Today’s tight labour market is causing major issues for all companies. It’s tough to recruit good people and you just know your best employees are ripe to be shoulder tapped by others, usually promising them the world in their desperation to fill a position. So how much effort are you putting into ensuring that your people stay? That they’re not tempted by those more lucrative offers? Putting more effort into your employees now will mean less effort and time required in trying to recruit and train someone new later. Having a great culture and a successful company definitely helps you to retain ..read more

“We have just had a week where a decade happened,” Dr David Skilling said to me just after Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. Dr Dave is a fascinating, clever man. We went to school together before he went on to Harvard University with a Masters and PhD in Economics. Today, he lives in the Netherlands where he works as an economist and policy advisor to governments, firms and financial institutions in Australia, NZ, Europe, The Middle East and Asia. In the same way that I look at P&Ls and can read a culture to then give advice to a business on how they might perform better, Dave analys ..read more

I’m coming across more and more business owners and employees who struggle to switch off after work. This 24-7 work mode has been building for years, with smartphones and their easy access to work emails not helping. Now, more than ever, you need to switch off and have downtime — in fact, it’s critical in order to perform at your optimum at work the next day. Excessive stress and worry is nobody’s friend. Here are some tips and thoughts on how you can switch off — a lot of it is common sense however we constantly overlook what we know we should do. Hopefully you’ll get an idea or two you can t ..read more

Nothing makes your heart sink like seeing a white envelope on your desk or hearing one of your employees say, “Can we talk for a minute? I have some news.” Resignations can be hard to face, with many owners feeling personally gutted that an employee has chosen to leave (as well as being happy for them, that they have a new opportunity to look forward to). With the NZ talent market being as tight as it is and good people being hard to find, you want to do what you can to hold on to your team. It’s usually better to retain your best people than it is to find another one that can fill their shoes ..read more

I’m talking to a lot of people at the moment who feel down about the current situation: Omicron, the government’s response and the effect on their businesses, and now Russia’s war on Ukraine. The bad news can be hard to escape from at the moment. If this is you and you’ve been struggling to switch off and take your mind off the current state of NZ and the world, this advice shared by counsellor Steve Taylor from Relationship Matters might help… “Trying to zone out and distract yourself from reality by binge-watching Netflix may not be enough — instead, the answers to the questions below c ..read more

The past few years in business have been HARD. It’s been a long time since “business as usual” was a thing, and the mandates, face masks, isolation and constant talk of Covid have really been at the forefront of how we live. We’re all weary. The upheaval from Covid has been massive, not just on businesses but on people personally. Late last year I spoke to Robin and Leonie from Workplace Wellness about how we can look after ourselves and our teams in these trying times – you might find help in their following advice which covers resilience, how to recognise burnout and why you need to start ha ..read more

Ever wondered why sometimes your feedback to one staff member can go amazingly whereas to another it falls like a lead balloon? I asked Relationship & Family Therapist Stephen Taylor from Relationship Matters International why some people struggle to take on feedback… “Taking feedback requires two key premises: authentic humility, and trust of the person giving the feedback. To be open to feedback, the person needs to understand that correction is not rejection, feedback is not a personal attack, and teachability is not control. If you have an employee who struggles to take feedback well ..read more

I want to tell you about this guy — let’s call him John. He recently purchased an existing business and I caught up with him when due diligence was being done. When we first talked he was full of great ideas, outlining some initiatives and processes he’d put in place that would immediately streamline things and ultimately add to the bottom line of this new business. John had experience in the industry so he had a fair idea of what would work and how he could improve this business. His plans sounded spot on to me. He already had two other small businesses so with this one he wanted to remain ha ..read more

Someone told me the other day that people view or access risk according to A. the likelihood of it happening and B. the consequences. So if the consequences are huge (like death) but the likelihood is extremely low, they might not view it as much of a risk. Or if the likelihood is high but the consequences are insignificant, that’s a low risk. But if the consequences are really bad and the likelihood of it happening is enough to cause you sleepless nights, then you’d consider that high risk. Obviously, everyone’s idea of risk is different, depending on their appetite for risk and how they view ..read more

I spoke to a guy a while back who told me he never keeps a to-do list. That way, he said, he only remembers the 1-2 big things that he needs to do, rather than having a long list of inconsequential (to him) items. “Those smaller things will just happen— and if they don’t, it probably doesn’t matter. But if my big items don’t happen, that matters.” This was such a brazen example of big picture thinking. This man didn’t get up in the morning and concern himself with lots of little to-dos — he got up and focused on the things he knew would make a difference and that would get him closer to his go ..read more