Employee Engagement

I have been researching staff engagement recently and has come up with the following conclusions:

1. One of the most effective strategy to impact engagement across an organization: Start at the top

• It will be an uphill battle for everyone if your most senior teams are not true believers of the power engagement.

2. Spot an Engaged Employee, engaged employees are: Authentic

• Employees who are themselves are more effective in the workplace.

3. Define and refine your culture to engage: Keep your “culture to engage” in the front of employees’ and managers’ minds.

•  Make “culture,” “engagement,” and similar subjects frequent items for discussion.

4. One of the most important rules of Employee Engagement: Rules are meant to be broken.

•  Sometimes, you may find that it is necessary to break a rule to easily proved extraordinary service or just to make things work as they should.

5. Engage remote teams: Use web cams

•  An inexpensive web cam can be tied to your Instant Messenger. It is a great way to humanize people who are just names on a "cc" list.

We're currently busy marketing our training centre for Northern Ireland

Active Listening

A colleague of mine listened to an audio cd this morning by Peter Thompson called ‘The best kept secrets of the world’s great communicators’ – the following is a summary of one chapter on ‘Active Listening.’ These are the points that he noted from the session:  

Listen actively when there is high emotion or the possibility of misunderstanding, when the person is important to you, or when you need the information they have. The better you listen and respond to others, the better they will listen and respond to you. The more attention you pay when someone else is talking, the more attention they will pay when you are talking. The following are ways to listen actively:

1.       Allow people to finish their own sentences no matter how enthusiastically you want to jump into the conversation. Doing so will indicate respect for what the person is saying.

2.       Maintain eye contact. It shows others that you are paying attention.

3.       Make notes. This will reinforce your memory. It is advisable to ask permission first in some situations. That permission is seldom refused. If you wish to take a tape recording, it is vital to ask permission.

4.       Think of listening based on the ratio of having two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio. Listen twice as much as you speak.

5.       Get all the information that is available within a conversation so you will not jump to any false conclusions. Wait for the end of the sentence or end of the conversation to be sure this conversation is unique from any other that may sound similar to you.

6.       Respond so the other person knows you are listening. Your response may be “Yes” or “I see” or merely nodding your head. Any of these will do.

7.       Be accepting rather than judgmental so you can truly hear the message being given. Different accents, catch phrases, speeds of speech, and cultural generalizations can get in the way of hearing the actual message.

8.       Ask questions when you do not understand something that was said. This goes a long way to building strong communication.

9.       Ask core questions. That is typically a series of “why” questions that go deeper into a particular subject to gain the greatest understanding of a situation. Start with broad information and continue seeking more specific responses.

10.   Pause before replying. Pausing will add power to what you say. It indicates you are giving a considered response, that you thought about it, that it is not just some answer you offer every time this question comes up.

11.   Use the Rapid Repeat Method to improve your listening skills and concentration abilities. Do this by simply repeating, silently in your mind, what is being said a fraction of a second later. This holds your concentration and improves your recall of what was said.

 We're currently re-working how we marketing our employment law email service

IoD Annual Convention 2012

Two weeks ago, one of my colleagues attended the IoD Annual Convention here in London. It was really helpful and she was able to gather a number of key points: 

1.       From speaker Kevin Roberts, CEO Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide: “inspire rather than inform”, specifically on the company website. Customers want to be inspired by what they see, not bored by informative text. Think about what your webpage looks like and revise to inspire customers.

2.       Passion drives success. It’s not all about the talent you have for something, it’s the passion and the drive you have which will ultimately lead to your success (BackleyBlack – Steve Backley and Roger Black)

3.       “Success is a decision not a gift” (BackleyBlack)

4.      From Kevin Roberts, it’s not all about Return On Investment but Return On Involvement. Get the staff fully involved and the return will be much much greater.

5.       How to make the most out of your LinkedIn Profile (from Ariel Eckstein presentation, MD of EMEA, LinkedIn. Complete your profile – importantly add a photo – it makes it more personal to those connecting with you. Only connect to those who you will actually do business with. Treat your Linkedin connections like your phone book. Would you phone the people on your LinkedIn connection?

As always we're busy devising more Irish employment law seminars

Social Media Marketing

Legal-Island has been studying social media marketing closely this week and have gleaned 5 important key points to remember:

1. It's a Revolution - A fundamental and revolutionary change in online behaviour, expectations and in the online customer experience
2. It's Social - Marketing as a conversation is a two-way dialogue. New 'mindsets' are required to be successful in social media
3. Power Shift - Social media empowers the customers and the network


4. Declining Effectiveness - the traditional approaches to sales and marketing are not as effective as before
5. The End of Business as Usual -  We need new 'mindsets', new business approaches and new performance measures. It's not all about being a broadcast medium. It's about listening to and engaging with customers, partners and community.


We're busy at the moment marketing our new Mediation Services for Northern Ireland

Diversity Management Workshop

I attended a Diversity Management workshop delivered by Tanya Kennedy today at Legal-Island's training centre and took from it the following five key learning points :

• Jane Elliot’s “A Class divided” is a superb video that shows just how easily people can fall into prejudice and the ugly consequences. See here
• Zappos has some great core values worth examining including :

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

• Pret a Manager have simple core values  : passionate about food; passionate about people; passionate about success
• No-one is born prejudiced. It’s a learnt process. We can unlearn it.
• Are we all age obsessed? I think we are…

It's hard going sometimes in the employment law field. We still feel we're organising the best employment law seminars around.

Latest Training Event

Last week, one of my colleagues attended a seminar in Belfast and took a number of Key Learning points from this event, both from a personal perspective and company perspective:
 
1.       Title of event was slightly misleading, my expectations were not met in terms of how the event had been billed – learning: be sure to cover what you are promising in the title

2.       In terms of event management – the event was held in the Ramada Shawsbridge, registration took place at the lobby area at the top of the stairs – much more user friendly I thought compared to where we normally register for AR – learning: consider moving registration for this year

3.       When I was registered I was then immediately greeted by another hoster who showed me round to the main area and then introduced me to a Employers in Childcare colleague (who has been assigned to me by the colour of spot on my name badge). Learning: I felt well looked after and although I wasn’t too keen on being given a coloured spot on my name badge I did think the idea was good.

4.       Event was free although if you didn’t turn up or couldn’t send a replacement you were charged £50 cancellation/ no show fee. Thought this was a good way of ensuring all delegates will turn up

5.        Most if not all the questions from the floor were directed at Maxine Orr on her presentation on sickness leave and annual leave. 

At the moment we’re all working hard on our big event coming up soon. This is the Annual Update on Payroll Matters Conference.