The Latest from Kristy-Lee

Most Australian small business owners genuinely want their team to feel good at work, and most have tried something in the name of wellbeing: a morning tea, a wellness day, maybe a gym membership perk.

The problem is that most of these efforts treat the symptom, not the cause, and that's why they rarely move the needle.

Workplace wellbeing expert Amy Green, author of The Wellness Paradox, shared her expertise over on The People Powered Business podcast recently to help me unpack what actually drives wellbeing at work, and why the free coffee and the yoga mats were never really the answer.

Here's an overview of the key points of our discussion.

Why do most workplace wellbeing initiatives fail to make a difference?

Because they focus on quick, feel-good fixes instead of the underlying conditions that make people want to do good work.

Amy describes this as the difference between hedonic wellbeing, the instant, feel-good stuff like morning teas and massages, and eudaimonic wellbeing,...

Hello and welcome to Episode 333 of The People Powered Business Podcast.

Do you catch yourself giving instructions that come with a pre-packaged apology? "Sorry to be a pain, but..." "Sorry, I know you're flat out, but..." If every request you make of your team arrives wrapped in a sorry, this episode is for you.

And if you think that little apology is you being kind, I'd love you to keep reading, because it's doing the opposite of what you intend.

A couple of episodes back we talked about the risks of over-explaining yourself to your team, and I briefly mentioned that over-explaining often comes with an apology attached. As I've been working with my Power Boss clients over the last few weeks, I've realised just how many of us have fallen into apologising as a default. One client even emailed me to say it felt like I was looking straight at her.

We do this almost subconsciously, usually because we've worked for the barking-orders type of boss and decided we'd never be that person. ...

A lot of Australian small business owners undermine their own authority without realising it, not through anything dramatic, but through the small habit of over-explaining, apologising, or adding a disclaimer before giving a perfectly reasonable instruction.

It feels considerate in the moment.

What it actually signals to a team is that decisions are up for negotiation, and that erodes trust faster than almost anything else a leader does. If you've ever caught yourself justifying a decision before you've even finished making it, this is worth an honest look.

What is actually happening when you over-explain a decision to your team?

Over-explaining tells your team, whether you mean it to or not, that your decisions are open for discussion. It replaces clarity with noise, and your team ends up more confused about what's actually expected of them, not less.

The fix isn't to stop explaining altogether, it's to separate giving context from asking for permission, because only one of those...

Hello and welcome to Episode 332 of The People Powered Business Podcast.

Have you thrown money at wellbeing perks in your business, morning teas, a gym membership, maybe even a "wellness day," and still feel like your team is running on empty? You're not doing it wrong. You've just been sold the wrong fix, and you're definitely not alone.

I keep hearing this from business owners I work with. They genuinely care about their people, they've ticked the boxes they were told to tick, and they're still watching staff disengage, burn out or walk out the door anyway.

It's estimated Australian businesses spend around $64 million a year on wellbeing initiatives, and most of it goes towards treating symptoms rather than causes. So for this episode I sat down with workplace wellbeing strategist, speaker and author Amy Green. Amy's a former teacher and school leader who's spent the last decade working with schools, corporates and individual leaders, helping them properly rethink what keeps peopl...

Most Australian small business owners have at least one team member whose behaviour, attendance, or performance isn't where you want it to be, and most put off doing anything about it.

The instinct to wait it out feels reasonable in the moment: maybe it's a bad week, maybe raising it will come across as picking on someone over something small. But staying quiet doesn't buy you time, it costs you authority, and the longer it goes on, the harder the eventual conversation becomes.

What actually happens when you let bad behaviour slide?

Silence doesn't read as patience to your employee, it reads as permission.

Every day you don't address a problem confirms, in their eyes, that what they're doing is acceptable, so there's no reason for them to change it. The behaviour doesn't stay the same size either. Left unaddressed, it tends to expand, because nothing is stopping it from doing so.

If you're running a team, you've probably felt this exact tension.

You notice something isn't right, ...

Hello and welcome to Episode 331 of The People Powered Business Podcast.

Do you ever catch yourself justifying a decision to your team three different ways before you've even finished the sentence? Or slip in an apology before giving a completely reasonable instruction? If that's you, you're not alone, and it's costing you more than you think.

I see this constantly with the business owners I work with: over-explaining, apologising, adding disclaimers to decisions. It feels considerate, it feels inclusive, it feels kind. But it's actually undermining your authority and changing how your team sees you as a leader, whether you realise it or not. Most of us do it because we don't want to be the boss who barked orders without any context, the boss none of us wanted to work for. This one flies under the radar because it looks like good manners rather than a leadership issue, so I wanted to unpick it properly, because I promise you, every business owner has done this at some point.

In this...

Halfway through the year is when a lot of Australian small business owners have to admit that the first six months didn't go the way they'd hoped.

Rising costs, ongoing compliance changes, and the daily challenge of running a team can leave you staring down the back half of the year wondering how to get everyone refocused, without turning it into an awkward, formal performance conversation.

The answer sits somewhere you might not expect: professional sport.

The best coaches in the world reset an underperforming team in about fifteen minutes at half time, and the same approach works just as well in a small business as it does in a locker room.

What does a mid-year team reset actually involve?

A mid-year reset can be a short, honest conversation, it doesn't need to be a formal review and not a full day locked away in a planning session. It follows the same shape a good sports coach uses at half time: name the score honestly, pick one or two things to change, reconnect the team to wh...

Hello and welcome to Episode 330 of The People Powered Business Podcast.

Have you ever watched a sporting team go into the halftime break looking completely defeated, then come out in the second half looking like an entirely different team? That shift doesn't happen by accident. Something happens in that locker room, and whatever those coaches are saying, it works. So what if you could borrow that same approach for your business right now?

With the FIFA World Cup on in our house (I live with an ex-professional footballer, so there's no escaping it), I've been watching these halftime turnarounds with fresh eyes. It struck me that the best coaches in the world are doing exactly what the best business leaders should be doing at the midway point in the year. And right now, with July 1 here and 2026 already half done, this feels like exactly the right moment to talk about it.

For a lot of business owners, the first half of this year has been genuinely tough. Rising costs, ongoing complia...

Most small business owners think they have an HR problem when what they really have is a structure problem. When your team constantly comes to you with questions, you're putting out fires every day, and managing people feels harder than it should, it's tempting to look for a quick fix.

The reality is that software, templates and compliance documents won't solve people problems on their own. What most growing businesses need is a simple framework that creates clarity, consistency and confidence for both leaders and employees.

What's actually causing the chaos in your team?

In most cases, managing staff feels difficult because there are no clear systems or structure guiding how people are hired, onboarded, managed and supported. Without that foundation, business owners become the default answer to every question, every problem and every decision.

If you've ever found yourself thinking, "Why won't they think for themselves?" or "Why am I involved in everything?", you're not alone.

Hello and welcome to Episode 329 of The People Powered Business Podcast.

Have you ever felt like you're drowning in information but still not sure what action to take when it comes to managing your team? Maybe you've downloaded templates, Googled answers, asked AI for help and still found yourself second-guessing whether you're doing the right thing. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. The reality is that managing people in business has become more complex, not less, and many business owners are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available.

In this episode, I'm taking you behind the scenes of my own business and sharing a significant change that's happening inside People Powered HR. As I celebrate 20 years in business, I've been reflecting on one thing that has remained true throughout every stage of growth and change: when the game changes, we need to change with it. I've seen this happen before, from launching my recruitment business in 2006, to moving in...