Employees by their very nature are un-predictable!

It is virtually impossible to scale and grow a business without people so recruiting, managing, rewarding and exiting staff is a skill that you need to become better at if you are going to get the best return on the salary that you pay them. And if your goal is to become a ‘part-time director’ then you’ll need great people to run the business for you.

Before we start let’s make one thing clear: People by their very nature are un-predictable! And therein lies one of the biggest headaches for owners and managers of businesses – how to handle them in the most effective, and fair way to get the most out of them for the business. Here are some of the common challenges associated with (most) people:

• They are un-predictable
• They have opinions, emotions, morals, values and moods!
• They generally lack interpersonal skills
• Too many want to ‘take’ rather than give
• They are, on the whole, lazy
• Think they are indispensable
• They gossip, waste time, start rumours and make mountains out of molehills
• Will never be as passionate about your business as you are
• Expensive, especially if they are only sporadically productive

But people can be:

• Moulded and managed to achieve great things.

How? Firstly just think about children; they are little darlings when they learn the rules and know the boundaries, when they have structure and routine. Secondly people will generally follow a crowd, a trend, a fashion, a leader – it’s what they do. So if you set the rules & boundaries and then lead from the front people, especially your employees will follow you. In the absence of rules and boundaries your team will do whatever they like, whenever they want to.

The bottom line is that good people are critical to your business success and growth, not so good people will not help you much and bad people will just drain the life out of you and your business. But without good employees and of course, out-sourcers too, you don’t have a successful business.

So, learning to motivate, engage and empower your staff is important, but you’ll need to set the rules and boundaries first. If you need some help can I suggest you read Work The System by Sam Carpenter – his 30 principles are a great starting point.