How do you maintain strong team engagement? Do you have the right people in the right seats of your business? How often do you check in with them? Or are you too busy working in the business to spend time with them? Sometimes we need to reflect when we look at our teams as very often we end up with the people we deserve! Harsh? Possibly, but also very true. How involved are you in ensuring you do the right recruitment for your business?

Recruitment Advice

Hire Slowly but Fire Quickly. What does your recruitment process look like? How do you gather your CV’s? Do you make it easy for applicants to simply send you their information by email or do you get them to drop into your business with a copy of their CV? This is so important and yet often overlooked. This gives you the ability to immediately get a real picture of the applicant and it shows how eager someone is to come and work for you. It also allows the applicant to start meeting people in the business. It is an opportunity for the applicant to be shown around, to meet some key people and to start to see the business culture from the very start. You have to see the process from the viewpoint of the applicant too. What messages are you giving to potential applicants? Is this a place I can see myself working in, actually, is this a place I would love to work in for a period of time? Is the culture of the business the right fit for me? So set your stall out early and have a proper system in place to manage each and every application from the outset.

Start with the Buddy System

Once you take that approach and you hire new people, you then need to ensure you have a proper system in place, that will take them from applicant to successful employee from Day 1. Have a Buddy System in place, Ensure they are set up from day 1 with uniform (right size), email set up, access codes if needed, welcome huddle with the team and of course your playbook, or your “How We Do Things Around Here” Manual. Have a probation period in place with pre-scheduled time every 2 weeks to ensure the progress is being tracked from the start.

Training & Development

What Training and Development has your team completed so far this year? What have you planned for next year? If your team is not growing, they are dying, there is no middle ground. We have to ensure as business owners that our teams are constantly involved in training and upskilling to ensure they are growing. But ‘what if they leave?’ I hear you ask. I love the Richard Branson quote, “Train people well enough so that they can leave… Treat them well enough so they don’t want to!” Another great question to consider also outlines the challenge… “What if I train my people and they leave me?… Well, what if you don’t train them and they stay?!” Training & Development is a key part of managing and growing your team and would be overlooked at your peril…

Share The Same Vision

Another key question to ask is “Do the team share the same vision as the business owner?” If they do not share the vision and are not working on the same page as the owner, it is very possible that they are heading down a totally different path and this could be really detrimental to the success of the business. I will cover the importance of having a vision but more importantly, sharing the vision with everyone in the business in a later piece.

Communication

The final thing to consider today and yet without a doubt the single biggest challenge facing a majority of Irish Businesses is communication throughout the organisation. Fundamentally, the challenge is to ensure everyone within the business is fully aware of what is going on in the business and fully understands their role in making a success of the business. Team meetings on a regular basis are really important, either weekly or at a minimum every month. The more formal meetings should also be supported through less formal and more regular huddles, which are shorter (Only 15 minutes or so) and can also communicate key messages to the team in an informal setting, all standing rather than sitting down, with limited agenda but to the point.

At ActionCOACH, looking at how we can manage our team is only one of the many areas of business expertise we look at with our clients. Having the Right Team is just one area within one of our Six Steps to Business Mastery.

For more information on how we can help you with your business challenges drop me a mail to desryan@actioncoach.ie or head over to our website www.ActionCOACH.ie for further information.