leadership Archives

What is active listening, and why should you use it at work?

Posted on April 29, 2021August 11, 2023 by Chris James

Active listening is the process of fully engaging with someone during a conversation by paying careful attention, asking thoughtful questions, and taking the time to understand what’s being said. This is easier said than done, as active listening requires an immense amount of focus. But investing in this skill is well worth the effort, as you’ll see in our post.

Why active listening is an essential workplace skill

You may be wondering: Don’t we practice active listening every day? Not necessarily. It’s important to recognise that there’s a huge difference between hearing and listening. The former is a passive process, while the latter is active. We’ll illustrate the difference with an example.

Let’s say you’re having a conversation with a colleague about an urgent project. When you’re speaking, it’s clear they’re not paying attention – they’re constantly glancing at their phone and not making eye contact. Your teammate also frequently interjects with their own thoughts without acknowledging yours. While this colleague may hear what you say, it’s clear they’re not actively listening.

Now let’s say you’re having the same conversation with a different team member. This person gives you verbal cues to make it clear they’re engaged with you. They also give you the space to speak and follow up with thoughtful questions to make sure they understand what you’re saying. This is active listening in action.

Seeing these two examples side-by-side, it’s clear why active listening is an essential skill for the workplace. By practicing active listening, you can:

Form better relationships. When you take the time to listen to your colleagues, you strengthen your relationship with them. Having a solid foundation like this makes it easier to collaborate, communicate, and work through problems.

Position yourself as a leader. Being a good leader and being a good listener go hand-in-hand. When you can demonstrate that you possess active listening skills, people are more likely to respect you and turn to you for guidance.

Improve your problem-solving abilities. In every role, you’re going to encounter obstacles. How well you overcome these hurdles has a lot to do with your ability to understand the problem – and this can only be accomplished by actively listening to the inputs of your team members.

5 recommendations to practice active listening

Now that you understand the importance of active listening in the workplace, let’s discuss tactics to incorporate them into your day-to-day role. Here are a few of our favorite recommendations.

1. Approach the conversation with an open mind

When you enter a conversation with a rigid mindset, it’s unlikely to be productive. You’ll be so focused on getting your own point across that it’ll be difficult to pay attention to what the other person says. Instead, try to approach every discussion with an open mind and be prepared to change your mind. This will make the process of active listening much more manageable.

2. Use verbal cues

Paying attention to verbal cues is critical to active listening. For instance, you may notice that your colleague frowns when talking about a decision made by the leadership team. This is an excellent opportunity to ask a follow-up question to see what’s bothering them and better understand their situation.

Similarly, you want to provide verbal cues as well. Nodding, smiling, and making eye contact are all great ways to show your conversation partner that you’re engaged with what they’re saying. This type of body language also makes whoever you’re speaking with feel more comfortable, increasing the chances that they’ll be transparent with you.

3. Ask clarifying questions

A great way to strengthen your active listening skills is to ask thoughtful follow-up questions. By doing so, you’re signalling to the other person that you’re interested in the conversation and are eager to hear the speaker’s message. These clarifying questions also present a great opportunity to deepen your understanding of the discussion.

4. Be present

We’ve all had the experience of being part of a conversation where we excitedly wait for the perfect moment to interject with an opinion or fun fact. While this is totally normal, it can take away from the experience of active listening. When you’re busy planning what you’re going to say, you’re likely not paying attention to the other person and won’t absorb the information they’re sharing.

5. Paraphrase

Another great technique for active listening is to paraphrase what the other person is saying. This gives you an opportunity to confirm that you’ve fully understood the message your colleague is trying to convey. If you’re not sure how to do this, try using a phrase like “what I’m hearing from our conversation is that…” And follow up with “am I understanding you correctly?” to give the other person an opportunity to make clarifications.

Active listening is a valuable skill that can be used both in and out of the workplace. With enough practice, you’ll start to experience the benefits, from forming stronger relationships to improving your problem-solving skills. Use our recommendations to practice, strengthen, and fine-tune your active listening skills.

5 practices to build a strong workplace culture from the Best Places to Work winners

Posted on December 8, 2020August 11, 2023 by Chris James

Every year, a research institute called Great Place to Work Australia compiles a list of organisations that are considered to have the most desirable company cultures. This ranking is based on surveys of nearly 40,000 Australian employees, as well as an evaluation of the employers’ policies and procedures.

According to the research institute, a great place to work can be defined as one “where you trust the people you work with, have pride in what you do, and enjoy the people you work with.” But what exactly does this mean? We took a closer look at what these top-notch companies are doing to keep their employees happy and identified four best practices that you can put into action with your own workforce.

5 Best practices to build a strong workplace culture

Drawing inspiration from the 2020 Best Places To Work list, we’ve pulled out some of the best practices that these companies use to strengthen their workplace culture.

1. Take a purpose-driven approach to business

Purpose-driven organisations have clearly identified their reasons for existing – beyond just their profits, products, and services. And this purpose is infused into every aspect of their business, from the employee experience to the business strategy. These are the types of companies that people increasingly want to work for – especially Millennials, with 84% of this demographic believing that making a difference is more important than professional recognition.

This is a lesson that Interactive embodies well, and is the first step on Interactive’s five pillar wellbeing strategy, which is likely why it’s ranked first in this year’s Best Places To Work list. Director of People and Culture at Interactive, Merylee Crockett shares the other pillars on her list:

Start with purpose – A commitment to keeping your why at the core of every decision you make.
Safety – A commitment to keeping each other safe and investing in the physical and psychological wellbeing of our people.
Connection – A commitment to a connected and collaborative workplace.
Health – A commitment to nurturing your physical, mental and financial health.
Resilience – A commitment to learn from any adversity thrown your way.

At Interactive, building a resilient culture requires an integrated approach across all five pillars to succeed. Leaning on these pillars has allowed the workforce to stay resilient together by coping with adversity, continuing to build and adapt, and learning from their experiences.

2. Make your leaders accessible to employees

Employees want to hear from their leadership team regularly – especially during times like today when circumstances are constantly changing. In fact, this type of engagement is so important that 91% of employees say communication issues can drag executives down.

That’s likely why IT service provider Insentra, which has featured on the Best Places To Work list for five years running, is focused on opening up communication channels between its executive team and the rest of the organisation – especially after going fully remote during COVID-19. Insentra’s co-founder and CEO, Ronnie Altit, explains that he’s been making a more conscious effort to engage in conversations with employees across all levels – even if that’s just sending them a quick message to say hello.

He’s also trying to make himself as accessible by hosting weekly team calls that provide employees with an opportunity to ask questions, engage in conversations, or simply provide an update on how things are going across the rest of the organisation.

3. Care personally

One of the most common themes we identified on Australia’s 2020 Best Places To Work list is the importance of caring personally. In response to the global pandemic, employers have stepped up to provide their teams with the resources and support they need to stay healthy, productive, and optimistic during these challenging times.

For example, Terlya Hunt the People Experience Manager at SafetyCulture went above and beyond to keep their employee as happy and healthy as possible during the pandemic. The company launched a new EAP to help employees build mental fitness, provided education on how to hold space for vulnerable conversations, and set weekly themes for Mental Health Month in October to cover all aspects of wellness – such as finances and nutrition.

4. Listen to what your employees have to say

Companies with strong cultures always listen to what their employees have to say. Many times, HR teams and company leaders make assumptions about what their workforce wants – and it’s not always aligned with reality. To prevent this from happening, use tools like pulse checks and surveys to collect feedback from your employees.

These types of listening strategies are a huge part of what sets the best companies apart from the rest. SAP Australia, which is on the 2020 list for Best Places To Work, released a remote ‘pulse check’ this year so that their employees could regularly share how they’re feeling and what management could do to support them. Similarly, Insentra has been continuously surveying its workforce to identify any communication gaps.

5. Build a culture of resilience

Lucy Horne, a researcher from New Zealand, defines resilience as a trait that allows people to adapt to and learn from adversity. During the pandemic, HR analysts like Josh Bersin have been stressing the importance of building resilient organisations, cultures, and people. Not only does this allow companies to survive tough times, but it’s also integral to the wellbeing of employees.

Lucy Lithgow the General Manager of People and Culture at BPAY set up a various initiatives across her organisation to give her staff more autonomy and trust because this is something she believes is key in driving a resilient culture. During this time, BPAY went from a good employee engagement rate to a 92% engagement rate this year. Some of the initiatives Lucy implemented includes: removing the requirement for employees produce a medical certificate if need the day off, removing the company dress code and finally allowing all employees to be given access to the recognition budget so that they can now recognise and reward a colleague or a peer for going above and beyond. These things have really helped BPAY foster a resilient culture.

There’s so much we can learn from these inspiring companies and their HR teams – especially today, when workplace culture is more critical than ever before. Take these learnings from the organisations featured on the Best Places To Work list and put them into practice today. To learn how Flare HR’s free onboarding software and employee benefits can strengthen your company culture, request a demo.

Lauren Dick from Relier Group on how to train employees and build high-performance teams

Posted on July 1, 2020August 11, 2023 by Chris James

We interviewed Lauren Dick, the founder and director of Relier Group. Lauren has over 10 years of experience working for Australian owned retail brands such as Kookai, Aje and Tigerlily. In her experience working as a national training and development manager for Tigerlily and a National Retail Manager at Aje, she was responsible for coaching and developing hundreds of individual sales associates all across Australia.

She has now launched her own business, Relier Group, which is a HR consultancy business with the goal of making enterprise training and recruitment accessible for all businesses. Lauren uses her skills to build bespoke training programs and talent acquisition programs which help her clients build high performance teams who achieve consistent business results.

What are the company values of Relier Group and how do you uphold these values?

Relier is a french word with an English translation which means to connect. Connection is my founding value and my two other values are community and communication. My goal is to help businesses connect with their staff so that they can generate customer loyalty, client loyalty, and employee engagement. The communication value is based on open, honest, transparent and kind communication.

The reason I started Relier is because not all companies can afford to have an in house training manager or an in house HR support, so I started Relier so that no business would have to miss out on the benefits that HR can establish between an employee and the business.

What are some things you’ve learned by working in HR?

One of the biggest things I’ve learned by working in HR is to get feedback from the staff who are customer-facing because they tend to understand the customer best. Some businesses make the mistake of making assumptions about what their customer wants when they are quite removed from their customers. A better strategy is to ask their customer-facing staff for feedback.

Another important lesson I’ve learned is to coach your team to make decisions for themselves. I’ve worked in roles where I would have 300 people reporting to me, so it would be impossible to dictate every decision everyone makes. Instead, I learned to coach my team into being autonomous. By asking them the right questions which are thought-provoking and solution-focused. In the long term being able to coach people into making the right decisions instead of telling them what to do will mean you will develop a team of amazing leaders that are ready to take on new challenges.

Where do you go to learn?

I think that the best way to learn is to look at what other companies are doing well, what they’re not doing well, and then developing an innovative strategy based on that. I would probably say a lot of my learning is self driven and is about understanding the competitive climate.

How do you ensure that a new hire is a good fit for your clients?

In my experience with recruiting for large companies for several years, what I’ve learned is that the culture first approach gets the best outcome in the end. The culture first approach means that you hire people based on cultural fit first, rather than their technical skill. The reason why I use this approach is because I believe that the best outcomes don’t always come from the people who have the best technical skill. Culture fit is especially important in a client and customer facing role, because the employees are representing the brand to customers and clients in everything they do. In my experience, a culture fit is always more important than a skill fit because skill fit is easier to find.

What tips would you give someone who’s just starting out in HR?

In any HR role, you have to start by really mastering leadership and mastering people management. Theory can only teach you so much it really comes down to getting practical experience in leadership and management roles. In these roles you will be able to learn how to manage different personalities, learn how to be an effective communicator and how to take on feedback to give feedback.

Education comes next when you’re at the point where you do want to step into a generalist role or a HR specific role. However, experience comes first because it’s hard to give advice when you haven’t been in the situation yourself. That’s why it’s important to pick your field, get experience, lead people, become an amazing leader and then go from there.

What are some of the best things that you’ve learned about leadership?

I think good leadership starts with communication. One of the best things I’ve learned is how to communicate effectively and drive learning for different personality types. Learning that different people have different needs has been really beneficial for me.

I’ve learnt to tailor my communication based on the needs and innate motivations of each individual team member and this has certainly been fundamental to my success. For example, I consider who in my network is an intuitive leader, who is driven by analytics, who is driven by individual success, who is more driven by shared team successes and so on. This then determines how I lead, coach and personalise their training to optimise outcomes. Communicating differently with each personality type is a skill I’ve learnt through retail training courses and consistent applied practice throughout my entire career.

How do you lead, coach and strategise with clients to achieve great retention rates for them?

It depends on what service they need, whether it be hiring and performance advice or developing customer service models.

My approach is to collaborate with the entire team, get to know the customer and develop a model which is customised for them. This helps to improve the retention rates and get better results on the shop floor.

Adjusting the focus and roles of the team to ensure that the right people are in the right roles is also important. For example, moving team members to focus on KPIs or moving them from a KPIs focus to a networking focus. This process ensures that my clients can retain talent and save on costs associated with having to hire or train new employees.

How do you ensure that new hires of your clients have a great experience?

I work on the onboarding process for my clients as a first step. An example which comes to mind is when I developed a digital onboarding experience using Flare for one of my clients. This client was a holiday and travel business, so I developed an onboarding process which was aligned to their values. In this onboarding process, it would take new starters on a digital journey which was really unique to the client’s business. I believe that a new starter’s onboarding experience sets the tone for what they can expect on their first days at work.

Are there any final words you’d like to share with our audience?

The best thing you can do is communicate regularly with your team and lead with kindness. This can help you ensure that you are staying productive and working towards your goals.

Some businesses are afraid to share results with their team, however I believe that it’s important to educate your team on the results, why they’re important and how they can impact the business in a positive way. Showing your team that they are important and they can make an impact is my biggest tip.

15 best questions to ask in an employee satisfaction survey

Posted on June 23, 2020August 9, 2023 by Chris James

Every company wants their employees to be happy at their jobs. But the challenge is that many employers aren’t even aware that their workers are unhappy until it’s too late. This is how most organisations end up losing their top talent to competitors. To prevent this from happening, you may want to consider introducing an employee satisfaction survey to better keep a finger on the pulse.

If you’re not sure how to get started, don’t worry! We’re here to help. We’ll explain exactly what an employee satisfaction survey is, how to set one up, and share recommended questions in this post.

What is an employee satisfaction survey, and why is it important?

An employee satisfaction survey is an objective tool that’s used to measure how your workers feel about their jobs, their work environment, and the overall company culture. It’s an effective way to collect feedback from your workforce – regardless of size – and use that data to make more informed decisions about things like performance, retention, and innovation.

You may be asking: why do I need a survey to do this? Why can’t I just talk to my employees to figure out whether they’re satisfied with their jobs or not? This is a fair question. There are a few reasons why this isn’t the most effective way to measure employee satisfaction.

Related article: 10 Ideas to help you boost your employee engagement

You’re susceptible to bias. All humans have bias. So if you’re looking to collect objective data, conversations aren’t the best way to do so. For instance, as the HR leader, you want everyone at the company to be happy. Which means you’re more likely to highlight the positive feedback you receive and deprioritise the negative or constructive feedback. This doesn’t give you an accurate sense for employee satisfaction.

You’re not seeing the big picture. Let’s say you talk to one or two employees who absolutely love working at your company. You may walk away thinking that your employee satisfaction levels are fine. But what about the other 100 employees that you didn’t talk to? The truth is that one-on-one conversations, while valuable, aren’t scalable and don’t paint the bigger picture of what’s going on.

Your employees might not be honest with you. Finally, there’s a good chance that if you ask an employee how they feel about their work and the company, they’re not going to be completely honest with you. This is completely natural. People may not feel comfortable sharing their true thoughts or may think they’ll be punished for saying something negative about leadership. Either way, you can’t expect your workers to give you full transparency.

How to conduct an employee satisfaction survey

While you certainly have the ability to conduct your own employee satisfaction survey, we recommend investing in a software platform to help you instead. The reason is because running and analysing your own surveys takes up a ton of time.

Not only do you have to come up with the right questions, build your survey, and manually calculate your results, but you also have to be able to translate all this information into a comprehensive report or dashboard to share back with your leadership team and employees.

On the other hand, if you use a comprehensive performance management tool like Culture Amp and Lattice, it’ll be much less resource intensive. Both of these platforms will easily be able to help you launch your survey, come up with the right questions for your workforce, collect the feedback, and find ways to take action on the data that comes in.

There are a few best practices to keep in mind when conducting an employee satisfaction survey, regardless of whether you do it yourself or turn to a platform:

Be consistent. This means that if this is meant to be a twice-a-year survey, you have to consistently distribute it twice a year. Otherwise you risk skewing the accuracy of your data and won’t be able to measure progress.

Make it anonymous. As we mentioned above, employees likely won’t be honest in the survey if their identities are attached to their responses. So make sure your survey is anonymised to protect your employees and encourage transparency.

15 Questions to include in your survey

Below we outlined 15 key questions to include in your survey, which are categorised into three buckets: company culture, work fulfillment, and management/leadership. These are the pillars that have a huge influence on an employee’s satisfaction levels. Keep in mind that these questions are by no means comprehensive, so feel free to add on any others that are relevant to your business.

Company Culture

These questions gauge how your employee feels about the company culture and work environment. This is all about measuring overall sentiment around how the company treats its employees, and whether or not someone feels compelled to look for a new job.

1. Do you feel positively about our company culture?

2. On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to recommend our company as a great place to work?

3. Are you proud to work at our company?

4. Can you see yourself working here two years from now?

Work fulfillment

These questions are focused specifically on how an employee feels in their role. This digs into everything from how fulfilled they feel by their work to how compatible they are with their fellow teammates.

5. Do you feel proud of the work you’re doing?

6. Are you aligned with the company’s mission and vision?

7. Do you feel like the company is invested in your personal and professional growth?

8. Are your roles and responsibilities clearly defined?

9. Is your team supportive of one another?

Management/Leadership

These questions are about how employees perceive the leadership and management teams. It’s about identifying whether or not they feel their executives are honest, reliable, and have their best interests in mind.

10. On a scale of 1-5, how transparent do you think the leadership team is?

11. Do you feel informed about what’s happening at the company?

12. Does your manager make you feel supported and valued?

13. Do you feel comfortable approaching your manager with work-related problems?

14. Is the leadership team’s expectations of your performance clear?

15. Are you connected to the resources you need to succeed in your role?

Related article: 5 Ways to help your employees improve their financial wellbeing

Next steps

Even after you collect the data from your employee satisfaction survey, the work isn’t quite over yet! There are a few next steps to take into consideration:

Use the data as a benchmark. If this is your first time running an employee satisfaction survey, your results will serve as the benchmark for next year. In other words, the next time you run this survey, the goal is to compare it to these first round of results and (hopefully) be able to note progress.

Boost participation rates. With every survey, your goal is to have as many employees participate as possible. If you found that your participation rates were low this year, don’t worry. There are many tactics you can use – from sending out eye-catching reminder emails or Slack messages to incentivising employees with a prize – to increase participation rates.

Identify a few actionable insights. The most important thing you can do with your survey results is to take action. For instance, if a common theme in your data was that employees didn’t feel like the leadership team was transparent enough, it may be time to introduce one to two new initiatives to address that issue. This can be having “Ask Me Anything” sessions once a week or having your company leaders set up more one-on-one meetings with employees throughout the year. Don’t try to address all the issues at once – otherwise you’ll feel overwhelmed. Instead, take one or two of the most pressing issues and focus on them over the next few months.

Employee satisfaction surveys are a powerful tool that can help you retain top talent, improve performance, and increase innovation at your company. Follow these steps to get your survey started on the right foot.
If you’re looking for an additional HR software to support your business, Flare offers a free onboarding software with employee management and benefits. To learn more, please request a demo.

Nadine Blackie from Flare on how to build high-performance teams and great company cultures

Posted on June 18, 2020August 11, 2023 by Chris James

To kick off the HR and leadership series, we will be interviewing Nadine Blackie.

Nadine is the Head of Talent Acquisition at Flare HR. She has over 10 years of experience in talent acquisition for high growth startups in the tech sector. She has built high-performance teams for venture-backed startups that have experienced rapid transformation and growth. She’s worked at well-known companies in the startups space including Flare, Ansarada, Relic Entertainment and Hootsuite across Sydney, Australia and Vancouver, Canada.

Nadine’s passion for people and high growth companies led her to working at Flare where she’s built a world class, mission-driven team and a balanced culture that is working towards Flare’s mission: to help every working Australian live their best financial life.

Here are the highlights from our interview with Nadine on talent acquisition and human resources.

What do you enjoy about working in Talent and HR?

In the world of Talent and People, you have the ability to positively impact others and brighten someone’s day. Whether it be putting a smile on someone’s face by calling out their win, or removing a roadblock for someone to be more productive in their day to day, or coaching a manager through a tough conversation. It’s super rewarding work to be able to help others.

Where do you go to learn about HR and leadership?

I lean into my talented network and my mentors. They have a wealth of knowledge.

HR Open Source (hros.co) is also a great open source community and Facebook group where HR professionals share resources and tools with each other, such as: case studies, tools, engagement initiatives and wellness programs. When people are willing to share knowledge and give their perspective, we can more quickly level up and improve upon each other’s work.

What are some new ideas from other companies which have inspired you?

I am inspired by companies and People leaders who challenge the norm and make proactive ideas come to life.

The global pandemic has caused companies to evaluate the current landscape and plan for the future of work. For example, Twitter and Facebook are now allowing their staff to work from home permanently if they wish.

In response to this pandemic, we will see new ideas emerge from People and business leaders and a new landscape will unfold.

What is the culture like at Flare?

At Flare, we have a startup culture of taking big swings, building quickly and sharing in the impact of driving growth and positive change. We are constantly innovating against the status quo and learning new things.

Our team is a passionate and talented group. Culturally, the team is down to earth, doesn’t take themselves too seriously, works at a fast pace, has full ownership to drive change and is accountable for delivering ideas. We are empowered to deliver quality work we are really proud of.

What are Flare’s company values and how do you uphold these values?

We have five company values which are embraced at Flare: People first, Bat .400, Trust the Process, Do the Right Thing and Act Like an Owner.

I’ll discuss my two favourites:

People first is a value that drives our decisions and creates a strong sense of community at Flare. We have a culture of people constantly looking out for one another and working together. We have an engaged and supportive team where people feel welcomed and have a safe place to show up as themselves.
Bat .400 is a value that encourages our team to swing the bat to achieve 10x growth, and at the same time, allows us to embrace failures as a part of the process. I played softball for a large part of my life, so the terminology resonates well with me, but for those who are unfamiliar, Bat .400 is a baseball term. If you have a batting average of .400, it would mean you have the highest batting average in the Hall of Fame. To get that high of an average, you’ve actually struck out or failed more times than you’ve had success. The idea behind Bat .400 is how can we continue swinging the bat even if we might fail or have failed. If you don’t step up to the plate, you’ll never hit that homerun.

What do you do in the recruitment process to ensure a candidate is a good fit?

At Flare, we have a thorough recruitment process with a series of key stages to ensure a candidate is the right fit. Here are few things that are important to us in the recruitment process:

Understanding motivations. Understanding the motivations and ambitions of candidates can help us understand the type of learning and achievement that a person would need to be successful in a role.
Learning about their experience and way of thinking. We like to see people in action by giving them a technical challenge like a coding test or a specific challenge relating to a role. This helps us remove bias from the hiring decision and helps us see how people approach and perform the challenge. It also gives the candidate a good understanding of the types of challenges they could face in the role.
Explore mutual fit. The final stage is diving deeper into getting to know the candidate and exploring a mutual fit. Interviewing is a two way street, so candidates are encouraged to ask just as many questions as we do in the process. Alongside the hiring team, we want candidates to have all their questions answered about starting a new adventure at Flare.

What is important for great leadership?

In my experience, great leaders are authentic, open, honest and always have the best intentions for their teams. Leading by example and showing up like that everyday is important to me, especially in challenging situations.

I believe that creating ways to help teams feel safe and supported leads to a healthier and engaged workplace. At Flare, we aim to share information and feedback as timely and honestly as possible, and we encourage open and honest communication. For example, we have an “ask_Flare” anything Slack channel, where employees can ask questions truly anonymously. These questions are responded to in the Slack channel, as well as, addressed every Monday in our all-hands meeting. We’ve found this to be a simple and effective way to hear what’s on our employees’ minds and address these sentiments in a transparent way.

Where did you learn your leadership style from?

I grew up playing team sports my whole life so my leadership style was initially developed from many years of playing on high performance sports teams.

I also have two strong, intelligent female leaders as mentors. They both really push and challenge me on how to approach conversations with my team and define how I wanted to show up as a leader.

What are some leadership strategies which work well for you?

Always being clear and consistent in communication, expectations, and showing up as yourself.
Being empathetic and objective while balancing the bigger picture and execution.
Being an open book and constantly evolving. Always asking for feedback, constantly learning and observing and comfortable admitting when you don’t know, but look for a plan to figure it out.
Focus on the team. Giving them the space to create the norms and define how, when and where they work best.
Hiring up so you can surround yourself with the best team.
Empower your team to do their best work by removing any roadblocks. both current and in the future. While supporting them through the challenges and celebrating their wins.

How have you engaged employees during the COVID-19 pandemic?

We’ve looked at ways to keep people connected and engaged from their remote work environment, as we shifted to a ‘work from home’ policy during COVID-19. Here’s some strategies we’ve implemented:

Creating community Slack channels like lunch time workouts (#thegym) or grabbing an after work beverage (#palisadeshappyhour), which we see employees engage in regularly
Celebrating birthdays with gifts delivered to employees’ homes
Iterating our weekly all-hands meeting, so we have a format which supports our remote work structure
Setting a company-wide “no meeting policy” from 12-1pm to help promote this time to get away from computers, reset and take a break
Creating new initiatives and activities through our Vibe Team. Many fun and diverse ideas from this group have been implemented across Flare

How do you keep retention rates high at your company?

Gathering and actioning employee feedback is critical to employee retention. We use employee engagement surveys to consistently checkin and understand how people are feeling in their roles.

During COVID-19, we’ve made these surveys monthly as things are changing so quickly. The feedback is helping us identify specific action items directly from our teams on ways we can improve their experiences. It’s important for us to create a place for people to share their thoughts, how they are feeling and share ideas around improvements while giving us insights to any undiscovered frustrations.

How do you ensure new hires have a great onboarding experience?

At Flare, our onboarding process is designed to help new hires transition into their new role in a smooth, informative and welcoming way. It is an exciting time for a new hire joining a company and a team welcoming a new teammate aboard, so both the big and little things in the onboarding experience matter.

Here are a few things we do to support our new teammates:

Use Flare to preboard and onboard new hires digitally. This gives our new hires a seamless way to auto-sign and complete employee documents (ie. employment contracts, policies, and bank, tax and super information) – no paperwork required. We also gather information to shape our employee’s first day experience. For example, on an employee’s first day, there are a series of personalised welcomes and things that happen to make it memorable
Send out an onboarding pack before someone starts
Welcome them on their first day with a hand written note from their manager, their favourite coffee and treat, and arm them with a prepaid coffee card to the neighbourhood cafe which allows them to treat and get to know their new teammates
Set them up with a buddy, so everyone has a go to person for questions, over lunch they will learn more about the company from a different perspective
Add them to the #newbies slack channel. The channel has resources like company acronyms, a map of where people sit, other helpful channels to join. Plus, it’s a space to ask questions or see what’s already been asked
Run induction sessions with different leaders within the business, so they can learn how the business operates, put faces to names, and better understand how their role impacts the bigger picture and mission at Flare

How do you promote employee wellbeing?

We rolled out a new Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to proactively approach employee wellbeing. The EAP supports a wide variety of topics like mental wellbeing and manager coaching, while leveraging technology to create an accessible employee experience.

Through Flare Benefits, our employees have access to discounts and benefits from a wide variety of retailers like Woolworths, KMART and JB Hi-Fi.

We are currently working on other employee programs that focus on wellness (physically and mentally), and learning and development.

Any final advice you’d like to share with our audience about how to lead people better?

In these unprecedented times, creating a people-first engaged workplace will help businesses thrive in the long run. At Flare, I’ve seen many people step up to lead initiatives, rise to the challenge and lean in to support each other. It’s incredible and inspiring to watch, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Finally, remembering that we are all human and everyone is being faced with unique stresses during this time. As leaders we don’t have all the answers, but being open and admitting when ‘we don’t know the answers’ is important. When leaders are transparent and honest, organisations become stronger and greater trust is built within people and teams. From my experience, when this happens, teams begin to work together more closely to solve problems, and can make the most out of whatever comes next.

Coronavirus: How HR leaders from Apple, Google and Nike are responding

Posted on March 17, 2020August 11, 2023 by Chris James

The Coronavirus has continued to spread worldwide at alarming numbers. During this time of uncertainty it’s more important than ever before that we get our communities, workplaces and ourselves prepared.

Companies are looking to HR and people leaders to plan and prepare for the change in work. HR plays a critical role in guiding employees and management teams to prepare, and help keep the calm with unprecedented new challenges arising.

HR teams from Apple, Google and more are sharing Coronavirus plans publicly

Some of the world’s biggest companies have joined together to crowdsource a collection of resources to help HR and business leaders inform their employees about their Coronavirus response plans.

Source: Coronavirus HR Comms & Resources Guide

Here’s the link to find a curated collection of public Coronavirus response communications, templates, news, remote work, hiring impact, and resources.

How to communicate Coronavirus information in your organisation

1. Build a Coronavirus response plan

A Coronavirus response plan is essential to help anticipate and develop solutions to the disruption it will cause to your business. The Coronavirus HR Communications & Resources gives you access to Playbooks, Responsive Plans, WFH policy templates from the global HR community.

2. Distribute your Coronavirus plan

Create an information hub where employees can find all the information they need. Consider a HR communications tool like Flare which can help you manage, distribute and amplify communications to employees easily and efficiently. You can schedule a free demo of Flare here.

3. Re-evaluate your work from home policy

Many of you will be making plans for some of your employees to start working from home. Some of you will already have started. Here is one of our favourite guides to managing remote work: 21 tips to remote working.

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