Personal productivity and motivation

Over the last couple of weeks I have had two discussions on productivity that struck home. recently.

Firstly how for many people they only get things done when there is a negative outcome for not doing things, ie they lack motivation. For example self financial fines or performance rating by managers. But what happens to the self employed consultant or small business owner who “kicks their butt”? Well how about a Personal CEO?

Sounds like a good idea, but unless you can afford to hire one it ain’t going to happen. Hence, my excitement when I found The Printable CEO. A series of free downloadable forms designed to keep you focused on your productive outcomes. Forms provided include:-

The forms are very clean and simple making them easy to use, for example below is a picture of the Concrete Goal Tracker:-

The other discussion was around setting appointments for yourself to complete tasks. Many people do this, but then ignore the appointment because they are doing something else that is deemed more important. This is a very bad habit as the more you do it subconsciously value of these appointments diminish as your brain knows you are “lying” to it and eventually it will impact all of your goals.

Like most people I tend to use the setting myself an appointment for my own personal goals. You know the type the ones that really help you get through life, exercise, self reflection, planning, time with family, paperwork etc. Hence my excitement about finding this post on ZenHabits (via LifeHacker) which provides some great tips for managing your personal goals:-

1. One goal at a time.
2. Make sure you really want it.
3. Make it your top priority.
4. Reduce your commitments.
5. Keep it simple.
6. Stay focused.
7. Block off time.
8. Make it your most important appointment.
9. Show that you’re serious.
10. Find your time wasters.
11. Make it a part of your daily or weekly routine.

5 Ways to Engage Employees

Over the last few days there has been a really stir over Jason Calacanis‘s “Fire non Workaholics” statement. While he has updated the words in his post (completely I disagree with his first version) I feel the bottom line message is still there. Jason wants his employees to be engaged and committed with him on the journey of his company, what CEO wouldn’t? But a large majority of employees will not be fully engaged or committed to a company without a reason. As a CEO, manager or leader you need to provide the right environment.

So here are five ways to engage your employees:-

  1. Show you care about them as a person, take 5 minutes each day to get to know one of your employees. You need to understand them, their struggles, frustrations and desires both professionally and personally.
  2. Invite them to join you and your organisation in doing something meaningful.
  3. Once you have invited them to something meaningful make sure you provide individuals goals. But not just any goals, sexy goals! They need be a driving force, give your employees chills down their spine when they talk or think about them. Your employees need to be able to deeply connect to their goals.
  4. Ensure timely recognition of performance, not just at an annual performance review. Send a quick handwritten note to someone who has delivered, not just above & beyond, or who has had a hard day.
  5. Provide your employees with extra responsibilities, allow them to grow and explore new areas of personal and professional growth. This is easy if you have completed step 1.

Once you have engaged employees then they will be fired up about your organisation and its goals. They might even act as workaholics for a period of time. But ensure this is balanced so they do not burn out, otherwise they will then disengage. By the way if you have completed step 1 above you won’t let them burn out because you will see and treat them as people, not machines.

Finally to quote Sir Richard Branson:-

“Loyal employees in a company create loyal customers, who in turn create happy shareholders. The process sounds easy but it’s not, and it has defeated some of the bigger organisations of the twentieth century.”

Zoho launches Zoho People for the SME market

A couple of days ago SaaS vendor Zoho launched their latest product Zoho People, designed for small to medium sized organisations. The product has 5 modules up front:-

    Organization Module:
This module is used to define the structure of your organization including departments, designations/titles and also the Org Chart.

Recruitment Module:
The Recruitment module eases the hiring process in an organization. It automates the steps involved between searching a candidate from resume database to hiring him an employee. This module also lets managers raise job requirements and admins post openings on the website.

Forms Module:
The Forms module has a set of pre-created forms (mini-applications) for common tasks in an organization like filing expense reports, reporting leave etc. With Zoho Creator integration, this module lets admins create new forms or customize existing forms and make them available to all employees.

Checklist Module:
This module lets admin automate business processes and define the flow based on conditions. Tasks can automatically be assigned to users or groups based on defined flow.

Self Service Module:
This module acts as a self-service module for Employees and Managers. All the employees have access to this module. Managers can define job openings and organize their team structure. Employees can submit information to the HR department using the forms defined by the HR team (like submitting an Expense Report or informing about a leave etc).

Roles and Permissions :
This module is used by admin to define fine grained access for different roles based on permissions – which drill down to field level, action level and form level.

The product is free for less than 10 users and will require a monthly fee (approx $50pa/employee and $50/admin) for larger organisations. You can take an high level review of the product on the Screenshot tour or on the video tour.

The UI looks very clean and reasonable easy to use, however it was still easy to get lost in setting up my account. Zoho have packed a good number of entry level features in to the product which will definitely get HR managers to consider the product. In fact many of these features are included in any phase 1 HRIS deployment. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to cover the full product at this stage to determine the real depth or the flexibility of modules such as recruitment. However with the inclusion of Zoho Creator and the Checklist module organisations should be able to build out any missing the functionality.

Zoho claims the product has zero installation, while this is correct from a technical point of view, the implementation/deployment still needs to be executed. Any HRIS consultant will tell you it is in the implementation is where HRIS projects fail, not that the products features are lacking.

Overall a very interesting development in the HRIS SME marketplace and I would agree with other commentators, organisations like WorkDay, Taleo, SuccessFactors etc need to keep en eye on what is happening with Zoho People. Yes I know those others are focused on the larger end of town but the midpoint is where the real battle could be played out.

Another thought. I could see consulting opportunities here to help implement Zoho People in to SME organisations.

Further coverage:-

Fire non workaholics?

Oh man what a storm.

Jason Calacanis has triggered quite a storm in the tech community with his post “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)“. Overall the tips are very very good, but the one that caused a lot of the stir was:

Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

As you can see Jason edited the statement after the storm, but the damage was done. Duncan Riley seemed to be the first big name to take offense with his post on TechCrunch. Well after that is seems to have been on for “young and old“:

So now where? My thoughts.

  1. Burn rates matter to all companies, startups need to watch them a little more closely than established ones. But is wouldn’t hurt established firms to be a little more careful with their money either.
  2. Good people make or break a company.
  3. Engaged employees make or break a company.
  4. Having to replace employees costs you lots of money.
  5. Not everyone wants to or should have to work in a startup. The reserve is also true.

Jason is right that employees who love their work tend to produce more than ones who turn up just for a pay check or are disengaged. But Duncan is right you can’t just fire someone who is not in love with the job to the point of being a workaholic. Don’t hire them to start with! Hiring the wrong people will kill any company and in a startup wrong people means that the owner/founder/CEO has screwed up.

If you do have someone who was all fired up and now isn’t, it is again most likely the owner/founder/CEO’s fault. Why? Because something has changed and they did not see it. Has the employees personal situation changed, or are they no longer in love with your idea, what has happened? Find out, try to fix it otherwise it will be far more expensive to fire them and rehire.

In summary the trick is when hiring make sure you hire correctly up front, that way you won’t need to fire anyone.

UPDATE: Another Aussie perspective from stilgherrian. Also this is a very complex and difficult issue to cover I have lots of other thoughts just not the time to write them all down.

Carnival of HR

It’s time for another Carnival of HR. Ok don’t leave you might learn something.

Gautam Ghosh (who seems to be everywhere these days) hosted the long running Carnival of HR over on his blog.  There are links to 8 or 9 great blog posts from all over the global, including a audio post. Even on of this blog’s favourite guys Wayne Trumel, played with a post on Management Issues about generations gaps in the workplace. Other topics covered are performance management, recruitment and technology, and management of virtual teams, very important in this web working world so many of us are in.

You can follow the carnival over to Three Star Leadership for March 19th.

Disengaged employees

We all know disengaged employees are bad. Here is a story of a guy who had his mate shoot him in the shoulder (Hat Tip Evil HR Lady) so he did not have to go to work!! True story, I kid you not.

Sheriff’s detectives in Franklin County, Washington, say a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn’t have to go to work.

If you employees are that disengaged you might want to celebrate 7th March Employee Appreciation Day with these 5 tips on employee engagement.

Microsoft Dynamics – HRM

Here is a question. Why don’t I hear much about the Microsoft Dynamics HRM modules in Australia? There is lots of talk about CRM and ERP in general but not a lot on the HRM components. They have lots of data on their web site about it but I hear so little.

Is it because the product line is so confusing with the 3, that right 3, different versions? We have Dynamics AX, GP & NAV from the different acquisitions of Axapta, Great Plains & Navision.

Just a random thought for Friday afternoon.

Worlds Greatest Shave

Every year in Australia there is a fundraising event called the World’s Greatest Shave, which is designed to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation. Where people shave their head, beard, legs, wax off hair or just colour their hair all in the name of fund raising, read more about it.

This year Richard Giles is participating, I encourage you all to get behind him. If you don’t know Rich here is a quick run down:-

Oh & if he reaches $1,000 he will wax his chest otherwise he will just shave his head.

If you are in Australia I encourage you to sponsor him, even if it is only $5.

UPDATE: If you are on Facebook join the group.

UPDATE 2: Rumour has it that he has past $1,000 mark but keep sponsoring him. The more the better.

Concerned about layoffs?

With the markets still a bit rocky more and more people are concerned about layoffs, and quite rightly so. A month ago I posted about Robert Scoble’s 17 Tips for Job Seekers, today I have some more tips for you.

HR World has 16 tips on how to make the best of a bad thing:-

1. Keep your emotions in check.
2. Listen carefully as severance benefits are explained.
3. Ask about references.
4. Make sure that you collect all of your personal things.
5. Go home and grieve for a few days.
6. Don’t blame yourself.
7. Commit to the change.
8. Make concrete plans.
9. Apply for government unemployment benefits.
10. Keep to a schedule. Get up at the same time as you did when you had a job.
11. Take advantage of outplacement services, if they are offered.
12. Get out of the house.
13. Polish up your résumé.
14. Take stock of your contacts.
15. Update or create your Facebook or LinkedIn profile.
16. Revise your household budget.