The Latest from Kristy-Lee

One of the key frustrations and pain points I hear about from business owners, leaders and managers is around an employee not performing. Either very directly simply failing to get their job done, or more covertly just not quite meeting the mark, or frustratingly just walking the line of getting things done – just – it’s constant frustration.

Quite often we feel frustrated because our Industrial Relations landscape is quite firmly focused on employees, and protecting their rights, leaving businesses with a whole lot of tricky red tape to deal with in managing underperformance, especially when termination may be on the cards. However, what might be really causing our frustration is the fact that we don’t really understand why on earth they can’t just do their job.

If you’ve ever found yourself wanting to bang your head against a wall wondering why they aren’t just doing what you need them to – you’ll know exactly...

Ever heard the saying ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’? If you have, how much attention have you paid to it? If you’re like me, and many other business owners and entrepreneurs I know, you’re pretty good at putting your head in the sand on this one, think it doesn’t apply to you, and, most likely, think it’s extraordinarily selfish to even consider the fact that perhaps looking after yourself needs to be a priority.

Here’s the thing, like many of you, I spent my career, and my life, looking after everyone else first. Squeezing in time to replenish my mind, look after my health or do anything for my mental wellness was at best just that – squeezing it in around everything else. And by the most part that was a pretty successful approach. I had a thriving, fast growing and successful business, everyone was well looked after and life was good. I was juggling all of the things, working all the hours and truly thought I was smashing...

There is this common misconception in leadership books, amongst leadership gurus and in the advice we hear – and that is that when you’re a leader, you aren’t allowed to have a bad day. You can’t be off your game, you can’t be feeling blah and you certainly can’t let anyone in on that.

I call BS on that.

We’re human, whether we run a business, or lead a team within a business, you have days when you’d to be honest, rather just not have to deal with people. Of course most of us don’t have that luxury – we have to show up for our team and get some work done. However, that doesn’t mean that you need to put on an act, pretend that you’re fine when you’re not or not acknowledge that you’re just not having the best day – for whatever reason.

In fact, doing this sets the wrong example for our team. If someone on your team is feeling a little off, or is otherwise distracted, for...

At the time of writing this here in Australia we are in the midst of the ongoing impact of COVID-19. It feels like a dance, the in and out of lockdown dance. Unlike the initial periods of impact this virus had on us, where we were ‘all in it together’ we are now quite often a country divided. Victoria has been in and out of lockdown more times than they care to count, Sydney are in the midst of a long drawn out period of restrictions and in fact right now more than half the population are currently under some form of restrictions.

With all of the uncertainty that the last 18 months has delivered, one thing that has proven certain is this: all businesses require great leaders to survive and flourish, and through a period of crisis in any organisation, economy or environment, it’s our business leaders who have the ability to really pull us through.

If you’re in a leadership role, whether it’s your business or someone else’s, that fact may feel like...

At the time of writing this I myself am caught up in the Sydney 2021 ‘lockdown’ – despite the fact I live outside of Sydney, and like many it’s reminded me of how much the world of work has changed in the last 18 months.

I’ve spoken a lot about hybrid teams in recent months, because the big discussion has been around returning staff to physical offices and workplaces, whilst balancing their newfound sense of expectation around working from home becoming a new norm. In my view, the businesses who can balance their need to ‘see’ their staff in an office, with the teams work from home desires, will do best when it comes to retaining the best and brightest for their business. In fact, I heard just a couple of weeks ago about a big international corporate mandating no less than 3 days per week in office, which was causing much tension amongst their team who had all come to a common consensus that 2 days in office was sufficient and...

Small business and fast growing entrepreneurial organisations who are looking to service more clients and bigger projects faster and more efficiently have always been creative in how to manage this growth in their organisations.

One of the key strategies many small business use to facilitate growth in a low risk, cost effective way, is engaging contractors rather than employees to help meet their growing client demands. And there are lots of great arguments for why businesses should utilise this option.

However, with the prevalence of contract labour available, and the fact that this now seems to have become ‘common practice’ amongst small businesses, the line between what constitutes and employee and a contractor has become blurred in the eyes of many business owners. And those who don’t understand this are finding themselves caught in costly and potentially business destroying legal battles, purely because the right structure has not been put in...

Today is the end of the financial year, and for many businesses the plans, goals, strategies and projects they put in place at the beginning of the year may be just gradually moving along, or in some cases (thanks COVID) things may have been upended more than once.

At the beginning of the year we are typically all bright eyed and bushy tailed. We are refreshed from our traditional Christmas close down and break, we are motivated by our vision for the year ahead and excited to share it with our team.

For many of you that may have looked like a team planning and strategy day, where you got the whole team together, virtually or in person, to share the vision, get them excited and communicate clearly their role in making that happen.

That results in a great spike in engagement, as our teams all want to be part of something bigger, and when we can clearly articulate their roles in achieving that, and they can see what we’re working towards, they naturally get...

At the time of writing this particular article, the Fair Work Commission has handed down its decision following the Annual Minimum Wage Review process. The process involves the Commission reviewing submissions from various interested parties, including employer and employee representative groups, as well as analysing data relating to wages, such as changes to cost of living and alike.

Essentially, they are looking to ensure that the minimum wages set out in the Fair Work Act, including the National Minimum Wage, as well as al Award minimum rates of pay, is set at an appropriate level for our economic conditions.

What we typically see is that each year the National Minimum Wage, and all Award minimum rates of pay, will increase by a fixed percentage, and this increase has always taken place 1 July that year.

However, COVID-19 last year gave rise to ‘exceptional circumstances’ which allowed the Commission to make the determination, but alter how this...

In a recent report our of Swinburne University, entitled “The Peak Human Workplace Report”, it was revealed that 3 in 4 Australian workers surveyed were wanting to learn new skills in the workplace in the next 12 months, yet currently more than half of those surveyed participate in less than an hour of learning at work on any given week.

Based on this, amongst other researching finding similar statistics, it seems clear that the majority of workplaces across a broad cross section of our economy, are failing to deliver the level of training, skills acquisition and learning that our workforce is craving.

So why this thirst for knowledge, and why now? And perhaps more front centred for many business owners, when did the responsibility for learning shift from being individual and employee driven, to be the responsibility of the employer? The Swinburne University report helps us understand this a little better, as they found that three in five workers are...

No less than once a week I’ll get a call, or question online, that goes a little like “I have a problem with a staff member, they are getting their job done but they aren’t being a great team member, I can’t quite put my finger on it but every time I raise an issue with them they have an excuse, there is always some reason things haven’t gone to plan”. Does this sound familiar to you? Have you had someone like this on your team before?

Sure enough, after a few questions my typical conclusion is – you have someone who is below the line. What line? Great question!

I first became aware of this framework probably about 10-15 years ago, I’d heard about it conceptually but when I really noticed this as a powerful framework for teams when I worked with a business who really embraced the concept so much that their team used the language in their day to day operations – this is when I really started to pay attention to this...