Employment engagement and retention strategies
Above & Beyond Group
Underpinning Everything We Do Are Two Key Philosophies
1
“Organisations need to focus on becoming an employer of choice – to attract and retain the highest performing employees.”
We call this being a WOW Factor employer
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“Engaged employees will be loyal and will go the extra mile for the people you provide services to. There are five key elements that employees need to be engaged.”
We call this creating a MAGIC workplace
Are you a WOW Factor Employer?
Our goal is for all our clients to be an employer of choice, to attract and retain the very best talent.
We know that these factors are what first attracts new employees and keeps them loyal.
Simon Sinek’s Start with ‘Why’: Being really clear on your organisation’s core meaning and purpose (mission and vision) is just the first part. We help bring that message to your staff to enable them see how their individual contributions feed into the overall bigger picture. This connection to purpose is deeply motivating for your workforce.
You can’t offer everyone promotions, and our hierarchical structures mean not many can ‘succeed’. Alternative ideas include incremental advancements, stretch projects, champions, interim roles, personal soft-skills development, professional training, and variety (in the form of secondments, lateral moves, job swaps and so on). The workforce strategy suggests looking at career pathways. We consult on workforce structures, succession planning, progressive career pathways and job families. We also provide training and development workshops.
This is ‘Who’ makes up the organisation – it’s your Culture & Values. If you’re TRUE to these, and clear about them, then staff can see how they can connect to your culture, and whether they belong. We help bring your organisation’s values to life by defining the behaviours that link to them and setting expectations around them, that are clearly articulated to staff so everyone is clear and accountable. We also use values based recruitment methods to ensure alignment and ‘fit’.
Flexibility is a valuable currency that can be used when budgets don’t allow for more costs. As we move from work/life balance to work/play blend, offering staff more ‘me-time’ is hugely rewarding. As technology advances the workforce expect to carry out more of their roles anytime, anywhere. We offer innovative ideas to package your roles more flexibly in order to enhance workforce well-being, health and happiness. It’s also essential that our workforce is flexible and agile in their approach, to be able to adapt to and embrace ongoing change, and we help you select for that.
The workforce strategy tells us that Leadership is the primary driver of employee engagement. We’re aiming for leaders to have an expectation (and thirst) for excellence, and to demonstrate a growth mindset. These Leaders drive whole organisations towards a culture of continuous improvement. Our Above & Beyond programs develop effective Leaders using a combination of the Aged Care Leadership Capability Framework, 1:1 Coaching, Training Workshops, and assessment and development tools including 360 surveys, DISC and LSI. We also encourage providers to look beyond current leaders and engage and develop the NEXT GENeration of Leaders to drive us into the future.
We must move away from silos and work more cohesively. This applies across the full spectrum of workforce from individuals within teams, to teams within organisations, to whole organisations, to the industry as itself as a united voice, to our industry collaborating deeper with other industries. We help you understand how to leverage your strengths and learn from your blind-spots, to communicate better, and to achieve common objectives. This starts at a local level first.
This is the key foundation on which relationships are formed, and in our industry – relationships are everything. Employers on Employees: When we trust the individuals in our teams, we give them the freedom and autonomy to be creative, innovative, and come alive in their work. Organisations then benefit from their inspiration, effort and loyalty. Employees on Employers: The Workforce Taskforce found that ‘’trust in leadership’’ is the principal driver of workforce engagement. Our Above & Beyond workshops and coaching include how to develop a culture of trust amongst your teams.
Organisations with strong feedback cultures outperform competitors on a range of outcome measures. Employers to Employees: Abolish the annual appraisal in favour of more regular, constructive feedback underpinned by ‘no surprises’. Ongoing feedback is essential to ensure clear expectations and create a responsive workforce who are willing to improve. Our Performance Development tools enable you to do this, and we provide training on conducting effective reviews for managers. Employees to Employers: Gaining real insights from staff on the organisation, care practices, leadership and service design is highly valuable – BUT staff will only provide honest feedback when they feel safe, and when they believe their input will be acted upon. We provide 360 survey tools with analysed results, and we partner with you to develop actions plans and implementation. Completing the feedback loop avoids employees suffering from survey fatigue, and you optimise the value of the feedback.
Salary alone is not the main driver for the majority of our workforce in Aged Care, but providers do need to be fair and competitive. We provide market insights on comparable salaries to ensure you are competitive to attract the right level capability. As our industry moves to more of a performance based culture, we also provide guidance on performance related pay for relevant positions. Other than salary, there are more creative reward factors that we can advise on to motivate and inspire your hard working employees and keep them loyal, engaged and performing to a high standard.
Have you got a MAGIC workplace?
Many studies have shown that highly engaged workplaces are more productive and provide better consumer outcomes.
We believe these are the five elements that employees need to feel highly engaged.
What makes an employee get up in the morning and come to work? Using the Aged Care sector as an example it probably isn’t the money. Employees want to feel a sense of of purpose in what they do. Putting consumer choice front and centre of what is done is the start of building meaning and purpose in an organisation. We help organisations communicate regularly with employees so they understand what the whole organisation is aiming to achieve. And when the organisation’s purpose isn’t motivating enough in itself, we help each employee to find meaning in their own life purpose and dreams.
Most of us like to have some freedom to do things in the way that suits us. Whether its choosing what order we do things, or the way we interact with customers. In a highly compliance based sector such as Aged or Community care the degree of autonomy may be limited. But within the boundaries there is often scope for individuals and groups of employees to work out how best to organise the work to suit their own abilities, interests and skills. Being clear on the outcomes required and holding employees accountable, is far more motivating and empowering than micro-managing every minute of the day.
Each of us are constantly learning and evolving with new experiences and opportunities. For some organisations this means having innovative career paths or career lattices – so employees can grow in to new roles. Or it may mean adding new skills or areas of expertise to an individual role, or participating in researching and introducing new models of care. We recognise that effective leadership is the key to developing a future-forward culture, and we particularly focus on developing the next-generation leaders. Not every employee will embrace change on day one, but encouraging a growth and learning mindset throughout the organisation keeps things fresh, and enables employees to fulfil their potential.
Impact is closely aligned to meaning. Once employees understand what the organisation is trying to achieve – they need to know how their contribution is impacting on the wider goal. All too often we hear employees say they never know how they are doing until they have done something wrong! With our performance management framework we encourage regular reviews and feedback so employees know how they are doing, and if there is a performance gap they are given support to improve.
The average person spends nearly 5000 days at work in their lifetime, we often spend more of our waking hours with work colleagues than family. For many people the connections they have at work are vital to their enjoyment of life. In many studies the differentiator between happy and unhappy people is the quality of their relationships. In a people driven business, it’s important for organisations to create opportunities for employees to collaborate and support each other, and to know how to develop deep and supportive relationships. We work with groups of employees to define their values and behaviours, to increase their sense of a shared language and understanding, and to develop better empathy and communication.
We have bespoke tools for measuring employee engagement for the whole workforce or a section.
We work with you to develop and implement strategies for improvement.
