COVID and 2020 has hit many business hard its important to look at your business and evaluate what you are doing and where things can be changed to improve the efficiency and sustainability of your business..
1. Company Culture
Company culture is the way things are done within the business, the way people behave and treat each other. Defining a company culture is very much the same as defining how a certain family unit behaves. We all have those friends that when you invite them over you cringe because their children are unruly and disrespectful this is their family culture, their identity. In order to establish a company culture, goals and behaviours need to be set, and everyone from top to bottom needs to be held accountable for their behaviour with unacceptable behaviours and practices being to be addressed. If people are pulling in different directions you generally do not have a company culture in place or a less favourable culture may be incubating between the staff.
2. Legal Compliance
One of the first things to check – are you legally compliant? Do you understand the law and are you implementing it correctly. If not, there is a risk, and it’s usually financial. The Department of Labour and Employment may fine you or in some cases, they will charge an employer criminally for non-compliance. If you are knowingly and willingly bucking the system, your employee is most probably aware of this and when a conflict arises their first port of call to get back at the employer is the Department Of Labour and Employment. Your non-compliance and the consequences will bring your business down like a deck of cards rather prevent this from happening by ensuring you are well informed of the legal compliance requirements for your business sector.
3. Company Structure
When last have you looked at your company structure and evaluated the roles your staff are fulfilling? Circumstances change, you may have taken on another project and you may be understaffed and need more hands if so your current staff may be overworked and cannot perform to the best of their ability or to your company standards. On the other hand, the economic downturn may have hit and you may have to consider restructuring or retrenchments.
4. Poor Work Performance
In every business, there is always that one individual that does not perform to the required standard. In many cases, employers close their eyes, ignores the poor performance and hopes it gets better. The reality is that is most probably won’t. If you are carrying the proverbial “deadwood” it is costing you money. Make sure that you institute the proper procedures for incapacity -poor work performance, a heads up – this is a not a process where warnings are used. Deal with poor work performance swiftly, the longer you leave it, the harder it becomes to deal with it, and you may have compromised the legally required element of fairness.
5. Discipline
In order to change behaviour set boundaries and make sure you implement the discipline according to your documented policies, procedures and codes. The key to getting through the CCMA unscathed is consistency and fairness, once you have compromised on these two factors and created a precedent, you will continually be hampered in applying discipline in future. Created precedents hang over your head for years to come. If emotions get in your way, normally incredible anger and frustration or pity for an employee, consult a professional who can advise you what steps to take, professionals, put things in perspective and take the grey out of the situation.
6. Measuring employee outputs
If you can’t measure something, you cannot effectively change it. Have an objective performance appraisal process in place, ensure it’s aligned to the employee’s job description. Make it a sincere, non-threatening and open process where performance is encouraged and documented. You could link incentives and remuneration to the measurements of a performance appraisal.
7. Policies and Procedures
Policies and procedures set the tone for expectations of employees and define boundaries and behaviour. Don’t leave your expectations to chance, expensive and detrimental mistakes by employees have been made due to them not knowing what is being expected of them.
8. Recruitment
Who are you letting into your business? If you don’t get this step done properly, once the problem has walked through the door it takes a lot of effort to get them out. Ensure that your recruitment process is not a flat process and that you use competency-based questions to determine if the candidate is the correct fit for your business. Do all the necessary reference and background checks. Please don’t rush recruitment out of desperation and get the wrong person you will suffer in the long run.
9. Training
Upskill your staff, research shows that in an environment where training occurs staff are happier and more fulfilled. Analyse training needs, conduct a skills audit for each staff member, make sure you align these to your business objectives and ensure that training assists in addressing the employee’s performance gaps.
10. Workplace Skills Plans Annual Training Reports
If you are a business that pays over R500 000 in salaries per annum you are required to pay 1% of your annual payroll in skills levies. Many businesses overlook submitting an annual Workplace Skills Plan and Training Report thus not being able to claim back the 20% of their annual levies in the form of a mandatory grant, further to this by completing your submission you may have access to what they call a discretionary grant where you can access learnerships, apprenticeships and other skills programmes which have huge tax incentives and benefits to an employer. The business community is currently taking legal action against Minister of Labour and Employment and we might see the mandatory grant percentage increase to its original amount of 50% of all skills levies paid. Would you want to lose out on getting these funds back?
Should any of these factors resonate with you and you would like to chat about these or explore them please get in touch with Infinity HR Consulting on 087 073 6940 or 083 305 6219.
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