If It Weren't For Employees, This Would Be Easy!

I've heard so many variations of this from small business owners:

      If it weren't for employees, running a business would be easy.

      I spend way too much time dealing with petty employee matters.

      Why can't they just do their job?

Unfortunately, running any kind of business where your customers pay you for deliverables generated by employees means having to deal with human beings. It's easy to understand why large companies are using robots, technology and automation whenever and wherever they can. Robots don't get sick, don't have petty jealousies, are never in a bad mood and are programmed to do one thing - the company's work.

People are much more complex. Most work to live, unlike their bosses, who live for their work. But one thing that these troubling employees and their bosses have in common is that they are both primarily motivated by their own self-interests. This is where bosses miss the plot so often - they can't understand why the employee isn't as motivated to achieve the bosses goals as the boss is. 

Bosses are typically motivated by money - that's why they started a small business to begin with - to work for themselves and create an opportunity to earn more than they could working for someone else. Your employees, however, may not be motivated nearly as strongly by money as you are. That may be why your efforts to incentivize the behaviors you want primarily through monetary rewards may not be working.

Business owners will benefit from pausing to think about what motivates their employees to come to work. Or more importantly, what motivates them to give discretionary effort. Understanding what motivates the individual employee will give you the opportunity to create a culture that stimulates star performance from that individual. Assuming that everyone is motivated by the same things you are motivated by may result in a sizable chunk of your workforce being misaligned with the rewards you've established. And aligning the rewards of the job with the motivators of the individual is the key ingredient to employee engagement.

How do you find out? You could just ask them... Or, you can contact The Davidson Group and we can help you assess what's working and what's not with your workforce. 

HR Priorities for 2016

Here are some suggestions for your HR priorities for 2016:

1. Make sure you are compliant with wage and hour regulations
This is one the most common and potentially costly infractions I run across when conducting HR compliance audits. Here are the three most common mistakes:

• Paying by 1099 when the relationship clearly doesn't qualify. The Uberization of the workforce has been a hot topic of late, and make no mistake, utilizing 1099 labor can make strategic sense. But remember, the government doesn't like it and it is increasing its enforcement efforts against what it considers abuses of this practice.
• Failing to account for bonuses in overtime calculations. If Jane makes $10 an hour, earns a $50 commission for the week and works 42 hours, her gross pay is not $480, it's $481.18! Missing by only $1.18 doesn't sound like much, but over a two year period, multiplied by a number of miss-paid employees, it can add up and is subject to additional penalties. (Contact me if you need help with the calculation).
• Incorrectly classifying employees as exempt. Just because the company decides to pay an employee a weekly salary rather than an hourly wage doesn't automatically mean that the employee is exempt from overtime compensation. The employee must qualify for an approved exemption.

2. Conduct an employee survey

It's amazing what you learn when you bother to ask. A lot of small business owners don't conduct surveys because they think they have a good enough relationship with the employee base that they're already aware of what they like and don't like about the company. Don't underestimate the employee engagement benefits of simply asking in a forum in which employees can give anonymous feedback. And don't screw it up by compromising the anonymity. Utilize a third party if you need to.

3. Make sure your feedback and your rewards are aligned

The traditional performance review is giving way to performance dashboards that give more timely and more relevant feedback. If your organization awards performance bonuses and commissions based on achieving certain individual, group or company goals, take a look at how that information is communicated. You may have an opportunity to increase the motivational impact of dollars you are already spending by aligning the performance feedback and the rewards with better, more visual employee communication tools.

4. Adopt an applicant tracking tool

If your job ads still say, send resumes to hr@mycompany.com, you're living in the dark ages. You're having to open every email, then open at least one attachment for every applicant, whether qualified or not. This is a hugely inefficient way to keep up with applicants when there are low cost alternatives available. The Davidson Group can set you up with a branded applicant tracking site, post your jobs for you and help you establish screening criteria. The only applicants that arrive in your in-box are the ones that meet the criteria that you've established. An applicant tracking portal also protects you from certain EEOC compliance risk that you're exposed to if all you have is an Outlook folder full of emailed resumes.