Employees

Poor relationships within the team will always reflect on morale and have been proven to impact on the bottom line.  You can make or break a career or a job depending on the way you behave with fellow workers.  Workplaces need to be profitable for businesses and for the people in them – and that means personally and financially.

Whether you are a leader or a team member there are actions you can take to create a positive, empowering, motivational work environment for people.

A CEO complained that his managers only brought him problems. When you come to the meeting with a problem, have some suggested solutions ready at the same time.  The negative effect simply complaining disappears, and is replaced with an atmosphere of constructively sharing in resolving issues.

Constantly laying the blame on someone or something else is negative and often destructive of team spirit. Don’t put your effort into finding ways to point the finger at others. People are more likely to recognize their contribution to the problem if they are not publicly humiliated in the process.  You will alienate others and end up with enemies, not conducive to your future job prospects or your business’ success. continue

Smaller enterprises are at the greatest risk from fraud, particularly from within the organization. They’re the least likely to have dedicated security personnel, and most likely to lack adequate internal systems and controls to prevent fraud. You can minimize your exposure to fraud by learning how it’s perpetrated in businesses like yours. There are also policies you should put in place to prevent fraud from occurring. We’ll start with the two most common types of fraud, fake invoicing and cheating on expense accounts.

Fake invoicing

These common frauds are usually along the lines of an employee sending his own company a false invoice which is approved for payment. The employee receives payment that is thought to have gone to a legitimate supplier. The employee simply sets up a company as the fraudulent supplier, establishes a bank account for that business, and then begins sending invoices to his employer.

Frequently the employee has signature authority over the invoices that are sent, so approval is easily accomplished! It’s also possible that the employee is working corruptly with another employee to get the invoices approved. In any event, the company pays for something it never received.

There are variations to this type of fraud in which goods are actually supplied but the ‘vendor’ (the employee’s company) is overpaid for what is delivered. There are also instances where a third party colludes with the employee to overcharge for goods and refund a portion of the price to the employee.

Expense account frauds

In any business there are likely to be a number of employees with the authority to incur expenses on behalf of the company for which they will be reimbursed. These can vary from insignificant amounts, such as for postage and stationery items, all the way up to airfares and accommodation costs for sales staff.

Expense account cheating usually takes the form of wrongly describing the expense incurred or overstating it. Some expenses may have never happened, or were for personal use and not business related at all. Because it’s fairly easy these days to create ‘dummy’ invoices on a home PC, simply having a receipt doesn’t necessarily prove that expenditure actually took place. It’s also possible to copy a genuine invoice and increase the amount or change the details on it.

Well administered policies are the best defense

Fraud is difficult to prevent and often very hard to detect. The best way to combat workplace fraud in a smaller enterprise is to have suitable policies in place and to unfailingly enforce them.

To deter employees from submitting fake invoices, payments should never be made to suppliers that aren’t approved by the owner, nor should a sudden increase in the amounts purchased from any supplier be allowed to happen without a valid reason.

All suppliers should be qualified before any orders are placed with them or payments made to them. This includes having full details of ownership and trading references that verify a history for the business.

Expense account frauds aren’t easy to stop, but once again having appropriate policies and enforcing them will help reduce the possibility of fraudulent claims being submitted. The most basic policy is to pay only for expenses supported by original receipts; photocopies or reprints should never be allowed.

Review the amounts of all expenses and be alert for overcharging or duplication. Be aware of every employee’s responsibilities and their need to incur expenses to meet them. If an employee’s claims show a sudden increase, be sure to query them for the reason as quickly as possible. Experience shows that if they get away with a fraudulent claim once, they’ll almost surely try it again.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc.

One of management’s key responsibilities is selecting the right people to perform the functions needed by the business to operate productively. Hiring the wrong person can affect your business for years. Businesses have even been found legally liable for damages to property and injury to customers as a result of employee incompetence because they failed to uncover the candidate’s depth of ignorance at the time of hiring.

Whether you’re about to hire your first team member or you’ve already hired dozens, there are some basic steps to the process that you need to keep in mind.

Step 1. Know exactly what you’re looking for before you start looking

The first thing to do is to clearly define the person you’re looking for in terms of their education, skills and competencies required to perform the job. But it needs to go much further than that. You also need to clearly set out the type of person you need to help you achieve the vision you have for your business. Qualities like friendliness, integrity and enthusiasm are important in a smaller enterprise.

Step 2. Consider how you’re going to find them

How you go about getting the word out about your position goes a long way toward determining the quality of the candidates you’ll get applications from. You can advertise directly, which means you get to do all the qualifying and screening yourself. Or, you can use an outside source such as a government placement service or a fee-based recruitment agency. Don’t rush into this decision. Identify your options and talk with someone from each agency you could use. You’ll get a lot of good ideas doing this and eventually find the agency with access to the biggest pool of quality prospects.

Step 3. Plan your interview process carefully

The attributes you chose in step 1 will now become the basis of your interview questions. Many of these issues are easily turned into questions, for example about their education, background and work experience. Others, such as their degree of enthusiasm, are subjective and require your own assessment.

Ask at least a few open ended questions to extract the candidate’s feelings on particular subjects. Get their ‘take’ on important areas like their attitude toward customer service and their relationship with co-workers and supervisors. Give them some ‘what if’ questions to see how they might behave in certain situations.

Step 4. Thoroughly check their resumes and references
Do thorough background checking on candidates you think might be worth hiring. Even if they’ve made a terrific impression during the interview there may be something lurking in their past that can cause you problems in the future.

A pre-employment investigation is easy to arrange and will quickly tell you if they have any criminal convictions or a history of problems with employers. Contact their former employers and ask them for a reference. They may not be willing to say much, but even their guarded answers may tell you that there’s been some sort of conflict in those previous positions.

You may even consider having an outside testing firm administer standard tests for things like emotional stability and intelligence.

Step 5. Get them up to speed fast

After you’ve appointed the person, a well planned induction will get your relationship off to a good start. This will introduce them to your business, to its culture, and to their workmates. Arrange for any training needed, such as on operating a particular piece of equipment or in the use of the software your company uses, to be conducted soon after they start.

Hiring is really about people and not just a set of skills that any one of several candidates may possess. Dedicate your hiring process to getting the right person in every respect; the future of your company depends on it.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

As a business owner you expect and hope that the great employees that you have taken such trouble to hire will all get along. Even in the best companies, issues between employees still arise.

Intervening in employee disputes is a risky action and, often as not, ends up with the business owner or manager alienating both parties. A better way to proceed is set up a policy that will enable management to listen to any employee with a grievance, yet still encourage those with disputes to do everything they can to resolve it among themselves.

This should be a formal policy, stated in writing. It should also become a part of employee orientation and be incorporated into the company’s policies and procedures manual.

Be a mediator – not a judge

While it’s preferable to allow people to resolve their own disputes, if that doesn’t happen or if the conflict is affecting their performance or the business itself, then you will have to play a part. In this situation make your role one of mediator rather than as judge and jury. Have a plan and work to it or you’re likely to make things worse.

Guide them through a simple process that makes them think about why the problem arose and what they can do about it. Begin by seeing each of the parties separately. Here are some of the questions you can use to be sure and get their side of the story:

• Ask each of them what has been said and done
• Ask each of them why the other person feels that a dispute exists
• Ask each of them if any other co-workers are involved
• Ask each of them what they feel would end the dispute

Make careful notes and when the sessions are over compare records to identify the major points of difference or misunderstanding.

Bring the parties together in a neutral environment

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with the parties in the dispute and how they feel about the key issues, bring them together in a location outside the work area of any of those involved. Summarize their respective positions and try to get them to be objective about their position as well as that of the other person.

If it’s a realistic idea, propose to both parties their own solutions – the answer they each gave about what would resolve the dispute for them. Start from those positions and try to work them both towards a middle ground that will probably be a compromise but hopefully will be acceptable to each of them. Point out where the parties have seen things the same way and try to build an agreement from those foundations.

Your role must be to remain objective and impartial. Even if you personally feel that one of the parties is ‘wrong’ and the other is ‘right’ your place is to help both parties see things clearly and work it out between themselves.

Ignore complaints that are anonymous

Complaints that are unsigned or made anonymously (telephone calls or emails) must be ignored. Once an anonymous complaint about an employee is investigated it has been given credibility. You become the villain because you’re the one making the accusations.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc 

The positions in most small to medium businesses have evolved into their present form rather than having been created with specific objectives and duties. This means that the roles of team members often overlap or don’t incorporate everything the person could be doing. A thorough review of each position will clarify these vital details and put your business in a position to run more efficiently. The review should be done in conjunction with the person in the position so that both of you gain a clearer understanding of the role and its responsibilities.

Tasks of the position

Begin by making a simple list of all tasks each employee does – ‘answer telephones’, ‘purchase stationery’, ‘collect mail’ and so on. For each task list the outcomes that the work is to accomplish. Be as comprehensive as possible and ask why each task contributes to the functioning of the business. ‘Answering telephones’ makes a contribution to sales, to accounts, to public relations and frees up managers to spend their time more effectively. Then create a brief outline about how each task is performed:

• Is it performed manually or with the use of equipment?
• Is it performed independently or with the assistance of someone else in the office?
• Is it required to be performed at specific times of the day?
• How much time does it take each time the task is performed?
• What skills are required for completing the task?

Priority of each task

Assign each task a level of importance according to its contribution to the business. Use only three classifications:

• Essential – the business will not survive unless this task is done
• Valuable – contributes to the functioning of the business but not essential to its survival
• Nonessential – if the task was not performed it would have no effect on the business

This requires some sensitivity to people’s feelings as everyone thinks that what they do is important. Duties such as picking up the owner’s dry cleaning or collecting money for a weekly lottery entry may be part of somebody’s responsibilities but contribute nothing to the business.

Document the essential tasks

Prepare a ‘how to’ step-by-step manual for performing each essential task in the business. As you do this, go through every step and ask whether this is the best way to do it or if there is a way to improve it. If the person now performing a task leaves the business it will be much simpler to bring a new person up to speed because you’ll have a written procedure they can follow.

Examine the valuable tasks

Tasks that are considered valuable deserve closer examination. Each should be analyzed to answer the following questions:

1. Should this function be performed by someone else in the business?
2. Are the outcomes of the task the same as another task that is being performed?
3. Is the task being performed at the optimum time of day?
4. Is the equipment being used appropriate for the task?
5. If the task is performed with others, are you using the best combination of team members?
6. Is too much time being spent on the task?

There are a number of tasks that are valuable to a business but could be handled in a way that adds more value. If the person doing the task is struggling then consider training them up or reassigning the task; or perhaps they’re being performed inefficiently because the wrong equipment is being used; or maybe they are just being done in a way that consumes too much time.

Eliminate the nonessential tasks

The final step in your review is to eliminate any nonessential tasks. This will free up team members’ time for better performance of their other duties and for new tasks that may have been put aside because there wasn’t time for them.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Employers that provide their team with training are making a commitment to better customer service and to being more competitive in the marketplace as well as encouraging a reduced team turnover rate.

Few businesses are incapable of providing some sort of in-house training to improve skill levels and the improvements in performance that result makes it a highly cost effective investment.

A typical small business’ basic skills training program can incorporate on-the-job instruction of individuals or groups by supervisors and cover practical subjects such as workplace safety and equipment operation. It can also encompass more fundamental topics like reading and writing that at first may not seem work related but actually underlie everyone’s ability to perform their job.

It won’t take a lot of time to develop these programs, nor will it require much in the way of resources. The essence of basic skills training is the sharing of information, letting those with more knowledge communicate what they know to those who will benefit from the exchange.

This type of training is also valuable as part of an induction program for new workers to ensure they have the specific knowledge their work requires. It will give them greater confidence and enable them to be more productive from day one.

Delta Wire, a small manufacturing company in Mississippi, instituted a basic skills training program that enabled workers to record and interpret information on a control chart, and to communicate about that information properly. A year after the program was introduced Delta Wire’s non-conforming material had decreased from 6 or 7 percent to just 2 percent and the firm’s output had increased from 70,000 to 90,000 pounds per week.

Here’s how to introduce a basic skills improvement program in your own organization.

1. Start by analyzing each position in the business and list the specific knowledge and skills that it requires. This will tell you the kind of training you need to provide.

2. Appoint one senior person from your team as the Training Supervisor. Let them be project manager of the training and work with them on structuring the process that will deliver the skills training needed.

3. Identify the members of your team who would make the best instructor for each of the skills on your list. Involve as many other team members as possible in the planning and let them help in developing the content of each ‘course’.

4. You might be able to involve your suppliers or even some of your customers in the process, especially if skills related to equipment or product usage are part of the requirements. Most people are willing to share their knowledge with others if asked to do so.

5. As with all the training you do, be sure you have a way of getting feedback on how effective the training has been. Ask both the instructors and the students to evaluate the training sessions and use their comments to improve the process.

You can get assistance in planning your basic skills training from a variety of sources including local technical and vocational educational institutions, trade associations, unions and government agencies. Investigate these before you begin and you may find that someone else has already done most of the hard work for you.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc