Camps and Global Business Coaching have developed a model of trainable skills to help you take your staff from a group of people to an engaged and highly productive team.

There are 5 stages in the model, they are:

• Responsibility – As the leader you are responsible for getting your team engaged. It starts with you, once you understand what you need to do you can then build a winning team. It doesn’t just happen.
• Communication – Many of us have heard the “Golden Rule” which is “treat others as you would like to be treated”, but consider that this could be very wrong! The “Platinum Rule” should be “to treat others as they would like to be treated”. It’s a subtle difference but a massively important one. People have different personalities and preferred ways of communication and there are tools you can use to understand people better and adjust your approach to “treat them as they would like to be treated”.
• Meeting Together – We are usually good at having staff/team meetings to talk about what needs to happen at work, but we need to go further than that. The fully engaged teams are connected together at a social level as well. For some people this happens naturally, but for most of us we need to be purposeful about making this happen.
• Identity – the best teams have an identity, think of the Navy Seals or the All Blacks Rugby Team. They have a clear identity that brings them together. You are part of these teams or you are not. You need to build an identity for your team that supports the purpose of your business.
• Continuous Improvement – Like learning to play football. The skills you learn when you start are not the same as a professional football player is learning. They are related but at a different level. For example, initially you start with just learning to kick the ball, but a professional is learning to kick the ball so that it curves through the air to hit a target. It is the same skill, kicking, but at much different levels.

Important event not to be missed:

On the 10^th of November we will be holding a half day workshop where you will learn to apply this model with your team. We will be presenting ideas if you are new to leading a team or if you want to take leadership to the next level.

At the end of the workshop you will have an action plan to implement over the next 30, 60 or 90 days to help improve your team’s engagement and productivity.

The workshop will be on-line using Zoom. Many of us have sat through a boring “webinar” where someone speaks to you for hours – this is not like that. We will be working in small groups to apply the knowledge that is taught so that at the end you have a set of tactics to implement.

And if you require ongoing support with the implementation then we have VIP and Implementor packages that include one on one support. This can be specific to your business model.

Please remember, we are here to help!

To find out more or register for the event click here.

Until the 3^rd November you can get 20% discount on any of the registration packages, saving you over $100. To get this 20% early bird discount use the coupon code “EARLY2020” on checkout.

If you want more information then please give Alan a call (his direct details are below), otherwise I’ll see you on the 10^th November.

Cheers from all the team at Global Business Camps