An article in the latest NZ Business newsletter says, according to a survey, Kiwi business owners are giving up their holidays in order to support their businesses during these challenging times. The closing statement was that business owners are working a lot harder for every dollar of profit that they earn.

When you ask most small business owners why they went into business for themselves the response often includes work/life balance: being able to spend more time with the family or to travel etc. The "respondent" sometimes lets out a maniacal laugh when the realisation hits that they are actually working more hours than they would working for someone else. This is quickly followed by some kind of justification that they are investing the time into the business now for a payoff in the future. Well, that's how the conversation usually goes when I'm the one being asked!

There are so many things to do when you're running a small business, it's easy to delude ourselves that we need to do all of them. Then we wonder why we're so tired and frazzled and have no time to do anything else! Perhaps it's time to Determine Your Personal Return on Investment, and decide to let someone else do some of the tasks for a change. Delegation (whether to staff or outside experts) leads to a healthy work-life balance.

When you have a team of people working for you, chances are that there will be some room to improve their productivity. There are several keys to unlocking the potential of your employees, increasing their engagement and in turn, their productivity: 

1. selecting the right people with innate talents
2. defining the right outcomes for your business (and each job within it)
3. identifying and developing the strengths of each person on your team
4. finding the right fit for each person not only now but also as they develop

The practical HR systems and processes you have in your business (recruitment, performance management, learning and development, reward and recognition etc) helps you turn these keys.

Outsourcing allows owners to focus on other business issues while having the details taken care of by outside experts. This means that a large amount of resources and attention, which might fall on the shoulders of the owners, can be used for more important, broader issues within the business. The specialised company that handles the outsourced work is often streamlined, and often has expertise and access to technology that a small business couldn't afford to buy on their own. The best outsourcing partners become an extension of your team, regularly working on-site.

So business owners: as you start a new year, consider what alternatives there are to doing it all yourself. You deserve a holiday just as much as your staff do.

There's a new resource for employers on Immigration New Zealand's website.

The Employer Hub is a useful resource where you can find out about employing migrants, the visa options available to you, and how to help your new employees settle in New Zealand.

The hub is divided into four sections:

• Employing Migrants -- to help you identify appropriate visa options for the type of position you need to fill, and the steps you need to take as an employer.
  
   
• Finding & Recruiting Migrants -- to help you connect with potential candidates through a database using the free SkillFinder service, and the DoL funded NewKiwis service, as well as practical suggestions to help you get started if you are a beginner to recruiting migrants.
  
   
• Settling & Retaining Migrants -- provides you with access to information, tools and settlement support services to assist your new employee with settling into New Zealand both at work and at home, and to help your workplace welcome and retain new migrants.
  
   
• News, Tools, and Statistics -- helps you keep up to date with migrant attraction activities, find out about events for employers and migrants, access tools to assist you, and provides access to news, research and statistics related to immigration.

Visit www.immigration.govt.nz/employers for more information.

Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, ended the second day of the Financial Education Summit in Melbourne with a memorable keynote. Here are the “can’t forget” HR highlights from his on-stage interview:

• Lead with your heart. A business is a group of people … a good leader will motivate, praise not criticize, and inspire to get the best out of them. If you lead this way you’ve got a good chance of being successful.
• Learn the art of delegation. Spend time to find people better than you to run your business on a day to day basis so you can be entrepreneurial. Once you’ve delegated, don’t second guess them. Give them the freedom to make mistakes and accept they won’t do things the same as you.
• If people are happy (proud of the company, have the tools they need, and feel listened to) they will stay. People don’t usually leave for more money, they leave out of frustration that they’re not being listened to.

Pretty good advice if you ask me.

We often find that small business owners are very unsure about how to handle concerns with employee performance, so much so that they tip toe around the issue rather than tackle it head-on.

I was speaking recently with an owner that had a casual employee that worked fluctuating hours and submitted a timesheet for payroll. The employer had noticed that the hours on the timesheet had been increasing over time and now were around 25% greater than orginally planned. The employee's workload hadn't increased so in addition to higher wage costs, the business was suffering from a reduced workplace productivity rate. 

To address the problem, the owners had been keen to alleviate the employee's workload by taking on some of the tasks themselves. On the surface this might appear to be a good option, especially as it's a zero conflict approach - instead of confronting the employee to talk about nasty things like poor performance you can talk about how to ease the load - but what's the real cost of not tackling the issue head-on? 

1. The employee will not know that their performance is not meeting your expectations

2. The owner falls into the trap of working in the business, rather than on the business (which defeats the purpose of having employees in the first place)

3. The employee's productivity rate may become even worse if they continue to work the same long hours with a reduced workload

4. Everyone else who completes their work in the expected hours sees their workmate getting a helping hand, so they might all increase their hours to get the same reward!

We always recommend that employers speak openly with their employees about general progress and any concerns and ideas either may have.

In this case some points for discussion might be:

• how is work planned and reviewed?
• what slows people down?
• how are hours determined / approved?
• how can we ensure that the allocated work gets completed in the allocated hours?

The key is to have a two-way discussion ... educate your employees about productivity and what in means in your business, and figure out together what it means for them in their job. Problem-solving conversations like this can be really useful to identify improvements to operational systems and processes which may be all that is needed to address performance shortfalls.

But, if pain persists ... see your Doctor.

Maybe that's our new tagline? Blue Dot ... the Workplace Doctors!

Most people would like to be paid more and many employees think they deserve more (sometimes regardless of their actual performance). In today's economic climate pay rises may not be at the levels they were but that doesn't mean employers should stop reviewing salaries and communicating the decisions to staff.

In tough times it can be tempting for business owners to freeze salaries or withdraw benefits to minimise costs. Before taking this type of action across the board consider the impact this could have on the engagement, productivity and retention of your high performing staff. Perhaps review your remuneration philosophy and structure first.

A smart, structured approach to remuneration can increase the return from your limited budget for salary increases. It also allows you to speak objectively with employees rather than giving them the fob off.

When employees understand the factors that are taken into consideration during pay reviews, how they fare and what needs to happen for them to earn more they're likely to feel respected and valued. Even if it means no increase this year.