Extract from Claire Harrison’s book, The CEO Secret Guide to Managing and Motivating Employees
As a business leader, you have a tremendous amount of power: you hold in your hands your employees’ prosperity and wellbeing. We spend so much of our time at work that satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one’s job has a profound impact on our quality of life – both perceived and actual. Being a great business leader is not just about ensuring that your organisation enjoys solid financial results; it’s also about being aware of the enormous impact you have on the lives of your employees, and about motivating and managing employees in ways that reflect that knowledge. You have the power to dramatically influence the quality of your employees’ and your customers’ lives (and this extends to their families and loved ones as well). Your legacy as a business leader is far reaching.
Based on my significant experience working for and with global corporations as well as my experience as the Managing Director of my own business advising other businesses, which has seen me providing consulting and outsourced services to business leaders. I have helped business leaders take back valuable time from their busy schedules and increase their people management expertise. The results have spoken for themselves: our business leaders are confident in their ability to effectively lead and manage their employees and grow their business; employees are happier and more productive; and customers are significantly more likely to see the organisation as a reliable partner.
In conducting research for my book, The CEO Secret Guide to Managing and Motivating Employees, I interviewed award-winning leaders. These are the best workplace business leaders who have been recognised over and over again for their best practice approaches to leadership and employee management. For many of these business leaders, their organisation’s appearance on the Business Review Weekly’s Best Employers list or their accreditation as an Aon Hewitt Best Employer has been the reward at the end of a long journey of trial, error and improvement. This means that these business leaders have valuable insight to share about what works and what doesn’t, and they have strategies to impart that have taken them from being a good employer to being a great one.
The secret I want to share with you is that there are proven steps you can take as a business leader to increase the rewards you enjoy in both quality and degree. The business leaders of the world’s best workplaces all understand this secret and put it into practice every day. What follows is the six-part Best Workplace Method, which will help you better lead and manage your employees, improve bottom line results of your organisation, and provide you and your employees (and your customers too) with the kind of satisfaction that will make you the envy of your competitors.
The Best Workplace Method is made up of the following six parts:
LEADER
- Be brave in your approach to business and life
- Be authentic in your communication
- Love what you do and have fun doing it
CULTURE
- Inspire with your vision and live your values
- Grow, train and develop your people
- Recognise and reward the right things
APPOINTMENT
- Attract amazing people to you
- Select superstars for the job and organisation
- Promote from within
PERFORMANCE
- Focus on business deliverables
- Expect high performance
- Give feedback in the moment
RECOGNITION
- Know what you need to reward
- Recognise the personal and professional
- Encourage people to achieve great things
WELLBEING
- Care for your people and their families
- Embrace differences in your team
- Nurture your employees mentally and physically
Following the Best Workplace Method will lead to a great place to work, one that has superstar employees helping happy customers and achieving substantially better overall financial results. But wait, there’s more: it will also be a workplace where you feel happy and want to come to work each day because you have such an awesome group of people to spend time with who are doing meaningful work.
Do you have a great place to work? Take our test now to find out and receive tips on how to develop a best workplace.
Written by Claire Harrison, Author of The CEO Secret Guide to Managing and Motivating Employees, and Managing Director of Brisbane HR consulting company, Harrison Human Resources.
Claire Harrison is the Founder and Managing Director of Harrisons, a flourishing HR consulting business that sprouted in 2009 from Claire’s passionate belief that inspiring leaders and superstar employees are the key success factor to any business. With over 20 years’ experience, Claire has worked as a HR Director of multi-national organisations, as a Non-Executive Board Director, and a small business owner. Claire’s corporate career includes working with companies such as BHP, Westpac, Fonterra and Mayne Nickless.
