The Latest from Kristy-Lee

As business owners, we often find ourselves spending our entire day dealing with people, managing their needs, and navigating the complexities of teamwork.

As a business owner we need to step into the role of ‘leader’ in our business. However, many entrepreneurs and managers find themselves reluctant leaders, struggling to embrace their role as "the boss."

Instead of providing direction and leadership, they fall into what can be called the "non-boss mindset"—a hands-off approach where they hope their team will figure things out independently. While autonomy is important, a lack of leadership can create confusion, inefficiency, and frustration among employees.

If you've ever avoided making decisions, shied away from conflict, or found yourself reluctant to manage your team, you might be operating in this non-boss space.

Overcoming the Fear of Leadership

When we started our journey into entrepreneurship or embarked on our careers, we may not have anticipated that managing people ...

Hiring the right people is one of the most critical decisions a business owner or manager can make.

Yet, so often, interviews are filled with bad questions—the kind that don’t actually help assess a candidate’s suitability for the role.

If you’ve ever left an interview feeling like you didn’t get any real insights into an applicant, your questions might be to blame. Let’s explore the worst types of interview questions, why they fail, and how you can ask better ones to make smarter hiring decisions.

Why Interview Questions Matter

Many employers assume that candidates will volunteer all the important information they need to make a decision. But in reality:

• Candidates only answer what’s asked—if you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t get the right answers.
• A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work—questions should be tailored to the role and your business needs.
• Poor questions lead to poor hires—hiring mistakes are costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to your bu
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At the time of writing this, it’s Employee Appreciation Day!

Whilst this day is a great opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of your team (despite not being widely recognised in Australia), it’s not just about recognising your team on one day each year.

I thought this day was a great opportunity to discuss the value and importance of recognising our people more generally.

Taking the time to celebrate your employees can boost morale, improve engagement, and create a more positive workplace culture. Embedding gratitude and recognition into your daily leadership style will have a far greater impact than a single celebration.

Let’s explore why employee recognition is crucial, creative ways to celebrate Employee Appreciation Day, and how to foster a culture of appreciation year-round.

Why Employee Recognition Matters

It might seem like a small thing, but showing appreciation has a significant impact on workplace morale, engagement, and productivity.

Hiring great employees can be time-consuming, challenging, and even overwhelming. But with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), businesses can streamline the recruitment process, saving time and effort while improving hiring outcomes.

AI won’t replace human decision-making in hiring—it lacks intuition, emotional intelligence, and the ability to assess cultural fit. However, when used correctly, AI can speed up administrative tasks, enhance job ads, and help you find the right candidates more efficiently.

Here are five practical ways you can use AI to improve your hiring process.

1. Use AI to Write and Refine Job Descriptions

A well-crafted job description is the foundation of a successful hiring process. It sets expectations, attracts the right candidates, and filters out unqualified applicants.

How AI Helps:

• AI tools like ChatGPT can generate job descriptions based on specific role requirements, industry standards, and key skills.
• AI can suggest improvement
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When an employee resigns, employers often face a critical decision: should they require the employee to work out their notice period or let them leave immediately?

While it may seem like a simple yes-or-no question, the reality is more complex. There are legal considerations, business needs, and the overall impact on the team to take into account.

While notice periods exist to ensure a smooth transition, the question remains: does keeping a resigning employee on board benefit the business, or is it sometimes better to part ways early? Let’s break down everything you need to consider when making this decision.

Understanding Notice Periods and When They Apply

A notice period is the time between when an employee resigns (or is terminated) and when their employment officially ends. For permanent employees—whether full-time or part-time—notice periods are typically outlined in their employment contract or the relevant Modern Award, or The Fair Work Act.

The length of notice...

Hiring the right people is one of the most critical elements of business success.

The right employees can drive productivity, improve company culture, and help your business thrive. But hiring the wrong people? That can lead to inefficiency, workplace tension, and costly turnover.

Unfortunately, many business owners and managers fall into common hiring traps—ones that are completely avoidable with the right approach. The good news? By recognising these mistakes and making simple changes, you can dramatically improve your hiring success.

Here are three of the most common hiring mistakes—and exactly how to avoid them.

1. Lack of Clarity: Know Exactly Who You’re Hiring

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when hiring is not being clear on exactly what they need in a new employee. Many employers rush into recruitment without defining the role properly, leading to confusion, wasted time, and unsuitable hires.

Why This Happens:

• Urgency to fill a role quickly,
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The workplace is constantly evolving, and 2025 is shaping up to be another year of change.

Business owners and leaders need to be aware of the key shifts that will impact their teams—from changing employee expectations to the rise of AI and the increasing importance of workplace wellbeing.

What will 2025 bring for your team? Here are the top five workplace trends that will define the year ahead.

1. Job Mobility is on the Rise

If you thought the job market had settled after the turbulence of the past few years, think again. Employee mobility is set to increase, with more people actively looking to change jobs in 2025.

Several factors are driving this trend. The economic uncertainty that made many employees reluctant to switch roles is beginning to ease. The travel boom that kept workers tied to stable jobs (so they could take extended leave) has passed. And most significantly, employees are no longer willing to stay in jobs where they feel undervalued, underpaid, or o...

In the world of small business, we are always ruminating on the skills v’s fit tension when hiring new staff for organisations.

Commonly these days, the cultural and team fit far outweighs the skills requirements, but obviously new hires still need to have the fundamental and foundational skills to get the job done – otherwise what’s the point in hiring anyone?

In saying that, my advice to business owners, leaders and managers over and over again is this: you can hire the most technically competent and brilliant employee the market has to offer – but if their values don’t align with those of the business, they ultimately won’t be a great fit and they won’t last – meaning any benefits you gained by having their brilliance in your business will be eroded by the lack of alignment and fit, under engagement and ultimately the turnover of the role.

So, if fit is going to trump raw skills, and ultimately you will hire someone who fits into your team every time, provided they have ...

In a competitive market where applicants are in short supply and the struggle to even find one person who might be suitable for your role is real, it’s easy to think that there is no need to screen and assess applicants. Well, there is no one to screen, or so few applicants so what’s the point, right?

Actually, wrong. You see, despite there being far fewer applicants to chose from, the importance of making the right hiring choices hasn’t changed. The reality is you can’t outrun a bad hire. So even if there is only one applicant, hiring the wrong person is guaranteed to cause you more frustration, more stress and cost you more than hiring no one at all.

When we had only a handful of applicants to select from, screening effectively is even more important because in these moments we can lose focus and clarity on what’s really important, out of desperation, overwhelm and stress. We waiver on the previous non negotiables, and start to consider applicants who we know really aren’t ri...

Hiring the right person, the first time, is essential to building a successful, productive and high performing team.

But in a tough market, it isn’t always easy. I anticipate that in 2025 we may experience a challenging hiring period where attracting great applicants to your roles, especially in some industries, will be tricky.

If you’ve hired recently, or are in the process of hiring right now, you’ll know what we’re talking about.

Maybe once you would be inundated with applications, right now it’s looking more like a dried-up oasis. Even the bad applications aren’t coming through.

You don’t always want to hire anyone as a stop-gap because they could create more damage to your business and team in the long-run. It’s still incredibly important to be considered and strategic with your recruitment processes.

Business owners and managers alike may be frustrated, desperate for help and uncertain about how to continue without finding the right staff (or any staff) for their...