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What people say about working with Andrea…
Andrea has a unique approach which gave me instant confidence to put her in front of my team. Andrea is great to discuss HR strategy; her experience combined with practical solutions to complex people problems are very refreshing. I would recommend her to any business leader wanting to build a more engaged workforce.
Tony Jensen, Regional Manager Bendigo and Adelaide Bank
If it’s people management solutions you are seeking, Andrea is the first person you should contact. Andrea has an innate ability to handle diverse personalities and challenging situations. And unlike some consultants I have dealt with over the years, she doesn’t just talk about it she makes it happen. My time spent with Andrea has given me a real advantage in the workplace. So if you want the new changes to stick even after your consultant has walked away Andrea leaves you with the tools you need and the confidence to suit.
Bianca Wilson, GM, Century Cranes
Few people I have met in 40 years of business possess that cut-through ability to take a ‘brief’, distil the problem, and then quantify an action plan like Andrea.
Andrea’s workplace experience on both sides of the labour divide earned her the trust of both management and staff with direct methods, resulting in guidelines with which to progress to sign-off.
Addressing our shortcomings and quantifying our aspirations was key to management and staff moving forward with common purpose.
Thank you, Andrea.
Chris Kingsbury, owner and MD, Totally Workwear Cairns
Andrea possesses that rare combination of passion and capability, built over many years as a people professional. Having worked with her in a number of roles, I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that if you want to create an extraordinary culture within your organisation, listen to what Andrea has to say. She is leading the way when it comes to creating strong, effective and engaged workforce communities.
Andrew Griffiths, Australia’s #1 small business and entrepreneurial author
I find Andrea possesses qualities that allow extremely comfortable conversations to flow. She is a very efficient, powerful enabler who forces the strengths within you to rise to the surface. This ability is a dynamic instrument in forging and guiding profound leadership. She is my ‘go-to’ person.
Phil Rist, EO, Girringun Aboriginal Corporation
Working with Andrea has been a hugely rewarding experience. She has a tremendous ability to effortlessly swoop to the root cause of HR matters, whereupon, with similar ease, she cultivates a solution that always results in a win–win situation. Without doubt, she is the best HR professional I have ever met. Through her efforts, we have forged an even stronger business with great clarity, purpose and fulfilled staff.
Chris Cooper and Ian Johnson, owners, GBR Helicopters
Andrea is an engaging, authentic and well-respected business and people leader who walks her talk, and gets results. Andrea is able to combine her extensive experience in labour law and people-leadership skills to help both small and large businesses improve the engagement of their teams.
With her incredible insight into people behaviour, she is able to identify core issues, and provide effective people management and leadership advice and tactics to strategically build a great company culture.
Sam Harrop, speaker, author and trainer
Thank you, Andrea, for helping our business formulate a structure and culture that we believe will hold our business in a stronger position than the competition moving forward. After 25 years in retail, it is amazing what you have taught me in a short period of time. If only I had gone on this journey years ago! I am positive it would have made my life a lot less stressful. My staff had been asking for years for a reporting system that you helped to initiate and they are thrilled with our outcomes. All great stuff.
Mike Shakes, owner, Supa IGA, Atherton
By nature, people are challenging creatures. As we struggle to understand ourselves, bringing them together in a team environment brings with it a whole new set of challenges. Andrea’s experience in working with teams and individuals turned what was potentially a devastating situation into a new level opportunity. Andrea’s insights and experience are priceless.
Troy Haines, director, theSPACE
Acknowledgments
I am blessed to have so many people love and support me. Without them I may never have found the meaning in my own work and certainly would not have taken these steps to share this meaning with you. I am ever thankful that I am able to share my insights and talents every day.
I wish to thank Paul Stafford for loving me most, Nelson for being by my side always, Janet Tunjic for unconditionally believing in me, Mum for being so proud of me, Dad for teaching me to innovate, Finn Osborne for the encouragement to push through and trust the creative process, and Andrew Griffiths for showing me how to work in my own truth through his own example.
This book is full of the stories of my wonderful clients. I’d like to thank them for trusting me enough to help them in their own businesses. I learn from them every day.
Do the Work was my constant companion as I wrote this book. Thank you Stephen Pressfield for such wisdom as ‘Stay stupid, follow your unconventional, crazy heart’ and ‘We’re in till the finish. We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance’s ass and not let go, no matter how hard it kicks’.
And thanks to you, who have read this. I hope I have given you some ideas to activate, energise and inspire the greatest assets in your business – you and your people.
About Andrea
There isn’t much about cultural change and staff performance that Andrea doesn’t know or hasn’t tried. To say she is driven to help create engaged, responsive and cohesive teams is an understatement, and it comes from her diverse career that spans well over 20 years in the people space.
Andrea has worked in a range of union roles, been a high level human resources manager, become a small business owner and proudly a people management consultant. Her experience is sought after to help mentor leaders, improve business culture and engagement, and introduce initiatives to optimise people performance.
Andrea brings an engaging, authentic and practical approach to the challenge of getting the best from people at work. She is passionate about the results that are achieved when staff and their leaders are enabled to perform at their best.
In 2015, Andrea was awarded the Small Business Woman of the Year. She won the award for her genuine passion for empowering people and for identifying opportunities for positive and productive change in the people management space.
Andrea has also developed ‘Employ, Lead, Grow’, an impressive online e-course for inexperienced people leaders, and iCoachMe, a self-coaching iPhone app that has been recognised by the International Coach Federation.
For more background information please visit www.andreatunjic.com
First published in 2016 by Andrea Tunjic
PO Box 724 Trinity Beach, Queensland Australia 4879
© Andrea Tunjic 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the author.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Creator: Tunjic, Andrea, author.
Title: People power: how to activate, energise and inspire
the most valuable asset in your business / Andrea Tunjic.
ISBN: 9780994509826 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780994509833 (ebook)
Subjects: Employee motivation.
Success in business.
Incentives in industry.
Dewey Number: 658.314
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing
Text design and book production by Michael Hanrahan Publishing
Cover design by Peter Reardon
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Creating and leveraging a great culture
1. What’s your purpose and are you leveraging it?
2. Is your culture a strength or a weakness?
3. The competitive advantage of an internal mission
4. Breathing life into your internal mission
5. Helping staff to do the right thing at the right time
Part II: Engagement: the real influencer of people performance
6. Culture and engagement versus business results
7. The gold mine of engagement
8. What talent are looking for in an employer
9. The cost of frustrating the hell out of your staff
10. Engage your staff with business success
11. Refining goals to get buy in
Part III: Time to skill yourself up
12. What it takes to lead now
13. How you can become to a great leader
14. Re-engage yourself by getting what you want
15. Your leadership performance plan
Part IV: Holding people to account
16. Providing performance feedback – easily and well
17. Coach to engage
18. Coaching practice
19. Talking about the tough stuff with staff
20. Don’t waste time and effort on underperformance
Conclusion
Appendix
Need some help? Want to know more?
Introduction
I’ve got a bit of a grudge against the human resources industry – a grudge that’s built up over quite a few years of working within it.
For starters I loathe the term ‘human resources’, which sprang up in the late 1800s – about the time well-regarded business leader Henry Ford is said to have complained that all he wanted from his workers was a pair of hands and instead he got the whole person as well.
Sounds archaic, right? However, this is an attitude that’s still very present in workplaces. And this redundant attitude – that people and their needs come second to completing their assigned tasks at work – causes us all so much grief and costs businesses a lot of money.
In most countries across the Western world, over 70 per cent of people are unhappy and unproductive at work. The cost of this to business performance is in the multiple billions and the cost to people’s wellbeing is priceless.
In stark contrast, and regardless of the measure used, great workplaces create great staff and great staff create great workplace results.
Early in my career, I took a job as a union official, and what my time in this role showed me was that some employers were great at being employers. Their staff loved working for them, and they were happy and engaged. The leaders really cared about their staff and encouraged them to be the best at their work that they could be. These businesses also performed better than their competitors.
When I jumped sides and became a human resources manager, I also came across a precious few managers who had the same impact on their teams. Their staff would do anything for them, and a special bond existed between the manager and their people. They also outperformed other teams in the same business.
But these managers and employers seemed to be the exception. Throughout my time as a union official I was always appealing with employers to care more about the impact of their decisions on the people who were working for them. As a human resources manager, I spent my days trying to influence leaders to get the best from people, not hinder their efforts.
I also tried pretty much everything on offer to ‘improve staff performance’. These ‘solutions’ were outcome-focused and rarely worked. The desired outcomes were reflected in the kinds of questions employers and managers would focus on: How can we manipulate motivation to improve productivity? How can we extract more from this employee? How can we make our staff more predictable and less emotional? Basically, how can we make our staff more the pair of hands that Henry Ford was looking for 125 years ago?
I was constantly frustrated with the way this traditional approach to human resources always put the people second and hindered the very results leaders were looking for.
When I started consulting, I found more and more clients were turning to me to help to improve their workplace cultures. I hadn’t intended to work in this space, but time and time again the people management approaches I used had the effect of improving the workplace culture.
I realised one underlying theme to my people management work drove the success I and my clients were having. Instead of focusing on how an employer could extract more from their human resources, I encouraged them to ask a very different question: how can I (as the employer) help my people to succeed?
This simple question ultimately improved the workplace culture and drove the business’s success – and that is what this book is all about.
The promise of this book is that you, as a business owner or manager, can easily take control of your culture, become an engaging people leader and give your staff a road map to how they can succeed – simply by changing your approach.
Not a policy, rule or HR slogan in sight.
How this book is organised
This book is broken into four parts, representing the four key areas to improve the culture in your workplace. By focusing on these key areas you will be rewarded with a business that is able to reach its full potential through the energy and talents of your people.
At the end of each part, I’ve also included coaching questions, so you can really consolidate your learning. The coaching approach outlined in these questions helps you find the right solutions for your unique business and situation. This approach is also in line with the overall guidance I provide throughout this book – that is, it is better to coach than tell.
Part I: Creating and leveraging a great culture
Successful modern workplaces own and understand how their business purpose enriches the lives of people. They have created purpose and meaning for the work they do.
In this part, I help you to identify the purpose of your business, which will help you to engage others. I also show you how to identify and influence your workplace culture, and how your mission and values can energise your purpose and business goals. Clarity in these areas will provide the right conditions for the people in your business to thrive.
Part II: Engagement: The real influencers of people performance
Engagement is the productivity glue in any business – disengaged employees cost you money through lost productivity and under-utilisation. Many business owners, however, do not understand engagement and how much of the disengagement they are causing for their staff.
In this part, I help you to understand employee engagement, and how improved engagement helps to move staff from being just ‘clock-in, clock-out’ workers to people who are invested in the success of the business and even excited to come into work.
I also take you through an easier and more effective approach to setting goals, showing you how you can properly craft people’s goals to motivate and inspire them towards the outcome you want.
Part III: Time to skill yourself up
As the leader, the major influencer of the performance, culture and behaviours within your business is you.
As hard as it may be for you to accept, your attitudes, behaviours and actions will make or break your business. You set the cultural standards for the rest of your people.
Great leaders understand that they must focus on preparing themselves to lead. This starts with taking control of your thinking and your behaviours.
In this part, I show you how you can build your leadership skills and capabilities. I also cover what drives you and who you need to become to lead in a way that brings out the potential of your staff.
I also deal with something that is nearly always forgotten when looking at people management: ensuring your goals as a business owner or leader are met through your business.
Part IV: Holding people to account
Staff expectations have shifted over the last few years and a key part of this shift is that staff want to be empowered to act. This book is all about providing this empowerment, through giving you skills on how to coach staff, not tell them what to do.
However, not every staff member is going to engage and perform in your business, so you need to know how to manage these times and these people in a way that will reduce stress and problems.
People need clarity and direction, and they also need to know you are there to support their efforts and deal with problems as they come along. These needs not being met affects the performance, culture and outcomes in a business.
So in this part, I bring all the tools and advice from the previous parts together and work through the importance of having a performance plan for each of your staff.
Finding the right way to lead your business
My experience has shown me that there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to lead people in a business. And further, staff are choosing employers who lead the right way and rejecting those who don’t. The power balance is shifting, with people now valuing culture over money – and that’s a great thing.
Through this book, I hope to empower people leaders to change the conditions in their workplace and so enable everyone to work at their best.
Work can be the source of great pride, enjoyment and fulfilment for everyone and, indeed, now more than ever that is what we are all demanding from our employment. If you provide this, you gain engaged, enthusiastic people.
Through adjusting your thinking and the way you do things, you can tap into your most valuable asset – people power.
Part I
Creating and leveraging a great culture
On what high-performing companies should be striving to create: a great place for great people to do great work.
Marilyn Carlson
Some businesses are so good that people are lining up to work in them, staff rave about working there, customers become loyal fans and people write glowing stories about them. These businesses have a few things in common. Firstly, their purpose gives everyone a sense of meaning, and that meaning inspires people to give more of themselves at work. They also have great cultures. The purpose of your business is the ‘why’ your business exists. The culture of your business is the ‘how things are done’ in your business.
No doubt you’ve experienced a poor workplace culture. The costs of a poor culture are huge for a business, because everything is affected – including relationships, reputation, performance, productivity and sales. The Harvard Business School tells us that it is the culture of a business that determines whether a business will survive.
Great cultures don’t just emerge; they are built. Many business owners, however, are unaware of how they can control their culture; fewer still understand how to leverage their culture to deliver great results.
In this part, I take you through these different aspects, and then show you practical ways you can tie them all together – and take your staff along with you. In chapters 3 to 5, I use one of my clients as an example, to really show how the process works in practice.
1
What’s your purpose and are you leveraging it?
Your business has a higher purpose, and it can provide real meaning in your life and for those working for you. Our purpose is our reason for existing and we derive meaning from realising the impact of our work on others. When the purpose and meaning of our work really matters, we are all inspired to give more.
Wharton professor Adam Grant has found that when people are able to connect their jobs to something meaningful their productivity improves by five times.
To tap into the higher purpose and real meaning of your business, you may need to try some new thinking. Let’s look at an example. One of my clients, James, runs a large retail clothing business. On the face of it, his business exists to sell clothes. But this didn’t capture the business’s higher purpose. And this lack of purpose was affecting the business – although the business was doing well on paper, James could sense that his business and the staff were being held back, and that they lacked energy.
So we worked together on uncovering the higher purpose of his business.
As we spoke, his passion for retail came through. I quickly realised he loved helping people and understood his customers – they were busy, working people who wanted to get in and get out, knowing they had found a long-lasting product at a good price.
When I looked at the business with fresh eyes, I could see how James had constructed every aspect of his business to achieve his purpose to help his customers. The purpose of this business was not just to trade goods for money; it was far more than that. James wanted his staff and his business to genuinely help people. What we needed to do was ensure this purpose was being lived on a day-to-day basis within the business.
‘Living the purpose’ sparked a series of changes in the business; staff were encouraged to focus on helping, and more emphasis was placed on improving the customers’ experience rather than running with super tight margins.
The result was that staff became more engaged with their work – because their own need to find meaning in their work through helping others was allowed. The sales naturally improved and, importantly, the store became known for its purpose rather than just its clothing range as customers shared their stories of shopping at the business.
In modern businesses, people want to experience meaning and significance through their work. Identifying and articulating your purpose can create a powerful bond between you and your staff, as well as with your customers.
Another example is IKEA, which has been around since 1943. Its stated purpose is all about wanting to create a better and simpler life for people across the world. IKEA also use this purpose to attract the right kind of staff to their business. They only select staff who are willing to ‘be themselves’ and to work with other inspired and uncomplicated people to achieve the goals of the business. And this approach works – IKEA staff are known to be fanatical about working for the brand.