ALOFT: Advances. Legal Updates. Organisation. Frameworks. Tips.
For NDIS providers and health providers, people management is a constant challenge. High turnover and attrition rates make it hard to build teams and systems to support them. In this month’s ALOFT, we focus on managing staff. As usual, we include practical tips you can use to improve your provider business:
Advances
Leading a distributed or remote team is challenging. Home and work boundaries have increasingly blurred into each other, making it harder to act in different ways with different people. COVID-19 has hastened and intensified these trends. But digital transformation also creates new opportunities for managers to lead and for teams to work together more effectively. In this report, Michael Schrage from the MIT Sloan School of Management and his colleagues, look at the trends and make some recommendations for managers to make their staff feel more valued.
Legal updates
Australian workers fall into two broad categories: employees and independent contractors. But the line between them is often hard to draw, with courts looking at the whole relationship and testing whether the worker is in fact carrying out a business of their own. Many workers are hired as contractors, but may in fact be employees, and getting it wrong exposes providers to legal (and tax) risks. The growing gig economy is challenging traditional employee/contractor categorisation in Australia and many other countries In this article, the lawyers at Norton Rose Fulbright look at the employee/contractor distinction in several countries, including Australia, in the context of growing government interest in better protecting on-demand workers and contractors from exploitation.
Organisation success
People who have a strong sense of purpose tend to be better in times of crisis and uncertainty, and, on average, live longer and happier lives. Purpose is also linked to higher levels of employee engagement, stronger commitment to employers, and increased feelings of wellbeing. This provocative article by Naina Dhingra and colleagues at McKinsey, explores the employer’s role in helping employees define their purpose, using a model identifying nine types of purpose: achievement, conservation, caring, freedom, respect, tradition, enjoyment, stability, and equality and justice. They then provide some practical ideas about how to help connect an employee’s purpose to work, including through guided conversations, personal reflection, and helping employees to take action toward achieving their purpose.
Frames of mind
Check out this graphic summary of McKinsey model for identifying an individual’s purpose, with short descriptions of characteristics associated with each purpose:
It’s a useful tool for recruitment, onboarding, and performance development of your people (not to mention self-reflection and imporvement).
Tips for practice
“Talk less, and listen more.” Advice often given to managers, not easy to follow in practice. Research tells us that people who talk for more than 30 seconds are often perceived as too chatty. In this article, Mark Goulston suggests training yourself to stop talking for more than 40 seconds to encourage better turn-taking and listening.
Finally, a coaching tip from legendary music producer Rick Rubin (via the Brian Koppelman Podcast, “The Moment” ): One of your challenges as a leader is to raise the standard for the team, while simultaneously lowering the pressure. The whole podcast is well worth a listen for tips about getting the best out of people without micromanaging them.
