5 Reasons to Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings

When executed properly, all-hands meetings have the potential to drive a level of transparency and alignment within your team that will make your business stronger. 

What are All-Hands Meetings? 

It is widely known across industries that transparency within an organization drives success and business strength. One of the best ways a company can foster that sense of transparency and trust with their employees and teams is through the use of all-hands meetings.  

All-hands meetings are regular, company-wide meetings where all employees gather with leadership to discuss company matters. The general objectives of an all-hands meeting are to: 

• Share the business updates of the past month, quarter, year, season, etc. 
• Drive alignment around the company’s mission and strategy 
• Celebrate company milestones and recognize the individuals who made them possible 
• Give everyone in the company a chance to ask questions and clarify any concerns 

Any and all organizations can stand to benefit from holding regular all-hands meetings, regardless of company size or age, or the scope and level of the all-hands meetings you choose to conduct.  

Why are All-Hands Meetings Valuable? 

Company-wide, all-hands meetings have the potential to bring your teams together in an incredible valuable way. It provides perspective on the state of the business at team and department levels, and can highlight the importance of every employee’s contribution and effort of moving towards company goals. 

Here are several key benefits to holding regular all-hands meetings for your organization: 

1. Keeps your team updated and improves alignment.

All-hands meetings are one of the best opportunities you have to ensure all your team members are on the same page about everything business-related. This goes beyond simply sharing organizational and people updates, which can be done in much less expensive ways. By emphasizing company mission, strategy, and objectives, all-hands meetings provide you with the chance to accurately align your employees on the company goals, pointing them in the right direction and ensuring success down the line. 

2. Celebrates people and uplifts team spirit and morale.

Company achievements cannot exist without consistent efforts from the people involved. Celebrating your team members’ successes and recognizing their hard work is just as important as keeping them in the loop on business updates. Especially when your employees are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, one of the best ways to boost their morale is to review the highlights of their efforts and give shout-outs to the individuals who helped achieve them.  

A good way to do this is to involve your team members in the recognition process. Have employees think of one team member who went the extra mile for them or performed exceptionally well over the past month or quarter. Generating a word cloud of the results and projecting it on screen is an excellent way to have several top players feel valued and appreciated, while still shouting out the exceptional performers. Another activity could be to crowdsource company highlights from the employees during the meeting itself. As opposed to having speakers reviewing the highlights, invite attendees to share their personal high points with the people sitting near them, then submit them into an open text poll using their phones and acknowledge the top ones on screen.   

3. Gives a voice to everyone.

An all-hands meeting is one of the best places to generate a forum for employee questions, and address employee concerns from every corner. Holding an open Q&A with leadership may be useful in helping you uncover the most hot-topic issues in the organization, encouraging workplace transparency. A good rule of thumb is to allow for at least 20% of your all-hands meeting time to be dedicated to Q&A. It may be helpful to collect questions in the days leading up to the meeting as well, allowing executives and panelists to prepare thorough answers beforehand and have a general sense of the areas of topics the employees will want to discuss. 

4. Fosters a healthy company culture.

All-hands meetings are one of the best places not only to show your company culture, but to grow it as well. Demonstrating and strengthening your company culture by involving the people that the meeting is first and foremost about is critical. Let them contribute to the agenda and co-create the program and run activities where attendees enjoy themselves. At the end of the day, all-hands meetings are for your employees, so give them good reason to be excited about being there in the first place.  

5. Connects remote teams and workers with executives.

While imagining company-wide in-person gatherings is difficult right now, understanding the value of connectivity that they present is just as important as ever. All-hands meetings are a unique chance to connect your remote workers with headquarters, and truly make them feel part of the company and the organizational community as a whole.  

Certain companies even have the majority, if not all, of their workers working remotely, meaning they run their all-hands meetings fully online. We will investigate best practices for holding all-hands meetings remotely later but understanding the value of connectivity they bring beyond the regular virtual check-ins you may hold with your team is critical. 

Best Practices for Running All-Hands Meetings 

One of the biggest benefits of holding regular all-hands meetings is the opportunity it presents for productive interactions within teams and between employees and leadership. This intermingling can spark new connections, inspire new ideas, and can drive your company forward while keeping everyone aligned and on-track. 

But, not all all-hands meetings are created equal by nature. If you want to get the most out of your all-hands meetings, ensure their effectiveness, and have everyone who walks away feeling included and excited about the future of your organization, there are a few best practices you should follow: 

Prep Your Team

Especially if your organization is not used to holding regular all-hands meetings, worrying your employees during the scheduling process is the last thing you’ll want to be doing. Critical to the success of any all-hands is its establishment as a neutral event beforehand. 

While sending out meeting invitations, include the all-hands agenda, and clearly outline what it is you are going to be discussing. Provide attendees with some idea of what to expect, especially if this is your company’s very first all-hands meeting. Otherwise, people will only be able to speculate, and you risk having your employees assume a worst-case scenario.  

Keep All-Hands Meetings Short and On Time

Especially for larger companies, having every individual in the organization in one room can be daunting, especially when it comes to the challenge of keeping each and every one of them engaged. This is why you should aim to keep your all-hands meetings short and to the point where you can, ensuring they remain effective creating a lasting impression on its attendees. 

Depending on how much ground you need to cover, and how much you have outlined in the agenda, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour should be plenty. If you have plotted out a day’s worth of events, ensure you break it up with engaging activities and events that will keep your team focused and participating. In addition, it is important that you start and end the meeting on time. Everyone has busy calendars, and you have asked your entire company to step away from their responsibilities to attend this meeting, so it is critical that you demonstrate your respect for their time.  

Focus on the Right Content

Keeping your all-hands meeting attendees engaged and attended is your biggest responsibility, but it can also be your biggest challenge if you waste too much time on the wrong topics. While you may be inclined to share every last detail about certain updates and projects, aim to focus the majority of your time on the content that is relevant and interesting to the entire company. 

Keeping all-hands meetings relevant to the organization as a whole can be difficult, but a good rule of thumb to follow is the three-category strategy: first, discuss the critical information, then dive into present-day business and updates, and end it off with something fun, social, or interactive. If you have a full day planned, try to organize the content and scheduling around this pattern.  

When it comes to the present-day business, avoid going too deep into the minutiae of things. Your presentation or discussion should aim to provide a general overview of what’s happening within your company, and if certain employees want to learn more, they can follow up directly with the appropriate contact person or team.  

Switch Things Up

For companies that have already gotten into the habit of holding regular all-hands meetings, it can be tricky not to fall into the trap of it digressing into an hour-long lecture from your leadership. While keeping leadership input at the forefront is important, you should still aim to keep the meetings interesting and engaging for everyone in attendance. 

Your employees likely don’t want to hear from the same handful of executives every month. Switching up the presenter roster is a great way to keep the audience excited about what they will be hearing and provides them the opportunity to learn more about other teams that they may not have the opportunity to work with on the day-to-day.  

Share Successes and Opportunities for Growth

Involving presenters from specific teams is a great strategy, but it is important to stress transparency in what they present to the wider organization too. It is likely that they are going to want to put their best work at the forefront, and while all-hands meetings are one of the best places to share successes and provide recognition where it is deserved, it’s also an excellent forum for sharing learning opportunities and tips for growth and improvement. 

Celebrate the accomplishments of your team, and recognize their progress and successes, but ensure that people also have the chance to hear what others in the company have learned, and what hasn’t worked well for them. When asking a team to present at an all-hands meeting, ask them to share both their successes and their challenges, and the same rings true for the leadership team. By keeping everyone in the organization informed on team-specific challenges, and the strategies they used to overcome them, those learning opportunities that were only accessible to a single team or leader are then opened up to the entire organization. 

Aim for Interactivity

Employees won’t be very engaged if all-hands simply involve someone standing at the front of the room and talking at them for an hour. Keeping the entire team engaged is essential, so aim to seek out new ways to make your all-hands meetings more interactive. We have already discussed the value of holding Q&A sessions and implementing real-time interaction from meeting attendees. Open the floor regularly for Q&As, and have live questionnaires and responses from meeting attendees, but also consistently seek out inventive activities and events that can promote engagement at your meetings.  

Ask for Feedback

All-hands meetings are pointless if your employees aren’t getting what they need to out of them. One of the most important components of effective all-hands meetings is the mechanisms in place that ensure their continued effectiveness, and there is no better source for that than employee feedback.  

Following each all-hands meeting, follow up for feedback. Ask them what it is they enjoyed about the all-hands, what they think could be improved upon, and what they would like to see changed for the next meeting. Take the time to read through all that feedback and use it as criterion for improvement that will drive the planning and execution of your next all-hands meeting. Taking employee feedback and using it to improve and evolve how you run your all-hands not only increases their effectiveness and impact, but it also makes your team feel respected and heard.  

How Can You Hold Regular All-Hands Meetings Remotely? 

It is likely that many companies are facing the need to shift all their in-person events online for the next while and possibly indefinitely, but keep in mind that running an all-hands meeting in a virtual space can still have as much impact as if you were sitting in the same room together. They key is smoothing out all the wrinkles beforehand. Here are the three general stages to holding your regular all-hands meetings virtually: 

Tech Setup

Choosing a reliable video conferencing tool is the first step. A popular choice currently is Zoom, but other strong platforms include GoToMeeting, Skype for Business, Join.me, Roundee, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangouts. If you plan on presenting slides, ensure they run seamlessly on the platform, and test out any interactive features such as running live polls and Q&As beforehand as well.  

Preparation Phase

Like you would for an in-person all-hands meeting, the next stage is the assign specific roles to members of your team. There should be multiple speakers present at the meeting, since switching speakers helps break monotony and brings in multiple perspectives from different corners of your organization. Introducing a moderator can also be useful, which means having them greet your teammates as they join the call, deliver a kick-off speech, and keep an eye on the agenda. Especially for online interactive activities, assigning someone the role of discussion facilitator to field incoming questions and steer the discussion according to employee input can help keep the Q&A sessions running as smoothly as possible.  

One of the most important parts of the planning phase is to raise awareness of the meeting’s date and time. Aim to put out a calendar invitation well in advance so as many employees can make it as possible, and ensure you attach all the important details to that invitation, such as a link to the conference call, a link to the interactive features, and a brief agenda outline. 

Finally, conducting a dry run of your all-hands is essentially, especially if you are running it in a virtual setting. Test out the technology, review the agenda several times with all the key players (speakers, moderator, facilitators), and rehearse the content as much as you can. 

Delivering Content and Facilitating Interaction

A strong start to your virtual all-hands meeting will set the tone for the rest of the meeting, so make sure your introduction is as punchy as engaging as possible. Have your moderator welcome attendees and dedicate the first few minutes to ideally an icebreaker that can include all. Remote workers across the country are all facing challenges of loneliness and isolation, so spending some time to socialize before the meeting starts can help put your employees at ease. In addition, encourage your colleagues to turn on their cameras for the meeting. It is likely that many of their virtual calls and meetings have been voice-only, but having employee faces on screen can make the virtual all-hands meeting feel much more personal and interactive. 

When it comes to slide presentation, keep in mind that attending virtual meetings demands much more attention than in-office meetings. They are much more prone to distraction when in their home environment, so don’t overwhelm your audience with a too-heavy presentation or daunting visuals. Simplify your presentation slides, keeping them captivating and easy to look at while the essence of the content is in what you are saying. 

Presenting creative ways to deliver content and inviting employee’s participation is also important. You can conduct live polls, gauging employee satisfaction and crowdsourcing their ideas and opinions, or you can turn company stats into interactive quizzes where colleagues can have a guess at how well the organization is doing. Not only does it transform the more mundane topics into something fun, but it helps re-engage your virtual audience in case they have started to tune out. The Q&A also remains just as critical. It can be difficult for teammates to interrupt the presenter and ask questions on a virtual meeting, so setting up a Q&A tool online is an excellent solution. Attendees will be able to send in their questions as they come up throughout the meeting, and your facilitator can build a discussion around the top questions during the Q&A session.  

In Summary 

Running all-hands meetings regularly can be the key to strengthening your business, and now that you know how to optimize your meetings and yield the most successful results from them, all that’s left to do is get all hands-on deck and start planning for your next one.  

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The Pros and Cons of Paid Time Off 

Offering separate paid time off benefits according to an employee’s reason of absence sounds unnecessarily complicated, but it was the norm for employers not too long ago. Today, however, more and more organizations have adopted the newer, more flexible approach to absence benefits by incorporating a paid time off (PTO) system that encompasses all absence policies into one all-inclusive plan. 

What is Paid Time Off? 

A paid time off policy combines vacation, sick time, and personal time into a single bank for employees to use when they take paid time off from work. In essence, as opposed to having the employer differentiate between various benefits according to the employee’s reason for not being at work, a PTO policy creates a pool of days that the employee uses at their own discretion.  

When an employee needs to take time off from work, regardless of the reason, the PTO policy allows for a certain amount of that time off to be paid hours. That way the employee uses their PTO hours is up to them, whether it be saved for doctor’s appointments, kid’s school conferences, childcare, or sick leave. Other examples of PTO can include maternity/paternity leave, jury duty, holiday pay, or disability leave. The key is that the use of the paid time off is no longer the business of the employer.  

Is Paid Time Off Different from Regular Vacation Time? 

While the terms paid time off and vacation tend to be used interchangeably by employees and employers alike, they are not actually the same thing. PTO describes any time an employee is getting paid while being away from work, meaning it is much more encompassing than “vacation”. Essentially, all vacation is Paid Time Off, but not all Paid Time Off is vacation.  

Protecting the Employee and Employer 

Before implementing a PTO policy in your workplace, there are a few things you will need to do first to ensure the protection of the company’s workload and customer service quality. Requiring employees to request paid time off with ideally one-week prior notice whenever possible is a good practice, unless the employee is truly sick. Aim to establish any other guidelines as needed, including setting parameters for employee sickness, vacation, and personal time, before adopting a firm PTO policy. 

The Pros and Cons of Paid Time Off 

The Benefits of a Paid Time Off Policy 

Well-constructed PTO policies can offer several benefits to employees and organizations alike. By giving employees flexibility to the use of paid time off at their own discretion, managers are not put in the position of having to police their employees’ usage of their benefit, and employees are not put into disclosing what are sometimes very personal situations. Other key benefits include: 

• Paid time off gives the employer some control over unscheduled absences, which can become a serious problem not planned for or scheduled properly. When employees schedule their time off in advance through a PTO system, it assists with work coverage costs and planning. 
• Employees value the flexibility offered to them by a paid time off policy. Rather than having to follow the guidelines of sick leave or vacation leave policies, it provides them the option to use their paid time off for when they most need it. 
• When a company uses a paid time off policy, employees are much more likely to be transparent about their reason for absence. In the past, they may have been less willing to share about why they needed time off from work because they either wanted to preserve their privacy or were concerned about the optics of their absence. With a PTO system in place, employees can make decisions for themselves, cultivating a more transparent employer/employee relationship. 
• Employees and the Human Resources department only must track one bank of paid time off hours, as opposed to having to manage separate tracking systems for vacation, sick, and personal days.  

When a company incorporates a paid time off policy, it is common for them to start seeing much more vacation time booked from their employees, and much less unplanned sick days in scheduling. This benefits employers significantly. Firstly, employers receive much more notice about scheduled vacations, and can plan for work coverage accordingly and in a timely manner. Second, employees who take vacation time are much more likely to return to work feeling more refreshed and productive, which may in turn reduce the over sick time taken. 

The Disadvantages of a Paid Time Off Policy 

While the benefits of paid time off policies are numerous, no work policy is immune to downsides. Some disadvantages of adopting a PTO policy can include: 

• Employers who implement a PTO policy sometimes fall into the trap of giving their employees fewer overall days off than they had previously, and/or new employees start accumulating paid time off days more slowly than longer-term employees. 
• Employees also run the risk of not distinguishing PTO from vacation and begin treating paid time off as vacation time and come to work even when they are sick. It is possible to discourage this practice by optimizing absenteeism management practices, but it is the employer who is responsible for setting the pace and expectations surrounding PTO and modeling the appropriate behaviour for their employees.  
• In some regions, accrued paid time off is required to be paid to the employee upon their last day of work at the company, but unused sick and personal time does not have the same regulations. This runs the risk of employees banking up their unused PTO and costing the organization much more upon their separation than if they were to have banked up regular sick and personal time off.  

Time Away from Work is Beneficial 

Regardless of the vacation, sick, personal, or paid time off policy you implement into your workplace, your primary goal should be to encourage your employees to use it. The benefits of employees taking time off from work are tremendous, and a company culture that supports time off hinges upon its managers leading by example and taking vacation and PTO days themselves. Aim to eliminate the guilt factor that was previously associated from work absences and demonstrate a true interest in how your employees have spent their time off.

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Top 12 Manager Best Practices 

Being a great manager is about much more than simply keeping a group of employees engaged. A great leader is someone who knows how to motivate their team, and who can follow the business management best practices in the right way, driving their organization towards success.  

Business management can be described as the process by which an organization gets its employees to produce the greatest results while leveraging those skills and talents made available to them. While every corporate culture is based upon a different philosophy and driven by a unique set of goals, beliefs, and core values, there are some universal truths about effective management that any manager can employ into their practices to obtain that ideal optimized workforce. By following the 12 manager best practices listed below, any business leader can transform even the most struggling organization into a streamlined system, in which employees are inspired to produce their best work, and processes work in such a way that ensure long-term, sustainable success.  

1. Engage Workers 

An alienated or bored worker will not care about performing their job at all, let alone performing it to their highest ability. The very first step to becoming a great leader is identifying how to engage employees in the company’s vision. Engaged workers are not only more enthusiastic about their efforts and productive in their work, but they also become less passive in how they perform their job. They take more responsibility and accountability for their performance and can also help attract fresh talent to the organization. 

2. Reward Effort 

Recognition of an employee’s effort, and rewards for achievements, makes workers feel much more valued in the organization. While it may seem like an obvious practice to instill into your managerial plan, many business management training programs overlook the positive impact that appreciation can have on a company. Some managers may even feel that being too close and friendly with employees undermines their authority. However, recognition and reward for great work motivates people to work harder and achieve more themselves and helps to build company loyalty.  

A good practice for rewarding effort is to give credit and acknowledgement publicly. If recognition is due for outstanding work, everyone should be made aware that their contributions to the organization will be acknowledged if they show the same level of work ethic.  

3. Be Vulnerable 

 When the leader is open and honest about their sentiments regarding business efforts, employees will also feel comfortable speaking openly and sharing their ideas. Transparency affords increased levels of trust and even respect between a leader and their team members.  

4. Stay Committed 

Distrust within a team drains valuable resources and time, with team members focusing more on avoiding conflict rather than airing their real opinions and working to find a common ground. When distrust is prevalent, it transforms the workplace into a state of permanent ambiguity, meaning clear goals and strategies rarely emerge from group discussions. By staying committed to the organization’s initiative, a manager can foster a work atmosphere where conflict is welcomed, not feared, since differing perspectives can help to shape a clear and robust goal.  

5. Practice Consistency 

Perhaps one of the most important manager best practices, remaining consistent in how you treat employees is critical for maintaining a productive working environment. Effective management relies on having leaders in place who treat all team members with a fair, consistent and equitable approach where zero favouritism applies. 

6. Seek Clarity 

An issue many organizations face is a lack of alignment among managers.  Aiming for alignment in managerial practices is critical and can only be achieved when clarity is at the forefront. Aim to ask, and answer, the following six questions to clearly outline the company’s vision: 

• Why do we exist? 
• How do we behave? 
• What do we do? 
• How will we succeed? 
• What is most important? 
• Who must do what? 

When leaders can develop and share a clear sense of the organization’s vision, values, strategic goals, and delegation of responsibilities, the company can obtain the clear sense of purpose and direction it needs to succeed.  

7. Create Cultural Cohesiveness 

Company culture is one of the biggest driving forces in how well a company operates, and how well-equipped it is for the future of business. It encompasses the shared values of an organization that, with the right level of engagement, can lead to the development of productive and efficient outcomes. A strong manager best practice is to ensure that all new hires are in alignment with those core values and visions, since workers with shared values are much more likely to work well together. Diversity in race, gender, socioeconomic status, and more, is beneficial to an organization, since it increases collective insight. But diversity in company values should be avoided. 

8. Encourage Teamwork 

Cultivating team spirit is extremely beneficial to any organization, and one of the best ways to do so is to introduce frequent opportunities for projects that move away from a department-centered focus. Employees are much more likely to learn and appreciate the importance of collaboration when they are regularly given a the line of sight between the value-add work they perform to that of driving the organization forward. 

9. Focus Team Effort  

Many managers believe that their efforts to focus teams starts and ends with the introductory period, hosting retreats to boost solidarity, and being attentive to new ideas when they first come out. However, it is critical for managers to keep an eye on ongoing team dynamics, ensuring team members don’t get distracted down the line by individual activities that will lead them off track. In order to achieve the best result for the company, there needs to be consistent reassessment and realignment of team goals. Conducting a teamwork fitness survey is a great way to gauge and monitor key elements of team success such as change compatibility, cohesiveness or team meeting skills. 

10. Hold Regular Meetings 

Meetings are one of the most critical components to an organization’s success. It could even be argued that no other action, activity or process is more integral to the creation of a healthy organization than meetings. In order to be fully successful in how you plan and run your meetings, and in order to leverage them in the best way to achieve success, aim to do the following: 

• Hold separate meetings for tactical and strategic business planning. 
• Assess tactical agendas only after teams have reviewed their progress against their goals. 
• Ensure sufficient time is allocated for clarification, debate, and resolution of major issues. 
• Meet occasionally outside the office to review industry changes, as well as anything else significant happening within the company and the team. 

By providing teams with a regular forum to discuss core values, and measure their progress against their goals, members can realign their principles and gain perspective on the best business practices for the future of the company.  

11. Lead by Example 

A manager’s behaviour should always be reflecting how they expect their team to behave. A core manager best practice, but one of the most important, is demonstrating and role modelling the values and expectations you are expecting of your people. If you are on time, your employees will be on time too. If you are consistent, they will be consistent too. As a manager, it is critical to model the ideal behaviour, so your employees will have something to follow and emulate themselves.  

12. Practice Transparency 

The importance of transparency in business goes beyond its legal implications. A transparent business leader is one who inspires trust and respect among team members on the day-to-day, and not just on bigger picture issues. Team members will be much less willing to follow a leader who has lied or kept important information from them, so remaining transparent and honest is critical. Of course, the essentials of good judgement apply as some information can be sensitive in its nature. 

Final Thoughts

In order to succeed in the field of business management, you first need to ensure your own core values align with your organization’s goals. If you are not true to yourself, you cannot expect to have a meaningful impact on the organization you are representing. While there are several manager best practices you should always be incorporating into your leadership efforts, the best and most significant ones are those that focus on fostering authentic connections between yourself, your employees, and the organization.  

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The Difference Between Reward and Recognition 

In order for your employees to feel fully satisfied in their jobs, they will need much more than just a pay check. While offering competitive pay is critical to recruiting the top talent in your industry, it is important to have a program that covers both rewards and recognition if you wish to attract and actually retain high performance employees.  However, many professionals fall into the trap of assuming these two terms are interchangeable. In order to glean the best results from your organization’s employee reward and recognition program, it is important to first de-couple these two terms, and identify their key distinctions.  

What is the Difference Between Reward and Recognition? 

As you develop your reward and recognition program, aim to first thoughtfully consider and understand the key differences between these two areas of employee incentives. Once you have a clear picture of how they differ, both in nature and in practice, you will be able to accurately assess where and when the deployment of each is most appropriate. 

Listed below are the 10 key distinctions you should draw between reward and recognition: 

Creating an Employee Reward and Recognition Program 

Once you have gained a thorough understanding of how rewards and recognition differ in their nature, you can begin crafting an employee reward and recognition program that ensures your response to employee achievements and results is always appropriately directed. The first step is to understand just how the distinctions we have laid out will interact when put into action: 

• Tangible vs. Intangible – an individual can be recognized without being given a reward, but a reward should never be doled out without being coupled with recognition. 
• Transactional vs. Relational – rewards are useful for attracting top talent to your organization, and recognition is mandatory for retaining that talent.  
• Consumed vs. Experienced – carefully balancing how often you reward vs. recognize an employee ensures that the way in which the employee receives compensation for their achievements is appropriate and measured. 
• Transferrable vs. Non-Transferrable – aiming to focus on recognition, and teaming it with reward where appropriate, will help your employees feel valued for their individual contributions. 
• Conditional vs. Unconditional – blending rigidity in rewards, with the flexibility in recognition, and applying them either on their own or in combination over time at your discretion is critical. 
• Expected vs. Unexpected – an individual should never be let down by being deprived of a well-earned reward, but you should also be spontaneous enough in your attitude to be able to celebrate and appreciate your employees each day. 
• Economical vs. Emotional – performance and fixed outcomes of success are important to keeping employees motivated, but it is feelings (that is, satisfaction in being recognized) that rule the retention aspect of the employee experience. 
• Fixed vs. Free-Flowing – fixed rewards allow for employees to have a clear picture of the expected behaviours they should be working towards, but a free-flowing culture of recognition will help keep them on their toes and productive on the everyday level. 
• Impersonal vs. Personal – the impersonal nature of rewards can be remedied by always combining the dealing out of rewards with personal recognition for the employee. 

Now that you have a clear sense of the key differences between the concepts of reward and recognition, and how they may interact when put into action in your program, it is important to understand some general tips for creating and implementing an employee reward and recognition program. Listed below are some of the key best practices you should follow when utilizing your program: 

1. Identify What to Recognize

Outline and map out all of the behaviors and actions you will be looking for from your employees, and ensure everyone in the company has equal opportunities to receive recognition. 

2. Make It Timely

To ensure the effectiveness of the reward or recognition you deal out, you need to act immediately when success is identified. Providing recognition or a simple reward as soon as you notice behavior you want to see repeated helps employees pinpoint what exactly you are looking for, and how they can go about receiving recognition themselves. 

3. Do It Often

Employees crave recognition, so seeking out small and unique ways to regularly recognize their efforts and achievements keeps them satisfied. 

 4. Make it Genuine

Don’t stick to e-mail templates or automated responses when your employees are performing well. A sincere thank you, or a personalized recognition coupled with a reward, will go further. 

 5. Personalize It

As we have already mentioned, personalizing how you go about giving rewards or recognition to your employees is critical. If you are recognizing their achievements, praise them in a way you know the employee will be comfortable with. If the employee is shy and uncomfortable with loud, public recognition, be genuinely thankful and demonstrate your appreciation in a one-on-one discussion. If you are giving out a reward, select something that you know will be meaningful or impactful to that specific employee.  

6. Aim for Collaboration

Including everyone in your employee recognition and reward program incentivizes them to keep up the good work even when you are not looking. Employees love being recognized, but they also enjoy recognizing the work of their peers. Encourage your team to praise one another often, and consider implementing a peer-nomination system into your rewards program. 

7. Make It A Habit

By setting yourself a standard of regular recognition, it is much more likely to get ingrained into the company culture as a whole, and will transform into something every employee wants to be a part of. 

8. Be Transparent

Doling out recognition and rewards is a great tool for demonstrating the type of behaviors you want all employees to exhibit.  

9. Be Fair

Don’t just reward the same rotating roster of your top performers. Keep an eye out for the underdogs of your team, whose work is of high quality but may not be quite as obvious. In addition, never create company rewards that are only achievable by a certain group of employees or certain departments. 

10. Include Remote Workers

Your employees working remotely are just as important as your in-office team members, but they can often feel disconnected from the office. Providing recognition and rewards to them as often as you do your in-person employees, and encouraging employees to engage in recognition with their remote peers, helps to keep them engaged with the wider team. 

11. Be Creative

Your rewards and recognition program does not have to be boring and dry. Have fun with your ideas, finding ways to recognize and reward different groups, departments, and employees in unique ways that apply to their specific accomplishments, wants, and needs. 

12. Separate Recognition and Criticism

Constructive criticism is essential, but when it comes to your reward and recognition program, avoid the “compliment sandwich”. Do not leverage recognition just to soften the blow of harsher criticisms. Feedback is integral, but you should have those discussions separately from your recognition process. 

In Summary 

The term ‘Rewards and Recognition’ are often used interchangeably by professionals, but recognizing their key differences is one of the most important steps to ensuring your employee program keeps your employees feeling satisfied and engaged with their work.  You do not need to be excessive with rewards to keep your employees feeling appreciated. When giving out meaningful recognition, and coupling it with tangible, earned rewards where appropriate, your employees will feel their individual contributions will never go unnoticed by you. 

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The Pros and Cons of a 4-Day Work Week

The pandemic has ushered in a host of significant changes, influencing every area of life, including how we work. Employees around the world have been forced to adjust to their new work-life within the confines of their homes, and companies not deemed essential have modified their physical environments and/or shifted almost entirely to remote work. As a result of the increased stress and tension these rapid changes have placed on the shoulders of workers, organizations are beginning to adopt policies and practices that they may have resisted in the past. One of the more prevalent, modern approaches to work that has gained momentum in the past few months is the idea of a 4-day work week.  

What Does a 4-Day Work Week Look Like? 

While flexible schedules have been a topic of interest for some time, primarily leveraged by companies looking to modernize their functions, the idea of a shorter work week has rapidly become a focal point of business debate. In a time of such uncertainty, no organization has all the answers to how to best support their employees, and many have turned to a 4-day work week as a solution for the toll the pandemic has taken on their workers’ mental health. But, what does the 4-day work week look like in action? 

In truth, there is no one best answer to this question, and no one definition or description of a four-day work week. Shortened work weeks come in many different forms, depending on the objectives of the adoption of the practice in the first place. Some organizations envisage a shorter work week as a production of the same output, with the work time being condensed into fewer hours. Other companies may plan to implement longer working hours, spread out over fewer days than usual. Some models of a four-day week mean a three-day weekend, while others are set up for a day off midweek. Simply put, it just depends on the type of organization you run, and how you want to go about responding to this international period of disruption. And, the first step to identifying whether a shortened work week practice is right for your company and your employees, is to weigh out the potential advantages and disadvantages it may introduce. 

The Benefits of a 4-Day Work Week 

The idea of a shortened working week is no doubt appealing to many employees. With an extended weekend, or an additional day off, to work towards, many will likely access a newfound point of motivation, and produce better work as a result. According to a Harris poll conducted in May, when the notion of a 4-day work week began circulating quicker than ever, over 82% of US employees stated they would prefer a shorter workweek. Organizations that have already implemented it as a practice have also contributed to the debate. Perpetual Guardian’s CEO Andrew Barnes stated that his implementation of a four-day workweek in 2018 gleaned lower stress levels, higher creativity, and a major boost in team cohesion for his employees. 

As companies begin to reopen their offices, shifting from remote work to a reformed workweek system leads to many companies as the right way to go. With companies left and right testing the idea, and achieving promising results from it, employees and employers alike may stand to benefit greatly from a wider adoption of this new concept. Some specific benefits that a 4-day work week gleans for organizations include: 

• Increase in Productivity – it is well-known that an overworked employee is much less productive than an employee working a reasonable number of hours each week. Perpetual Guardian’s introduction of the 4-day work week policy saw a decrease in employee stress levels from 45% to 38%. Similarly, the countries that yield the highest productivity statistics, including Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, average around 27 hours a week, not the traditional 40 seen in five-day week structures.   
• Equal Workplace – the introduction of a decreased workweek would provide employees the opportunity to better balance their work and life commitments. One of the largest contributors to the widened gap between employed female and male workers is the lack of flexible policies surrounding childcare. Most employees who take leave of absences are women needing time off for childcare. A 4-day work week would eliminate this gendered gap in available working hours, providing a more equitable approach to accommodating the familial needs of employees.  
• Increase in Engagement – a shortened work week has the potential to boost employee satisfaction, morale, commitment, and overall engagement. While a happy workforce may seem like a far-off notion in the current times, providing flexibility in scheduling will do wonders for relieving employee stress levels that may be higher than usual right now. A 4-day work week also means employees are less likely to need stress or sick leave, since they have more time off that they can use to rest and recover. Resultingly, they can return to work ready to take on new challenges, even in times of disruption.  

The Drawbacks of a 4-Day Work Week 

While the arguments for a 4-day work week seem to keep rising, so too do the arguments against it. Many companies are avid in the belief that condensing the work done over five days into four will yield significantly more negative results for your organization than positive ones. While flexibility in how you go about structing a shortened work week is critical, and it can be adapted and adjusted to the needs and demands of your business, there will always be potential drawbacks to adopting a new, unfamiliar management practice. Some of the key arguments against the idea of a 4-day work week include: 

• Good Statistics Indicate Poor Management – the shortened work week has picked up so much steam largely because of the benefits it has yielded for the companies who dove head-first into the new model of work. However, if a company is reporting significant changes in their waste and efficiency statistics and are closing gaps only because they condensed their week, it could be argued this speaks negatively to their existing management system itself. If the firms were properly managed from the beginning, some common-sense adjustments should not have produced such radical improvements in the company’s efficiency. It points to the potential of existing flaws, meaning the miraculous statistical changes circulating online in favour of the 4-day work week are not necessarily reliable. 
• Skipping Workdays Benefits Your Competition – regardless of whether you see massive increases in employee satisfaction, the very possibility that an entire workday is now cut out from your schedule will seem extremely appealing to your competition. If they do not follow the trend themselves, they now have an entire day that they can dedicate to outperforming your organization. They may choose to contact your key clients and customers on a day where they won’t be able to get in touch with your employees.  

• Shorter Workweeks are Industry-Specific – while it may seem like the entire world is exploring new workweek options, there are certain industries and jobs that will need to remain operational within their current workweek structure. A bus driver for example, cannot work extra to be able to take next Friday off, just as a hotel maid cannot condense five days of cleaning rooms into four. Because of their job design and industry, there are some jobs that simply cannot be condensed into four days, meaning a rapid adoption of a four-day work week can only be leveraged by certain industries.  

Above All Else, Your Employees Want Flexibility 

The newfound trend of a shortened workweek has kicked up a storm of debates in the business world, and for good reason. Any new, seemingly radical idea of how to manage a company will cause some disruption, but when placed into a context of global uncertainty and unfamiliarity, the pros and cons are dissected under the world’s microscope. While a 4-day work week may seem like a radical change to introduce in such times, it may be useful to examine how well it would suit your organization. The arguments for and against shorter work weeks are abundant, but as a leader, it is up to you to have the final say in what approach will truly benefit your employees and company in the long-term.  

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The Importance of Leadership Communication

The key to becoming a great leader has always been being skilled in communication. Especially today, when communication channels are rapidly increasing and the need for connectivity between a leader and their employees is in high demand, effective leadership communication is a definitive cornerstone to business success. If you want to be able to implement changes and produce real business results for your company, you first need to learn the skills necessary to have effective workplace conversations. 

Leadership Communication Defined 

Looking at effective workplace communication as a 2-way street is important, but it also glazes over some of the complexities involved in communication itself, particularly from a leadership perspective. Effective leadership communication is far from a new business buzz phrase. Rather, it describes a particular approach to workplace communication that has a clear and critical impact on an organization’s bottom line. 

Leadership communication consists largely of messages related to a company’s culture and core values. These messages are significant to the key stakeholders of the company, including the employees, customers, strategic partners, shareholders, and media. When it comes to communications from leaders, they are critical because of their direct impact on this relayed message regarding the organization’s vision, mission, and transformations. The most important goal of leadership communication is to cultivate a sense of trust in the workplace through the messaging coming from leaders, keeping employees engaged and focused in the right direction.  

The Importance of Leadership Communication 

Communication is a core leadership function, meaning effective workplace communication and effective leadership are closely intertwined. An effective leader needs to be a skilled communicator, applying that skill in relationships at the organizational level, in larger communities and groups, and sometimes even on a global scale. However, according to the statistics, 57% of employees report not being given clear directions, and as much as 69% of managers are not comfortable communicating with their employees in general.   

The problem here goes beyond managers lacking confidence or the skill levels necessary to be successful business leaders. Rather, leaders who are falling short in the communications department will have a direct negative impact on employee satisfaction, motivation, and productivity levels. Without effective leadership communication in place, a leader cannot and should not expect their employees to be engaged and connected in the workplace, introducing a host of other detrimental impacts on the success of the business.  

Keeping employees motivated and driven towards success should remain a top priority for any leader. But, in order to inspire and motivate in the first place, business leaders need to establish and foster a strong line of communication. As a leader, you need to think with clarity, express ideas, and disseminate information to a multitude of audiences. A good leader can handle the rapid flows of information that circulate within the organization, and between customers, partners, and any other stakeholders. Essentially, maintaining strong leadership communication within the workplace is the key to keeping your business not just afloat, but thriving in the industry as a whole.  

Tips to Optimize Your Leadership Communication

Fostering strong lines of communication as a leader introduces a particular set of goals that differ largely from the business skill of general communication. As a leader, it is your responsibility not only to have good basic communication skills, but also to ensure that the lines of communication you open within your business cover the following leadership goals: 

• Align employees with the company culture. 
• Align employees with the company’s strategic goals. 
• Build trust within the workplace. 
• Maintain employee engagement. 
• Encourage two-way conversations and open dialogue. 
• Promote employee collaboration and teamwork. 
• Keep employees informed. 
• Communicate any upcoming changes effectively and in a timely manner. 
• Prevent internal miscommunications. 
• Disseminate important information and make it available to employees.  

Best Practices for Effective Leadership Communication. 

Aligning your communications strategy with the above leadership objectives is critical, but how do you know your skills have matured enough to ensure your leadership communication is as effective as it can be? The number one thing great leadership communicators have in common is they have an accurate sense of situational and contextual awareness. That is to say, they are great listeners and astute in their observations, drawing on contextual clues naturally to heighten their communication skillset. 

A great leadership communicator can read the individuals or groups they are conversing with, sensing the mood, dynamics, attitudes, values, and concerns associated with the other and can easily adapt their messaging to said environment without missing a beat. To know you have reached the point where your interactions as a leader translate to your presence as an excellent communicator, aim to employ the following best practices into your method of leadership communication: 

1. Be honest.

People won’t be open to those they don’t trust, and this is especially true when it comes to leadership. When employees, shareholders, partners, or any other key stakeholders have a sense that a leader is worthy of their trust, they will invest time and take risks for the business in a way that they never would if the leader had a reputation built upon a lack of integrity. However, keep in mind that demanding trust rarely works – it is best earned through right actions, thinking, and decision making.  

2. Get personal.

Effective leadership communication should be a dialogue, not a monologue. The more personal and engaging a conversation is, the more effective it will be for both parties. If you remain at arm’s length from your employees, you will remain in the dark and only ever receive a highly sanitized recounting of the truth. Developing meaningful relationships with people and opening a personable, consistent dialogue with them is key to being able to solve the issues that they encounter before it’s too late. 

3. Be specific.

Effective communication hinges on clarity. Being simple and concise in your communication efforts will always be more effective than being complicated, confusing, or superfluous. Especially today, time is a precious commodity, and the best leaders know just how to trim the fat and hit the high points in what they are communicating. Without understanding the value of brevity and clarity, you won’t ever be rewarded with insight into the granular level of things, since people will tune you out long before you reach that point. 

4. Focus on the leave-behinds.

Being skilled in leadership communication goes beyond having the ability to learn and gather information while communicating. The best communicators are also adept at transferring ideas, aligning expectations, inspiring action, and disseminating their overall vision. When you approach each interaction with a focus on contributing more than receiving, you can consider yourself an effective communicator.  

5. Keep an open mind.

The rigidity of a closed mind, especially in today’s climate, is one of the greatest limiting factors of new opportunities that exists. When a leader is willing to seek out those who hold countering opinions, or who stand in opposing positions, and seeks not to convince them to change their mind but rather to understand their point of view on things, their leadership is elevated to a whole new level. Hold open dialogues with those you confront, challenge, and develop you and your business perspectives. Keep in mind that it is not the opinion that matters, but rather your willingness to discuss, debate, and learn. 

6. Listen.

A long-standing cornerstone of great communication is the ability to simply stop talking and listen. A strong leader has an intuitive sense of when they need to dial it up, dial it down, and dial it off altogether. Broadcasting your message is important but doing so ad nauseum will produce much fewer effective results as starting meaningful conversations with others. The most worthwhile form of dialogue takes place not in the form of a detached lecture or monologue, but rather in an engaging conversation.  

7. Read between the lines.

Any strong leader needs to be able to look past the surface-level of things and understand what is not being said, witnessed, or heard outright. It’s one of the most useful skills needed to be able to paint a bigger picture of any kind of situation, grounding itself in contextual and situational clues that help you lead in a multifaceted way. 

8. Speak to groups as individuals.

A great leader is one who can tailor their communication in such a way that their message still feels personalized, regardless of the size of the audience. Knowing how to work a room and establish credibility, trust, and rapport are the key practices to holding successful interactions with stakeholders.  

Take the infographic to go!

The Cost of Poor Leadership Communication 

One of the biggest barriers to having high-quality conversations is a simple fear of sharing what you are really thinking and feeling. Being genuine is intimidating, but the intimidation should be coming from those insincere conversations, because they cost the company much more than many would expect.  

According to a study done by The Economist Intelligence Unit, the responses received from executives, managers, and junior staff members alike highlighted several key areas where communication breakdowns in the workplace have major consequences for business as a whole: 

• 52% of employees said that poor communication leads to higher stress levels. 
• 44% of employees reported poor communication causes failure in completing their projects. 
• 31% of employees said poor communication causes them to miss their performance goals. 
• 20% of employees in poorly communicative work environments said that they experience obstacles in innovation. 
• 18% of employees report that poor communication leads to an increase in lost new sales opportunities. 

Evidently, the cost of poor leadership communication is extremely high. But, the right internal communications strategy, and the implementation of the best leadership communications practices, can help leaders improve their communication efforts and eliminate the biggest leadership communication challenges being faced today. Communicating with the modern employee can be tricky, but they are relying on you to lead them and align them and their efforts with business objectives and success. You can only do this when you recognize the importance of maintaining an effective leadership communication strategy.  

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11 Causes of Scope Creep & What to Do About Them

Any Project Managers has had to at least at one point face the circumstance where a project started to balloon in size and scope, while its budget and timeline remained the same. Referred to as project scope creep, an unexpected addition to a project’s demands that move past its predetermined limits can cause a serious blow to your team’s success. But, what is scope creep exactly? And how does it get past even the most skilled project manager’s defenses, slowly but surely inflating the scope of a project?  

What Is Scope Creep? 

Scope creep occurs when the scope, deliverables, or features on a project expand from what was originally set, without additional time or budget being accounted for. Simply put, scope creep is about parameters. The scope of a project is always documented beforehand, outlining the project’s boundaries, schedules, and major deliverables. This is usually presented in the form of a Statement of Work. 

How Scope Creep Can Lead to Project Failure 

Scope creep can affect any fixed, measurable parameter set around a project, and it is unfortunately very common. It can occur both intentionally and unintentionally and arise from any number of individuals that are involved in the project. Because of its unpredictable nature, it poses the risk of causing serious harm, and even failure, to a team’s project. Perhaps an increase in needed tasks means the deadline is missed, or new required resources cause you to burn through the entire budget.  

Unaccounted for hiccups in a project’s progress are sometimes unavoidable, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of recognizing key sources of scope creep and implementing practices to avoid them as much as possible.  

11 Causes of Scope Creep & How to Best Deal with Them 

1. Lack of a Clear and Detailed Scope 

Clarity is critical to the success of any project. Without clearly outlining and defining your scope at the beginning, you risk causing major disruptions down the line, and the scope of the project is much more likely to mutate on its own. Stakeholders and even team members can begin defining the scope of the project for themselves, leading to a lack of cohesiveness amongst your team and clients.  

TIP: Ensure that the scope is clear to everyone who will be involved in the project. The Project Scope Statement that goes into the Project Initiation Document is where all the boundaries and parameters of the project should be clearly stipulated. Spend the time finalizing the plan and sharing it among your team so that their expectations are better managed, and so there are no surprises down the line. Involve your team members in setting the scope parameters so they are fully bought into what they are delivering before the work even begins.  

2. Lack of a Client Agreement 

In a similar vein, clarity with the client on what the scope of your project will be is critical. If they are not bought into the exact scope you have in mind, they are likely to change their mind, and hence the deliverables, later on in the process. 

TIP: Clearly communicate the scope with the client, and ensure they have a clear picture both of what it is, and what it isn’t. Sending a completed document outlining the deliverables is not enough. You need to involve them directly, speaking with them and walking them through all the parameters and deliverables thoroughly. Asking questions such as, “Are you clear on what this deliverable is, and what you’ll be getting?”, can be helpful.  

3. Weak Leadership 

While you may have clearly outlined the scope to the client, some may try and change it for themselves to get what they want if they begin to sense that you lack experience, or are not a strong project manager. 

TIP: This cause of scope creep hinges on how your clients are perceiving you. If demands are beginning to inflate the project scope, stand your ground even if it creates some conflict. Communicate strongly during meetings through body language and confident speech. If meetings are being held virtually, be certain to be speaking on camera and presenting the physical plan on screen showing its agreed upon steps clearly. 

4. Differing Stakeholder Opinions 

While some disagreement may arise between you and the client, others may come up between stakeholders themselves. If too many stakeholders are involved in the project, you risk having differing opinions on how to go about completing the project. Even if their desired end result is unanimous, their motivations could be wildly different, meaning they will have differing opinions on what should be prioritized during project development. With an unclear strategy for project development on the table, you risk altering your timelines almost any time a stakeholder chimes in. 

TIP: Evidently, limiting the number of your stakeholders is the solution to this cause of scope creep. If you need a larger group, try to determine what their motivations are so you can arrive at a common ground for the project. If needed, additional requests from stakeholders that come up during project development can be transferred into a future project instead. 

5. Not Involving the Client Throughout the Project 

Projects are no longer being left in the hands of your company alone to carry out with little communication with the client. Spending months doing the work and only sending the results of the work period to the client for feedback at the end of the timeframe is not sufficient and can result in surprises for the project scope. Finalized work may have to be redone entirely, impacting the project timeline and budget.  

TIP: Aim to collaborate closely with the client throughout each stage of the project. Keep them updated on the work as its still in progress, iterate its status consistently, and proactively involve them in the entire process. 

6. Not Raising Issues Proactively 

If issues come up during project development, it may seem easy to hide behind them and not be transparent with the client or stakeholder. However, this could have serious consequences down the line, since it will come as a surprise to the client and they may change their deliverables unexpectedly in response to it. 

TIP: Even if it is challenging, raise any issues with them right away, when they happen. Ensure you have had time to work through some solutions so you can offer strategies alongside it, which will help ease their worry. 

7. Not Prioritizing Features 

Many projects are laid out in a step-by-step format, meaning each feature involved in project development builds up to the final project. This could lead to the perception that every feature in the process is a priority. Without clear priority set among features, it is hard to recognize which areas can be descoped or scaled back when adjustments to the project’s requirements begin to creep in. 

TIP: Prioritize features of your project’s process by identifying which components are critical for delivering a usable end product. A more agile approach to project management may be necessary, where features that are absolutely necessary for users are top priority, meaning there is a working product that can be used by the client at almost every stage. 

8. Not Agreeing on How to Handle Change 

Change is almost inevitable in every project, so not clearly agreeing on how to best approach it at a project’s beginning will make it extremely difficult to work through when changes to the scope begin to surface. 

TIP: Outline in your Statement of Work how you will handle change should it come up. Change Requests are an option, but if you choose to utilize these ensure you clearly stipulate what falls within, and without, the scope, and how to go about raising a Change Request. 

9. Poor Estimation 

Getting estimation of timeline accurate can be potentially problematic. It is difficult to be accurate and foresee any and all changes to a project at its conception, since there are still many unknowns. Certain things may not get properly accounted for, meaning your team will be tied to additional scope in order to deliver the project. 

TIP: Involve everyone in estimation. Making guesses on your own about where the project could head, and what may surface during its development, is a sure-fire way to oversee critical components you should be accounting for. Rather than estimating based on deliverables, keep in mind the following: 

• Estimate for a discovery period where you will determine what it is your end product will be – at the end of this period, you will be able to provide a more accurate estimate for the remainder of the project. 
• Use a Time and Materials pricing model, rather than estimating by a Fixed Price. Actual worked hours on the project are what are billed, so the former can offer much more flexibility. 
• Avoid specifying the exact features being built and how within the scope – be specific but allow some room for change if needed. 

10. New Requests Not Being Properly Vetted 

During project development, it can be very easy to take on new requests or ideas from clients or team members. They know what they are doing, so many PMs may feel that any and all requests from them are the right path forward. However, if you don’t interrogate all requests properly, no matter how ideal they sound, you could end up duplicating existing work, or constructing unnecessary features without even noticing. 

TIP: Review any and all new requests with the entire team. Ensure each team member has a clear understanding of what the request is, what the impact of incorporating it will be, and the outcome it will have for the client. Then, prioritize the new request, and double check that it is not already being delivered elsewhere in the project. 

11. Not Involving Users Early On 

Without involving your end-users or customers from the beginning of the process, you risk receiving feedback from them that you have never heard before, adding to your list of action items when you have almost reached the end of your timeline. It is tempting to think that your team, clients, and organization understands your users well enough to avoid interaction, but without incorporating user feedback early on, you can go far down a project development route that won’t actually test well with your users.  

TIP: Similar to the involvement of clients and stakeholders, the key here is collaboration. Collaborating with customers early and often means you run much less risk of delivering something they don’t need or want. Keep communication lines open, and if possible, have users using the product as early as possible. If your client or budget holder doesn’t want to fund this effort, work through the benefits with them, and also clearly outline the negative impact of neglecting early user validation.  

Managing Scope Creep in The Right Way 

Scope creep does not have to be the enemy for your project development. At its core, it describes unexpected change. The way you go about managing that change is what ultimately affects your project, not the request to change it. Remaining watchful for when you spot scope creep is critical, especially when it isn’t apparent to the rest of your team, so ensuring you raise it before it spirals should be a given. However, change can actually be largely beneficial to your project, if you leverage it in the right way. The objective of your project should always be to deliver the best possible product or service you can, so if that objective requires a change in parameters every now and then, you as a project manager need to lead the way for adapting to that. 

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The 6 Stages of the Employee Life Cycle

Designing and encouraging an employee experience that leads to longevity, success, and great employee engagement should be a permanent mindset within your company. Rather than looking at employee engagement efforts as one-time endeavors when morale is low, the employee life cycle model frames engagement as a designed experience embedded into the trajectory of every employee within your organization.  

What is the Employee Life Cycle Model? 

The employee life cycle model (ELC) is an organizational method used to visualize how an employee engages with the company they are a part of. There are six stages involved in this model: Attraction, Recruitment, Onboarding, Development, Retention, and Separation.  

The employee life cycle model is geared to encompass every stage of an employee’s experience within a company, formatting that trajectory into a framework that provides a different engagement strategy for each stage the employee enters. For example, if a company has an excellent and engaging recruitment strategy, but high turnover rates, they can focus on the retention stage in their ELC in order to develop a suitable solution for the issue.  

The employee life cycle model greatly resembles the typical customer journey, which is intentional! Essentially, designing an employee life cycle strategy is rooted in the idea that the employee experience is just as valuable as their customer’s experience. Many large organizations don’t have a true idea of the value of employee engagement, choosing instead to focus on customer satisfaction and viewing employee engagement efforts as temporary programs rather than a consistent corporate mindset. In order for your company to be able to capitalize on your workforce’s talent, you need to be able to turn engagement data into meaningful intelligence at all managerial levels, helping your employees recognize their contributions to the company and driving engagement and success.  

The Advantages of Implementing an Employee Life Cycle Strategy 

By mapping out the employee journey in the same way you map out the customer experience, your company will see two main benefits: better talent retention, and reputation improvement. The ability to effectively allocate resources and efforts to reduce turnover issues reduces the time and money that turnover costs cause for the company. Similarly, a better reputation increases the chances of hiring more new talent, meaning a more committed and driven workforce.  

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The 6 Employee Life Cycle Stages 

In order to understand exactly how each stage of the employee life cycle can drive employee engagement, let’s examine each stage in greater detail. 

1. Attraction 

The first stage of the employee life cycle is the employee attraction stage. Regardless of how innovative and strong your product or service is, without the attraction and retention of great talent, your company will fail. This makes the attraction stage one of the most crucial aspects to any organization’s growth strategy.  

The attraction stage is the only stage that occurs before you have an open position in the company. Also referred to as the employer brand, it is the projection of the image of your organization as a great place to work, both in the minds of current employees as well as key stakeholders in the external market. This means that active and passive talent candidates, clients, customers, and potential stakeholders have a positive perspective of how it is to work within your company.  

In order to build a great employer brand and succeed in the employee attraction stage, there are several key tips you can follow: 

• Raise Brand awareness. Have your managers attend seminars and conferences regularly, seek out speaking opportunities, and be a regular contributor or sponsor of popular industry magazines, websites, and blogs. This will help build up your profile within the industry as a great place to work. 
• Be known to have a great culture. Regardless of external marketing tactics, the employee remains the most valuable and convincing promoter for any company. By having a fantastic company culture, you only increase the chances that your existing employees will regularly tell others about how great it is to work within your organization. You can also amplify these efforts by sharing insights into your culture publicly using company social media accounts.  
• Offer attractive benefits and compensation. Being competitive with compensation is one of the most obvious efforts your company can make to appeal to the top talent in your industry. This does not mean you need to pay the most to attract the best, but you should never pay the least. Seek out opportunities to provide softer benefits in addition to your existing ones, such as team lunches, birthdays off, and so on.  

2. Recruitment 

The second stage of the employee life cycle is the employee recruitment stage, the period where you seek out and recruit the best talent to join your organization. Recruitment can occur as a result of an existing role becoming vacant, or a new position being created altogether. The best types of recruitment plans offer an optimal candidate experience, support collaborative hiring centered around clear criteria and processes, and provide meaningful data that can be used to improve hiring results over time.  

In order to succeed in recruiting the right talent for your team, here are several key tips to include in your recruitment stage: 

• Ask for referrals from your existing team. Perhaps one of the best recruitment strategies out there is a referral from one of your own employees. As active members of the industry, they likely know several people who could be a perfect fit for the role you are trying to fill. However, be careful not to hire close friends or family of existing team members, as this can make the dynamic more challenging. Typically, these referrals will share a similar value set also. 
• Try out various recruitment platforms. Sticking to only one major recruitment website or media severely limits your candidate pool. Ask yourself where it is that your ideal candidates frequent their visits. This could be an industry meetup, or a lesser-known but growing industry magazine that many new potential industry leaders are subscribed to.  
• Be specific in who and what you are looking for. A sure-fire way to limit the chances of recruiting the most suitable candidates for a role is to publish vague employment advertisements. While being broad can be useful in casting a wider net, you should still be careful to outline all the pre-requisites to save you and the candidate’s time in applying and assessing.  
• Involve your employees. In addition to encouraging them to refer potential candidates, you can also ask your existing employees to help determine the best requirements for the role. Your team members can even assist you in reviewing the resumes and qualifications of potential candidates, if you see appropriate. Another useful way you can involve your employees is to request that someone in a very similar role joins in on the interview process, in order to assess the candidates that best fit within the team.  

3. Onboarding 

The next stage of the employee life cycle model is the employee onboarding stage. Occurring after you have recruited the top talent, the onboarding period is critical to getting your new hires well-adjusted to the organizational environment and performance aspects of their new job as quickly and smoothly as possible. During the onboarding stage, new employees cover more in-depth aspects of their position, identify the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are required to function effectively within the organization.  

Making new hires feel welcomed in the team and well-acclimatized to the nature of both their role and the organization is critical to drawing out long-term contributions and engagement.  Here are some key strategies you can employ to ensure that the onboarding stage of your company’s employee life cycle run smoothly for all concerned: 

• Have a job description. It does not have to be a long and academic analysis of the demands of the job but aim to have a single page outline that lists the most important duties of the role, as well as any associated experience and skills. 
• Discuss the company’s vision and values. Laying out your company values and vision and discussing what they all mean with your new hire is a vital component of any onboarding process. Clarify any questions they may have and get a sense of what the values mean to them, ensuring their perspective aligns with success.  
• Outline your expectations clearly. The job description will carry some of the detail, but it is still critical to lead each new hire through the expectations you are asking from them, along with explaining why they are important to company success.  
• Do follow-ups regularly. Completing the first week’s induction stage and then leaving the new hire to fend for themselves is bound to result in a rapid decline in employee performance. Schedule face to face meetings with each new employee after a few weeks, checking in on how they are managing, what challenges they may have found integrating with the team, and so on. 

4. Development 

The following stage of the employee life cycle model is the employee development stage. It is during this period that you begin to consistently encourage professional development amongst your team, which acts as a catalyst in their skill development, and also helps provide them with a future career path within the company. 

Some key tips you can follow to improve the professional development stage of your employee life cycle model include: 

• Encourage external learning. Providing your team members with opportunities to attend relevant conferences and seminar yields tremendous benefits for their skill development (many are available as virtual offerings online). A good way to do this is to regularly send them at the company cost or offer all employees a company-covered budget for their own initiated event attendance. 
• Assess knowledge and skills together. In order to best identify an employee’s key skills and areas of expertise, managers should work with the employee directly. Leveraging their own insight into their performance, you can then plan out and prioritize the areas that require further development. This is also one of the best ways to establish an open, honest feedback-driven relationship between you and your employees.  
• Encourage your team members to be responsible for their own development. In order to ensure employees, remain focused, you should encourage them to each develop a professional action plan. This plan should set out to help them develop their abilities and increase their chances of career advancement. You can either collaborate with them on this process or provide a general template to the whole team that they can follow to complete their own simple plan.  
• Reward the employees who learn in their own time. Many of your team members likely take part in regular informal development outside of their normal work hours. When you hear of a staff member doing this, make a point of finding out more about it, and sincerely thank them for their efforts and ensure they know they are appreciated.  

5. Retention 

The fifth stage of the lifecycle model is the employee retention stage. It is here that you focus your energies on keeping your top employees, and ensuring they are happy and sufficiently challenged in their respective roles within the team. The influence of company culture goes a long way in this stage. If the culture in your organization is poor, it inevitably leads to a high employee turnover rate, meaning you will have to face replacement costs regularly. Improving the retention stage is a great way to counteract this risk and promote longevity and satisfaction amongst your team’s career paths.  

Some tips to help ensure you are retaining your key people, and improving the employee retention stage of your lifecycle model, include: 

• Hire the right people. In order to retain the top talent, you need to first attract and recruit the top talent. This is where the success of your attraction and retention stages can be measured – if you were careful in your process and approach of who you hired to begin with, then you will stand a better chance of keeping the right employees in your team. 
• Cultivate great relationships with your team members. Building and fostering an open, honest, and respectful relationship with everyone on your team is critical to keeping them motivated to stay with your company. 
• Openly communicate your organizational mission and team aspirations. In order to improve your employee retention rate, you first need to ensure that your team thoroughly understands and is committed to the same mission and direction as the company. You should be regularly communicating with them on where they belong within the company, and how their specific roles and accomplishments help the organization to execute its mission. 
• Seek out employee feedback and measure team morale frequently. For smaller companies, a weekly face to face meeting with the team can be useful, where you set out to discuss how the team is progressing and identify any problems or issues they are facing. Another useful tool can be employee pulse surveys. If you want to regularly measure team morale, and seek out constant effective feedback, utilizing shorter employee survey tools or implementing an online feedback mechanism such as Sprigg’s Continuous & 360 Degree Feedback tool can be particularly useful.  
• Understand what motivates your employees. No one employee is the exact same, and in turn, no one thing will motivate every single employee to work hard. Understanding what drives and motivates various team members means that you can engage your employees and ideally retain them. 

6. Separation 

The final stage of the employee life cycle is the employee separation stage. For most employees, there comes a point where their employment lifecycle will reach its conclusion, whether from retirement, new employment, or for personal reasons. Treating the separation process with equal importance as the onboarding process and being equally as strategic in how you approach this stage, is critical. When a team member leaves, it has an effect on other members. 

It is the responsibility of the manager and HR professionals within the company to ensure that the employee who is leaving, exits in a way that doesn’t cause major disruption. If you find yourself faced with a situation where a key employee separates from your organization unexpectedly, there are a few key tips you can use to minimize the effects of that disruption: 

• Understand the reasoning behind the resignation. What an employee states as their reason for resignation, and what the actual reasons are, are often not the same. Aim to dig deep at what truly caused the separation, so you can avoid the circumstances that led to it in the future. 
• Remain positive.  You will feel a sense of loss at a top performer leaving your team but it does not mean that you will never find another great employee to replace them. 
• Ask for honest feedback. When someone leaves a company, conduct an exit-interview as it is one of the greatest opportunities to glean honest feedback about what it’s truly like to work in the organization.  
• Remind the team to keep looking ahead. Oftentimes, the loss of a valued employee can cause a decrease in overall team morale. Aim to concentrate of reaffirming commitment to the remaining team members, reminding them that while their departure is disappointing, the team will ultimately recover and grow as a result of it.  

In Summary 

The employee life cycle model is one of the best was to visualize and plan for each stage of an employee’s interactions with your company, providing you with the insight necessary to make each stage of their time with your company as successful as possible. By focusing on doing the best you can at each stage, you are much more likely to attract and retain a fantastic team.  

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Dealing with Insubordination in the Workplace

Insubordination in the workplace can have many different meanings. Some insubordinate actions are far more severe than others and require swifter action. However, regardless of the nature of the insubordination, it is always important to take charge immediately whenever someone isn’t following the rules, following the protocol put forth in your employee handbook.  

What is Insubordination? 

Looking at the strict dictionary definition of insubordination doesn’t do much to help us understand what it actually is. The straightforward definition describes it simply as a “defiance of authority”, however, most workplaces are not structured in a way where managers expect perfect adherence to management direction at all costs. More often than not, professional employees are given some leeway in how they approach their job, and strong managers recognize that they are the ones who are experts in their job, sometimes even relying on push back to achieve the best possible results.  

Rather than abiding by this general definition, defying authority in the workplace requires three things to be deemed as insubordination: 

1. The employer gives the order or directive. 
2. The employee acknowledges the order and understands completely what is expected of them. 
3. The employee refuses to carry out the order or required task. 

By following this definition, we can avoid miscategorising situations as insubordination when they may simply be products of forgetfulness or unrealistic manager expectations.  

Examples of Insubordinate Behaviour 

Recognizing the behaviours that indicate insubordination is the first step to combatting the issue. Technically speaking, any variation from manager instruction is insubordination. But, in order for it to be perceived and reprimanded as such, there needs to be a willful component to it. Hence, distinguishing mistakes that can be dealt with as common errors from egregious insubordinate behaviour is critical.  

Some employee behaviours can be easily classified as insubordinate, for example: 

• Intimidation or Harassment – there should be a zero-tolerance policy against intimidation and harassment in your workplace. People need to feel safe and secure at work, and any employee intimidating their colleagues or managers should be immediately investigated. The employee handbook should also state the policy and protocols for dealing with harassment in the workplace. Launch an investigation, make a note in the employee’s files and determine if further disciplinary action is required.  
• Abusive Language – cursing is not uncommon, and if bad language is used as a normal part of the office “shop talk”, it isn’t necessarily call for insubordination prevention tactics. However, if bad language is being used in an abusive way without provocation, as a result of something the manager said or did, it is considered insubordination. The action should be taken note of, but also be sure to take the heat of the moment into consideration. If it was a one-time outburst, it should be noted in the file. However, it if continues to happen, it becomes ground for insubordination and potential termination. 
• Confrontational Actions – people in the workplace will almost always have differing opinions, and a subordinate disagreeing with their manager or boss is not insubordinate in nature. However, if they confront and disagree with their boss in front of the rest of the team, it can be considered as such. If someone is confrontational in front of the rest of the manager’s employees, or openly questions their authority, it can lead to poor overall morale. Concerns of that nature should be addressed behind closed doors. Confrontational actions can also include defaming another person, spreading rumours that divide coworkers, and making inappropriate comments regularly. When possible, confrontational actions should be documented in the employee file for disciplinary consideration.  

Each of these insubordinate behaviours demands an immediate and swift response. However, some forms of insubordination are subtler, but can be equally problematic. Some examples of these include: 

• Sabotage – an employee quietly going behind their manager’s back to perform tasks that were specifically unsupported is less noticeable, but equally as damaging to the manager’s reputation and the overall team morale. 
• Failure to Perform – this is when an employee is clearly given a duty and intentionally ignores the command, or simply refuses to execute it. If they have some ethical or legal concern about the order, this should be directly addressed with the manager and their concerns should be stated clearly. If the employee’s position isn’t articulated, then a failure to perform warrants a written record as well as the employee excuse to go on file.  

Dealing with Insubordination in the Workplace 

Despite what some may believe, many employees never set out from the get-go to become insubordinate or difficult in their work environment. Naturally, employees want to keep their jobs, and managers want their employees to carry out instructions. However, there are sometimes legitimate clashes of ideas, personalities, values, and beliefs, which can make this relationship difficult.  

Preventing Insubordination 

The first step to managing insubordination in the workplace is to put into practice several key actions that can prevent it from occurring in the first place.

1. Set clear boundaries. When employees know your limits from the beginning, they have a clearer sense of what they need to do, and conflict should not arise as frequently. 
2. Listen to your employees. More often than not, cases of insubordination result from genuine disagreements between employers and employees over what the right course of action is. By having an open and communicative relationship with your employees, and by being receptive when they voice their concerns or counter-argue respectfully, you will have ample opportunity to find a solution before the insubordination can even occur. Additionally, if you insist that your instructions are the right one, you will have a chance to explain the reasoning behind your directive.  
3. Follow all laws and ethical standards. Should an employee ever feel that their employers were not following proper safety guidelines, there are grounds to bring the case to court or before a labour board should the manager choose to dispute it. In order to avoid the damage that could be caused by a loss in either of these scenarios, you should always be careful to follow the law.  

Handling Insubordination After It Happens 

Even the most skilled manager who follows the guidelines and rules as closely as possible will experience insubordination from time to time. When dealing with an insubordinate employee, there are some best practices to abide by in order to avoid inflaming the issue even further. 

1. Identify the behaviour immediately. The first step to remedying the issue is to address it directly. Ignoring insubordination, even for a short period of time, will only ever result in more insubordination. Even if the case is mild, simply letting it go sets a standard in the workplace that your instructions are not rules, but just suggestions. That is not to say you need to begin micro-managing your employees’ every move. You do not need to provide instructions for everything, and you don’t need to have control over every aspect of your employees’ workdays. Rather, this simply means that when you have given explicit instructions, and an employee doesn’t follow them, point it out directly and immediately. 
2. Issue consequences. The consequences you dole out will evidently vary depending on the circumstances. For example, if an employee locks the doors five minutes after they were supposed to, a quick reminder should suffice. Should the behaviour continue, a formal warning can follow that adheres to your company’s disciplinary guidelines. As already discussed, if a behavior is egregious, immediate punishment is in order. For example, if an employee lies to a customer and tells them the opposite of what you said, a write-up or suspension would be appropriate. 
3. Document everything. Managers often fall into the habit of not recording small infractions, choosing instead to wait until there is serious rebellion before acting. However, any termination will need a reliable paper trail, and this documentation can also work to protect you in court in case of a dispute. Document the insubordinate behaviour, no matter how mild it is, ask witnesses for statements, and keep everything in the proper file. 
4. Be fair. No manager can be entirely objective when it comes to managing their workforce. At the end of the day, they are human, and will naturally make mistakes. However, when it comes to insubordination and disciplinary action against it, there needs to be one single standard. Before you discipline your employees, exercise fairness and objectivity.  How you go about managing insubordination is critical to keeping employee morale high and in building up employee confidence.  

In Summary 

Insubordination is, at its core, unavoidable. Regardless of how many steps you take to prevent it, no manager is entirely immune to the possibility of an employee acting against their directives. There are, however things a manager can do to prevent insubordination as much as possible. Setting clear boundaries, and listening to your employees when there are disagreements, are excellent steps in the right direction. And, if it becomes too late for prevention, adequate action is essential – identify the behaviour, issue the consequences, document everything, and above all, be fair.  

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Creating a High-Performance Culture in 2020

While strong leadership and healthy discipline are two defining elements of managing the performance of your organization, they are not the only elements.  Creating a high-performance culture in your company requires a systematic approach to effectively managing the performance of both team and individuals, and the first step to achieving that is creating a roadmap for change. 

Organizations that focus on the performance and health of their teams are bound to be more successful and are much more likely to deliver better financial results. However, managing employee and team performance is much more than simply employing practices of good leadership. There are proven tools and techniques that can help you to establish a plan of action for instigating a change in organizational behaviour, and, ultimately, implement, promote, and sustain a high-performance culture.  

What is a High-Performance Culture? 

Culture, as a general term, refers to the learned assumptions upon which individuals base their daily behaviors and decision-making processes. Organizational culture is what drives the organization, its actions, and its results, in a direction relevant to those business-driven learned assumptions. It guides how employees and teams think, act, react, and feel – it is the operating system of the company. 

In order to lift your organizational culture into a state that encourages high levels of performance, you first need to recognize what it is that needs changing. When done right, transformational change within an organization’s performance culture can get employees excited about improving the success rate of the business. Measuring individual management practices against larger organizational outcomes is a good way of assessing the specific areas in your performance management approach that could stand to benefit from improvement. Some examples include: 

• Measuring the organizational outcome of direction against its driving management factors of a shared vision, strategic clarity, and employee involvement.  
• Measuring the outcome of innovation and learning against management practices such as top-down innovation, bottom-up innovation, and knowledge sharing. 
• Measuring leadership against authoritative leadership, consultative leadership, supportive leadership, and challenging leadership. 
• Measuring coordination and control against performance reviews, operational management, financial management, professional standards, and risk management. 
• Measuring motivation against meaningful values, inspirational leaders, career opportunities, financial incentives, and rewards and recognition. 
• Work environment against openness and trust, internal competition, operational discipline, creativity and entrepreneurial encouragement. 
• Accountability against role clarity, performance contracts, consequence management, and personal ownership. 

To build a detailed picture of your company’s organizational health, measuring desirable organizational outcomes against the management practices in use can help you to pinpoint the weak points in your performance management approach, and remedy them as needed. 

Any performance culture is based on discipline, but high-performance cultures have a foundation of discipline that strictly promotes decisiveness and standards of excellence that ensure direct accountability and success. This type of discipline means commitments and expectations are always clear, so performance culture shifts gear towards an expectation of consistent success, rather than a lack of resolves and sanctions that comes from a culture in which there is little accountability. In a high-performance culture, proactive performance management strategically blocks obstructive behaviors and practices, and supports, reinforces, and rewards constructive behaviors. As a result, all employees are truly engaged in the work they are doing, and in the business of the company.  

How to Achieve a High-Performance Culture 

The Necessary Building Blocks 

In order to instill a performance management style that is conducive to high performance from your employees, your organization needs to have specific qualities in place for the process to run smoothly. These include: 

• Openness and Trust: honesty is encouraged, and there is a willingness from your employees to speak what historically may have been the unspeakable. A work environment of trust and transparency with open feedback reduces defensiveness or friction should issues surface and encourages more honest reactions from employees. It also raises the frequency of employees asking questions and promotes spontaneity with individual comments and ideas. Any organization that has a workforce where employees feel they can safely speak their mind is bound to derive much greater value from its talent. 
• Managed Differences: conflicts are addressed appropriately, and unfulfilled commitments are addressed. Alternatives and options for solutions are examined with individuals expressing their real opinions. Issues generally in the workplace are resolved more expediently and effectively. 
• Simplicity and Focus: there is an intense focus on how the new performance management process will be implemented, with strong clarity and precision accompanying it to define what exactly needs to be accomplished, and how it will be done. There is a commitment from all employees and teams, at all levels, to remove complexity from the way of doing business. Striving for results and having fun are not perceived as mutually exclusive but are instead seen as codependent. When changes occur, so too do positive results.  
• Playing to Employee Strength: any good leader knows their people well and can effectively match talent with task. They recognize employee’s strengths, and how to best leverage them to achieve success. Both leaders and their people focus less on closing performance gaps, and more on improving and learning new strengths.  

Key Strategies to Achieving a High-Performance Culture 

Once these building blocks have been nailed down in your organization, you are ready to start putting into practice some key strategies that encourage a high-performance culture. In order to make the change sustainable and improve the chances of success, it is useful to refer to the earlier mentioned criteria upon which you assess the organizational health of your business. Plans of actions and strategies should address four critical elements of business: role modeling, communications, skill building, and reinforcing mechanisms. Leveraging new performance management practices to focus on these key areas, and encouraging a culture of consistently high performance, is critical to that sought-after sustainability.  

Some suggested strategies to achieving a high-performance culture in your business are: 

1. Train leaders and supervisors. 

Training supervisors and leaders to be effective in their communication enables consistent and clear dissemination of the new organizational vision to their staff, ensuring everyone at all levels is on the same page about the direction the company is headed. Once leaders have been trained in effective communication, and have alerted their teams of the vision, they can then sit down with their teams and clearly explain how their individual roles contribute to the company’s strategic goals.  

2. Reinforce effective behaviors. 

Effective behaviors that are conducive to high performance include collaboration, problem-solving, and customer focus. Managers that are trained in coaching and mentoring techniques are encouraged to offer in-the-moment praise or development advice to their teams, creating a culture of motivation and accountability. Employee achievements can also be celebrated in other formal and informal ways, such as places in internal newsletters or recognition in team meetings. 

3. Reform traditional performance appraisals. 

Traditional performance appraisals run the risk of draining valuable energy and time, and sometimes fail to produce accurate or actionable results. Rather than a year- or quarterly-end exercise, reform the appraisal process to transform it into an integral part of the performance and development system. A good way to do this is to reframe appraisals into a comparison between what is happening, and the things you would like to see happen from the employee. This includes ongoing feedback on observable or measurable performance outcomes, a focus on the strengths of the employee and the organizational or career future, and an engagement with goal setting and employee self-appraisal.  

4. Encourage a renewed focus on performance indicators. 

Encouraging a consistent focus on the importance of key performance indicators will reinforce the necessity of high performance from your employees. Discussing performance indicators at staff meetings and explaining exactly how their performance contributed to the financial and operational success of the company, is essential to encouraging sustainability in high performance.  

5. Develop tools and support mechanisms that ease the process of implementation.  

Making the new ways of working as straightforward as possible will reduce the risk of employees feeling the reformed performance management strategies are overcomplicated or futile. Streamlining meeting processes, adjusting methods of communication and information dissemination, integrative initiatives and check-ins into existing procedures, and assigning a single point of contact for employee questions and concerns, are all examples of tools and support mechanisms you can use to achieve a high-performance culture.  

6. Deal with performance management holistically. 

Rather than thinking of performance management as a day-to-day, problem-to-solution process, aim to connect the “what’s” with the “how’s”. Looking at performance management from both the strategic and operational perspectives, and at the organizational, team, and individual levels, will increase the chances of your performance management method embedding itself seamlessly into day-to-day operations. 

Completing the total performance management process can be difficult, especially for managers prone to seek out consistent, neatly wrapped up conclusions to their efforts. A good way to approach this is to roll everything up into a yearly snapshot, where expectations are set, ongoing feedback and coaching is provided, and progress and achievement are tracked. Recognition and rewards should be a critical component of this step, and so too should be the encouragement of professional development planning.  

In Summary 

Company culture is, at its core, the driving force behind what an organization sets out to achieve, and how they go about achieving it. Employee performance is integral to success continuance, the function of influences such as accountability, feedback, motivation, skills and knowledge, and rewards and recognition. All of these influences are interdependent, and it is the combination of these factors that results in the desired performance and the associated leadership behaviours that make up the organizational performance culture. Achieving a high-performance culture requires a systematic, thorough approach to managing performance at the organizational, team, and individual level with a robust change management process to support it. 

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