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Showing posts from 2017

It's all about the service... Gaining & Retaining Clients

Retaining and gaining customers has become increasingly challenging.  As customers we have abundant choice and it is so easy to comparative shop. We talk about great service We talk about the extra mile We talk about the attitude We talk about customer perception We talk about customer expectation We talk about meeting customer needs We talk about the tangible vs intangible We talk about the client experience So what makes a customer feel that they have received outstanding service?   What makes it a soft skill, rather than a science, is that we are all so different and people in services and sales need to read each situation and act accordingly. In a restaurant, if my chair is constantly bumped by the waitrons going past, no matter how great the food, my perception is negative.  My family don’t even notice the bumps.. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit Greece and Turkey. In Istanbul, we were wandering around one of the many fantastic street marke

The Gig Economy - HR and other issues

The Gig Economy has emerged as a topic of discussion and I understand that Intuit has posited that 40% of US workers will be independent contractors by 2020.  That is 3 years away! What is a gig employee?  Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb all utilize gig employees as the delivery mechanism for their apps.   While they are all clear that they are just an App and don’t employ the gig employees, governments and employer bodies are analyzing the risks and reports are indicating that they are significant. As a contract worker, which is how Uber defines their drivers, there is not an employer/employee contract in place.    While Uber, and other similar companies, create the mechanism for people to deliver a service, they consider themselves brokers, for want of a better word, and not employers. The UK is looking into the situation and considering legal structures .  The concerns are particularly when people have a single source of income, although they are not formally employed.  This leaves
We really could write a book! Believe it or not, this article is about subsistence allowances. And yes, we were once sent a business claim for an out of town visit which included toothpaste, cotton wool and dental floss… All bought in South Africa before the trip….. Hence our response, “You were going to brush your teeth, anyway”. He was quite taken aback. We assumed he thought incidental meant something to do with teeth.... Discussing this with some business associates, they trumped this story with the guy whose dog became extremely stressed when his master travelled and the company was asked to pay for dog psychology treatments. Over the years we have looked at how other companies manage out of country/out of town expenses. Some give a baseline - you can’t spend more than x and you need to validate all your expenses. Others give a value, often in line with revenue service guidelines, and no slips are necessary. The question is whether travelling should be income producing f

It's Not Your Fault, But..

It’s Not Your Fault, But… Its’s not mine, either. When something goes wrong, whether at work or home, most people immediately start casting around for somebody to blame. Over the weekend, I was reading and drinking a cup of coffee which was perched on the arm of the couch.  I do this daily, and have never spilled it.   My daughter came into the room, I put my reader down next to me and we started chatting.  A little later, I picked the reader up, turned to my coffee, and knocked it over.  Something in my expression caused her to ask whether it was her fault.  Of course, it wasn’t, but a mean, small part of me was thinking, well, no, but if you hadn’t come in the room…  And she was kind enough to help me clear it up! If that lamp post wasn’t there If that faster person wasn’t in the race If the traffic light hadn’t turned red at just that moment If we hadn’t hired Joe, I would have got the promotion If, if, if….. We are very quick to accept the “if” when it is a

Why Employees Stay

Are your employees staying because of their managers? Popular thought indicates that people leave because of their managers, so is the opposite also true? Added to that is the view that it is always the good people who leave. Fortunately, that is not a view, not a fact! Great people stay. The challenge is to understand both why people stay and why they leave. As in sales, management ask sales people to find out why they lost a deal. It is even more important to find out why a deal was won. At Accsys, we realised years ago that we were finding out what individual’s issues were after they had resigned and moved on mentally. We designed a system that allows us to understand our employees’ expectations on a regular basis, not just at increase time, as well as share our expectations with them. Nothing works all the time, but it has given us much more insight and created a positive manager/employee relationship model. So why do people stay? Today, many of us have good social me

It's Not My Job

It’s Not My Job Assuming that there are reasons for saying this: 1.        It’s not your job and is totally is outside of your skill set 2.        It’s not in your KPIs and you don’t want to do it 3.        You believe you are being exploited and want to draw a line as to what you will and won’t do. Outside your skill set This is reasonable and there could be many scenarios where this is appropriate ·        Where there is a safety or special licence requirement to do the job eg driving a forklift truck ·        Where there is a formal qualification like giving legal advice ·        Where additional qualifications are required as in a medical doctor without surgical qualifications or experience Not in my KPIs This response could be perceived as a lot more negative, not to mention career limiting. If there is a good reason why you can’t step outside your pure job description, share that immediately.  ·        “I would love to be able to help, however, I nee

Resignation - keep building relationships

Resignation – avoid burning those bridges It has been a great pleasure working with a colleague like you. Now, you are off to your next big challenge! Good luck and farewell! Isn’t that what we all want to hear when we leave?  We were appreciated and we will be missed. The need for all parties to maintain professional conduct in the event of resignation is critical, particularly now when we are working within an unsettled socio-economic climate. Employees should avoid damaging relationships, and employers need to adopt a neutral approach and ensure that there are policies and processes that enable the separation to be objectively handled.  For example: ·        A formal resignation letter is required ·        A formal acceptance of resignation is issued confirming any special conditions ·        An exit interview takes place ·        Handovers are planned and executed Our HR team advise those who resign their position to adhere to a few golden rules. Failu

The truth about cvs

How accurate are CVs/Resumés? Once, a long time ago, I knew a young man who had come to South Africa from England.  He was a television technician who landed up sharing a house with two draughtsmen.  They were earning better salaries than he was, so he decided that it was an excellent career choice. They taught him the basics and off he went and got a job as a draughtsman.   He was fired at the end of the first week!  Undaunted, he tried again.   Six months, and 5 jobs later, he was a draughtsman and still is today. I am not sure if this would still be possible, nor if there is a moral to this story, maybe amoral is more like it.   He did work extremely hard to improve his skills, though, and shared his questionable career path with the final company.  They decided to take a chance, and the rest is history. The value of secure employment within challenging economic conditions creates an environment where people resort to any number of tactics to gain an advantage – inc