360 Degree reviews

360 Degree reviews

360-degree-reviews-image

All employers need to do 360 Degree reviews

Firstly, what is 360 degree feedback?

A 360 degree feedback survey is a system or process designed to give a wider perspective of the performance of an individual (or group) within an organisation by taking into account various perspectives from key stakeholders within the employee’s work environment.

Feedback is gathered from sources such as peers, direct reports, managers, and on occasion key customers may be involved.

Anonymous feedback gathered in a 360 degree review is provided to the employee concerned in an aggregated or summarised format (as a feedback report) and should provide a wide range of information about their skills, performance, and working relationships.

Who should 360 degree reviews be conducted for?

Given the time, cost & effort involved in conducting 360-degree feedback surveys, these processes are often reserved for those in management and leadership roles within an organisation. Some organisations use 360-degree feedback as a form of performance appraisal. The most successful outcomes in utilising these reviews are when they are used for training and development, as well as succession planning purposes.

A word of warning – although it sounds like a good idea to ask a wide range of sources for feedback to help evaluate the effectiveness of an individual, HR experts caution there are pitfalls in doing so. Companies need to carefully consider the design of their 360-degree feedback survey system to ensure it achieves the purpose for which it was intended. The process most definitely requires senior management support and a strong culture of communication and trust.

Purpose of the 360 degree feedback

In most cases, the purpose of doing a 360-degree feedback survey is to provide timely and useful feedback to help individuals (and their managers) identify where they can develop further to improve their skills, performance, working relationships and enhance their career development potential.

There is no doubt that detailed qualitative feedback gathered from a wide range of sources accompanied by coaching and supportive counseling from a manager can be very effective.

In some situations, a manager may not even work in the same location as the employee so is unable to observe their direct report’s behaviour which is where the perspectives of peers, direct reports & customers is invaluable – it can be an eye-opener to see what others see. A 360-degree review can also identify situations where a strong performance in one area – customer service, for example – may offset a not-so-flash performance in another area.

Occasionally, 360-degree surveys are used to improve ties between groups – perhaps when they are not working well together as a group, and there is conflict. In these cases, managers would focus the appraisal effort on the entire group rather than on particular members. Handled well, this process can form an ongoing channel of communication to identify and resolve conflicts between groups.

Tips for successfully executing a 360-degree feedback process

To ensure the best possible results from the 360-degree feedback process, it is important to ensure that:

  • questions are short, clear and relevant to the person’s job;
  • respondents are credible to the person being appraised (i.e., they are deemed as being in a position where they can credibly provide input);
  • both the employee and those who will complete the questionnaires are adequately briefed on the process;
  • feedback is never attributed to an individual respondent;
  • it is clearly stated how feedback will be given and by whom;
  • training is provided to those individuals who will provide the feedback and results;
  • issues of confidentiality are clearly communicated detailing who has access to the data and for what purpose;
  • feedback is concise, simple to understand, and provides guidance on how the information can be used;
  • the process is constantly monitored and evaluated.

Using survey feedback results

Once completed, the results from a 360-degree feedback survey are collated into an in-depth report of the findings and are provided to the employee by a person trained to provide feedback (e.g. the employee’s manager who has had coaching on how to deliver feedback or an external HR partner). This report usually summarises the responses, actual scores and average scores for each question as well as any comments offered by raters.

A discussion of the results allows the employee and their manager (or the HR partner) to identify areas where the self-appraisal responses are in alignment with the perceptions of their peers, direct reports & managers, and where they are not. An examination of this provides the opportunity to take on areas in the employee’s work behaviour, skills and performance that may need training and development to bring about a desired result.

Done well – the 360-degree feedback process has the potential to be a real motivator for change.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Leadership style matters

Leadership style matters

leadership-style-matters-image

Leadership skills can make a difference to your business

Leadership qualities are the very cornerstone of success

Almost every great accomplishment has at its core, solid leadership. When everything is going well it is leadership that keeps people from getting complacent. When things are going poorly it is leadership that guides and encourages people, it is leadership that sets the new course, and it is leadership that provides hope for positive future outcomes.

Leadership style refers to a leader’s characteristic behaviours when directing, motivating, guiding, and managing groups of people. History has shown how great leaders can inspire political movements and social change.

Great leaders can also motivate others to perform, create, and innovate. In the past, managers used to operate with a rigid, bottom-line focussed, heavy into a command-and-control style of leadership. However, in most situations that style does not work now. Values have changed.

Research by psychologist Kurt Lewin in the 1930s identified three major leadership styles:

  • authoritarian (autocratic)
  • participative (democratic)
  • delegative (laissez-faire).

While subsequent research has identified other more defined types of leadership, this early work provided a catalyst for the identification of other characteristic patterns of leadership including the transformational leadership style which is often identified as the single most effective style.

Leaders adopting the transformational leadership style tend to be emotionally intelligent, energetic, and passionate.

They are not only committed to helping the organization achieve its goals, but also to helping group members fulfil their potential. Research shows that this style of leadership results in higher performance, more improved group satisfaction than other leadership styles as well as leading to improved well-being among group members.

However, it is not easy being a leader, especially these days when we are living in times of continual and, at times, exponential change.

The social and economic crisis caused by the current global pandemic is an extreme but relevant example of the types of challenges leaders face today.

Like any other crisis, the disruptive force and major social impacts were entirely unexpected and during the early days of the pandemic the most urgent objective of leaders would be to safeguard the future of the organisation and by adopting a more autocratic approach, making quick decisions for today while also considering what will be the “next normal” for tomorrow.

The “next normal” is the opportunity for organisations to emerge from this crisis stronger than before and in the post-pandemic world, smart leaders will need to adapt their leadership style.

Covid-19 has changed what business leadership looks like now, and for the foreseeable future. The more directive leadership style adopted in the early days of the pandemic would be perceived as an overly directive, actionist one-leader show during business as usual.

Leaders will need to be flexible enough to adapt leadership style to the situation as it evolves.

  • An article in Forbes Magazine describes the “7 Leadership Traits For The Post COVID-19 Workplace” required to restore and revive stressed and flailing supply chains, product lines even entire industries” as being:
  • Candour/openness/honesty – Possibly the best antidote for a workplace climate of anxiety and cynicism is openness and honesty. People respond so much better to the known (even if the news is not great) than the unknown (which tends to fuel more anxiety) or even worse misleading half-truths or irresponsible optimism (which can irreparably damage trust long term).
  • Regular, reliable fact-based communication – regular, reliable fact-based communication goes a long way to bringing people together and reducing workplace anxiety.
  • Empathy – some people are still feeling fragile and concerned about Covid-19. There has been a loss of sense of community and cohesion among staff from the isolation experienced e.g., loss of shared office space when working from home and ongoing concerns about things like job security and sick leave balances. Even just providing some heartfelt encouragement and recognition for a job well done goes a long way.
    Intergenerational and managing a remote and distributed workforce – Gen Zers and millennials require a different style of management (ethical).
  • Virtual and distributed teams also require a different style of leadership. You still need to bring these employees together regularly or work streams may fall apart.
  • Flexibility and adaptability – Covid-19 has taught us that businesses need to be flexible and adaptable to changing situations. Faced with unprecedented uncertainty, leaders need to avoid the temptation to “stick with the decision” and change course if necessary.
  • Humility / modesty – whether its knowledge related to public health, statistics, human resources or even legal issues, leaders will undoubtedly find themselves needing to rely on expertise that they do not themselves have to make the best decisions for the broader organisation. As a result, humility is a huge asset. It takes a strong leader to respond to a difficult question with “I don’t know, but I’ll find out”.
  • Active listening – while leaders certainly need to make hard decisions that will not, please everyone, making well informed decisions is still key. Indeed, there is a difference between listening and waiting to talk and for many leaders, their ability to shift gears into “listening to understand” versus “listening to respond” will be a key ingredient for their success.

Smart leaders need to adapt and be prepared to change their leadership style in the post-pandemic world and as Michael Dell (the founder of Dell Computers at age 20) said “I’ve learned that you have to take advantage of change and not let it take advantage of you”.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Managing personalities

Managing personalities

Managing-Personalities

Managing personalities to build an ‘A Team’

An HR basic that we find is often not obvious to employers is to avoid hiring people with whom you have a natural affinity because you feel comfortable with them.

Hiring great employees is about skills first and personality second

And that means diversity of personality – as different personality types have an affinity toward different roles, and some of those personalities may cause a degree of discomfort – such as extroverts employing introverts or vice versa.

The bottom line is, not everyone thinks or behaves the same. The secret to building a high performing team is to hire high performers, manage them in the way they need to be managed, while still upholding your standards and beliefs, and then teaching them to understand each other’s working styles.

How do we create a team from people who are all different from each other?

Start by understanding the skills required for each of the roles and the level of skill and experience required for the future.
In placing skill base before personality, you will avoid the number one hiring trap of employing someone who you are comfortable with, but who does not have the full skill base you require.

During the interviewing process, you will screen firstly on the basis of the skills and experience level required for the role now and in the future.
Your next consideration will be working style – and the easiest way to assess this is to ask the question ‘how do you like to be managed’, or ‘who was the best manager you’ve ever had and why’.

This places the spotlight directly on the candidate and removes a lot of the guesswork.

DISC Personality Assessment for Role Types

Different personality types tend to gravitate toward and have higher or lower aptitude particular roles. A classic extroverted sales person will feel anxious in an environment where he or she is isolated for extended periods of time, while the other end of the scale – the introverted detail checking type will struggle with continual interruption or process change.

Using DISC profiling to assess candidates and roles across the four sectors of DISC (Dominance, Influence, Conscientiousness, Steadiness) leads to a balanced team, however, this in its own right is not enough – managing personalities to work harmoniously and productively will drive business growth more than any other single thing.

Once you introduce your team to DISC principles, they will come to understand more about themselves and how to approach others with increasingly successful outcomes for all concerned and continually improving relationships.

Add to that clear management direction, effective training and development plans, open door communication and your business is sure to grow.
ConsultingHQ run DISC Profiling consultations for clients regularly. We can run Individual & Team reports, along with comparing individuals against specific roles ( which is great for great when you are considering people for new roles or for promotions).

Please contact us if you would like to know more about this.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Succession planning

Succession planning

succession-planning-image

What is succession planning and why is it vital in business performance?

Succession planning is the process of identifying key skills required for your business to run smoothly, ensuring you have adequate skill overlap.

Enabling any employee in the team to be absent for any reason and for any length of time – and enabling seamless future business growth.
Sickness, bereavement, annual leave and resignations can all create employee absences, planned and unplanned.

Many business owners are caught by surprise when a key employee is absent and are required to step in themselves – or they decide to perform key roles themselves and struggle to also run the business.

As your business grows, the requirement and focus for the owner is to spend increasingly more time managing at top level to provide direction and support. Stepping into the role of an absent employee becomes counter-productive.

In addition to employee absences, planned or unplanned – all your employees (including the business owner) need to feel that they can take leave as required.

This is the basis of succession planning – ensuring that every aspect of every key role can be covered at any time.

The first step is a skill matrix and gap analysis

This identifies potential gaps and overlaps both now and in the future. The optimum way of conducting this process is in light of future business strategy. Strategic gap analysis enables the business owner to consider future skill requirements – in the light of present employees, which obviously shines a light on training and development for current employees and identifies experience and higher skills that need to be recruited to build business growth.

Succession planning reduces one of the most significant employer risks – the loss of productivity due to employee absence. More than this however, having skill overlap in the team creates a more consultative environment, which is always a positive – and is especially valuable for employers who have employed skill bases they do not have themselves.

Succession planning has been the cornerstone for overseas recruitment becoming so widespread in New Zealand – enabling employers to continue projects without loss of productivity due to skill gaps. While some industries have seen this as an extreme situation, skill gap management presents a risk to every business owner.

To find out more about our Strategic HR Process, speak to one of our ConsultingHQ Consultants, or to learn more about employing skilled workers from overseas, please make contact with our RecruitNZ International Recruitment team.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Human resource gap analysis

Human resource gap analysis

HR-gap-image

What is an HR Gap Analysis and why is it critical to your business growth?

Most, if not all business owners commit to an annual business plan – which usually encompasses a Sales & Marketing Plan, Operational & Resource Management Plan, and a Finance Plan.
Planning revenue and capital expenditure for future growth is key to business scaling – every accountant will tell you that – but what about considering the people that you will need to create this growth through those resources acquired? Machines and software don’t make a business successful – people do.

Often business owners plan business growth without also considering the Human Resource plan to make the future business structure possible.

The HR Gap Analysis is every bit as important for your future business growth as your financial plan and your marketing strategy

This does not mean you rush out and hire new employees – it means you need a planning or strategy strand in the overall plan that brings into consideration the skills that you will need to either have developed across your current team members, or that you will need to introduce – and the timeline required to make all this happen.
When you think of building your business in bite-sized chunks of ‘what skill and which resource do I need to make this next stage happen’, it all becomes much easier. The overwhelm is reduced and a more productive planning process starts to take shape – then before you know it, your business transformation is underway – delivered by hard working people other than yourself!

The first step is conducting the skill analysis

To complete your Gap Analysis, you must first identify all skills required to grow your business to the first stage of planned growth, then look internally to see if you have those skills available to you with current employees – or if there is an obvious choice for training and development internally.
The second step, therefore, is preparing your Training and Development Plan.
Showing your employees your vision for the future, then delivering their role in that future with a concrete training and development plan is the single most valuable action a business manager can take in business planning for growth.

Upskilling an existing team member to develop and retain them in your business for longer is also an HR fundamental

The employee you know and who knows you – with mutual trust and business history is much more likely to fully commit to your vision of growth than an incoming new but higher level employee coming in cold.
The third step of the HR Strategy building process is one of establishing revised KPIs and job specification for any employee undergoing development so that your communication is absolutely crystal clear.
Follow these steps and you are on track for smooth, planned business growth with fewer speed bumps.

If you would find it useful, you are welcome to complete our Team Training Survey to take your HR Strategy to the next level. We will contact you with with survey results.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Leadership is the cornerstone of business success

Leadership is the cornerstone of business success

leadership-Is-the-cornerstone-of-business-success-image

Leadership is the cornerstone of business success

Building a business structure for future growth is challenging. It takes single-minded focus on strategic goals

So many business owners limit their own potential by not transitioning from being the go-to guy making all the decisions, to becoming the leader and director of the business.
Without this mindset change, growth becomes more difficult.
Leadership is founded on remaining focused on outcomes.
The challenge for the leader is to guide other people to build stepping stones toward the milestones that measure progress, within the desired timeframes – without stepping in and taking over.
The true issue is that many business owners find it very difficult to let go of the details – they feel that only their decision could be the right one, but in reality, it is almost impossible to maintain strategic focus while also being detail focused.

There’s no other way to grow a business than to become leadership focused

The leader places his or her focus on resolving roadblocks and inspiring the team – working on the business more than working in it.
The main reason so many clever entrepreneurs make lousy leaders are that they like to own all the decisions and micro manage relatively skilled people, they like to shift the focus for the goals and they become impatient quickly with people who don’t keep up. Teams find this very confusing and destabilising, so if this is you, find a business coach who will lead your leadership and keep you in check – or sell your ready-to-scale business so that someone else with the qualities of a leader rather than a creator can move it forward.
Sometimes it is difficult to transition into a leadership role – but it’s a shift that must be made for the business to be scaled.

Leadership requires full commitment to the goals – at strategic level and to empowering others

For leaders to become truly effective in a business they must commit to the following:

  • Empower team leaders to make decisions day to day
  • Inspire the team to get results
  • Be positive, consultative and communicative
  • Make key & strategic decisions for the team as they require
  • Focus on performance outcomes and results
  • Maintain unwavering focus on the goals

To rate your leadership ability and see where your challenges and your own KPIs may be, complete this HR Audit and we’ll send you the results!


 

 

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

Contact us to find out how we can help your business.