The global pandemic has thrown the world a curve ball and businesses have had to shift focus to find new ways of engaging, attracting, and retaining the best people.

Cloud systems have gone a long way to alleviate the administrative burden of HR however until now, they have fallen short at actually providing a system to drive the human experience of work – This was our desire when designing The H Factor.​

We sincerely thank them for this acknowledgement and want to provide some assistance to help business leaders build a better future for themselves and their people.

In this guide, you'll learn:

• How can technology assist us to focus on transformation rather than mere survival?
• How do we maintain, or even build on our business culture and values?
• How do we improve performance and productivity?

We have wonderful business technology however the human experience was being left behind.  The human experience cannot be underestimated or ignored; we should be talking transformation rather than just recovery when it comes to the global pandemic of COVID-19!

We need to go back to the basics of the why/purpose of the organisation.  But we need to do a lot more than just playing around the edges and using language like ‘soft skills’; they are not, they are human skills!   Too many employees worldwide are disengaged, we’re working longer hours, and trying to cope with both financial and mental stress.

We believe that a system should assist in developing leaders differently; allowing them to reinvent themselves around a human focus.  We need to change the way businesses lead their people without the need for face to face interactions.

The days are gone when we valued simply turning up to work.  We need to value, and focus on the quality of outcome delivery.  And we need to handover ownership to those tasked with delivering these outcomes, through simply posing the question “if this is the outcomes you are responsible for, how is it you’d like to deliver them, and what is it I (as the leader) can do to assist you in that?”

​Human beings have an aversion to being told what to do.  With this fact in mind, a system needs to give real autonomy and encourage ownership thinking through developing clear outcomes and self-developed KPIs; the result of which is motivated, more engaged employees, and leaders who begin to genuinely feel comfortable to let go the reins a little, and not micromanage.

We’ve seen employers spending thousands on collecting data without a clear understanding of how to use that data to positively affect performance behaviours. 

A system driven human experience needs to do much more than self-managed leave approval, time sheets, or number rated performance reviews.  It should be about encouraging bottom up engagement that allows your people to strategically build how they want to best deliver their outcomes and how their success could be measured.

Were most systems are about process automation to drive efficiency and compliance that allows managers to then focus on the people, we wanted to assist users to focus on the people aspects first, and make the processes and compliance a non-issue.

The system comes complete with inbuilt compliance policies around fair work and the NES, along with a platform for users themselves to capture their work and operational processes as text, video, or pictures, to build your very own business ‘Wiki’.  There’s easy access to capturing employee led innovation;  a platform for peer to peer recognition;  a new approach to recruitment that does away completely with the outdated CV and replaces it with an invitation to directly address the delivery of desired outcomes; and much, much more.

Being able to articulate your culture and the behaviours that drive it is of paramount importance to building a community that people want to be a part of and contribute to. 

​Taking on Simon Sinek’s philosophy of starting with why, goes a long way to delivering this.  While implementing THF you’re guided to effectively articulate the reason your business exists.  We like to practice what we preach and for us:

Your values - or perhaps better; your not negotiable rules of engagement - are what guide the behaviours of the people in your organisation.  As such individual words like; honest, integrity, or teamwork, just won’t cut it!

These provide no guidance at all; they’re just single words, and without context mean absolutely nothing.
With THF you’ll discover what value statements will be most effective to drive the desired behaviours of the organisation.  In order to effectively drive behaviours, your value statements should start with a verb, eg:

• Challenge the status quo and embrace change;
• Pursue growth and learning;
• Encourage open communication even on the tough issues.

Value statements such as these, create clarity, give permission, and provide a base line for discussions around performance.
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When your employees log on, the landing page is where they’ll find the “Business Story” expressing your business’s why, your brand values, your high level strategic intent, and your value statements; all designed to ensure that they remain relevant and top of mind.

The best way to improve performance is to shift the focus of performance conversations/reviews from talking to someone about them (the reason they’re uncomfortable), to talking about the outcome they’re responsible for delivering and asking them how they would like to deliver it.  Your job as leader is to simply guide the conversation through questioning, and clear the barriers to them delivering effective performance.

In effect it’s the difference between assessment and engagement.  We wanted to build a system that was not about assessing performance of an individual.   Instead we wanted it to engage them in the ownership of their own outcomes and deliverables, understand how what they do contributes to the bigger picture, and where deliberate poor performance could not be accommodated.

We also wanted to add self-driven KPIs that were strategically created, discussed, and negotiated, to ensure they would be an accurate indication of the success of the activity that was going to deliver the outcome/s.

​There is a realisation though COVID that business cannot rely on attracting skills from outside.  The skills shortage is impacting heavily and business needs to adapt quickly to build capacity and skills from within to grow.  Therefore effective conversations about outcomes and a tool to build a skills matrix is imperative.

The challenge that COVID has thrown at us is that we have to create organisations where people can:

• Collaborate virtually;
• Maintain a sense of purpose and value;
• Feel empowered to contribute regardless of physical location;
• Build organisations based on strategy, desired outcomes, and skills rather than individual agendas;
• Have conversations around performance where self-governance and self-driven innovation is encouraged;
• Grow talent from within;
• Make better informed recruitment decisions based on filtering in the right candidates;
• Provide peer-to-peer opportunities to acknowledge ad celebrate positive contributions;
• Give our managers a coaching tool to build leadership capability and capacity;
• Simplify quality and safety management to instil it in everyone's way of doing things;
• Move beyond assessment to drive ownership and embraced accountability; and or course,
  
• Meet compliance requirements.

If you’d like to learn more about The H Factor’s approach to providing this, we’d love to show you.

The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics survey on mental health of ages from 16 to 85 showed that 20% of Australians experienced anxiety, depressive, or substance use disorders. Just reflect on that.

1 in 5 people experience a diagnosable mental health disorder in any year.

It is not surprising that there is growing awareness of the duty of care requirements on workplaces in assisting people who experience a mental health disorder. To assist our clients, The H Factor have developed a sample Mental Health and Wellness policy.

There are number of things employers must consider in this area:

• Crisis situations - what to do if someone is in a mental health crisis, and they, or others, are at risk of physical harm;
• The Privacy and anti-discrimination requirements of the employer, and other employees, in working with mental health disorders in the workplace;
• Assisting employees experiencing a mental health disorder; and
• Information about training and learning to give mental health first-aid.

The H Factor draft policy incorporates all of these areas, and your H Agent can also assist you to tailor each area to your particular business situation.

There is a lot of misinformation and stigma about mental health disorders. Increasingly, employers of all sizes are recognising that they have an important role to play in raising awareness of the correct approach to dealing with mental health disorders, and in removing the stigma associated with them.

Some practical tips that are relevant to assisting people with a mental health condition are:

• Recognise that it is not your role to diagnose their condition;
• Remember that mental health conditions do not discriminate - they can impact people from all backgrounds in life, income levels, and social status;
• Be aware that you cannot force a person to take action, unless it is a crisis situation where their phsyical safety or that of others is at imminent risk;
• Avoid making judgmental statements to them, or about them, or about their condition;
• Seek to understand what is going on for them, rather than seek to fix things for them;
• Maintain their privacy at all times;
• Do not engage in gossip with others about them; and
• Encourage them to seek professional help.

Most people who receive appropriate help recover from a mental health condition.

Employers are required to make reasonable adjustments to a person's work arrangements during a persons treatment and/or recovery period.

Headsup, by Beyond Blue, have some useful information for employers here and a helpful guide for for helping a work mate here. This is a good starting point for understanding the workplace issues.

Workplaces have long recognised the need for designated first aid officers, who are appropriately trained to respond to physical injury or a health crisis. We recommend that employers also consider having a designated mental health first aid officer in their workplace. Accredited training is provided by Mental Health First Aid Australia, a not for profit organisation that provides evidence based accreditation courses on mental health first aid.

There is a wide range of support and information available. We recommend that every employer have clear policies and procedures in the area of mental health.

Beyond the duty of care that arises in employment situations, it is a good business decision to have clear policies and procedures in the area of mental health and well being.

We are pleased to release our first ever annual report.

For many businesses, including ours, 2020 was a year that presented many challenges as we all had to come to terms with the economic and social impacts of COVID-19. From these challenges came opportunities for us to learn, adapt, develop, and grow.

Please download our report to learn more about how we see our place in the future or work, and how we plan to continue to grow our system based on the human aspects of work.

Many thanks to our clients, licensees, and supporters in our network who have been so supportive on our business journey.

Happy new year, and all the best to you for 2021.

We face challenges. The world has changed, and how we respond is important. Intrinsically we know this to be true. There's part of us that knows we have an opportunity to make changes in our business, and actually balance our lives a bit.

Covid has changed our workplaces. It's forced us to adapt the way we work, the tools we use to work, how we collaborate with our colleagues, and even the way we serve our customers. For many of us, there just aren't as many customers either. Business is difficult, and especially when we face economic uncertainty.

It can be uncomfortable to confront, as we don't like the uncertainty, we might be anxious about our future, and it might seem that there's so much outside of our control.

In corporate speak; "we are facing headwinds".

It's time to click it down a gear or two and make the pedaling a bit easier. You can't change the wind, but there are other choices. You can react, rebuild, or retreat.

We are seeing all of our clients facing these choices at the moment. It can feel lonely, but actually many people are asking the same questions, facing similar dilemmas, and looking for the right gear. That's why we have started a webinar series. You're welcome to join the conversation  with our H Agent's and other business owners who are also working their way through change.

Our advice to business owners is to turn off the news, block out the complainers, analyse your business strengths, make the time to think deeply about what you'd like to achieve for (and from) your business, and find people who can help you rather than judge you.

An H Agent can help you find your right gear. We're working beside our clients to:

• Re-imagine their business in its new perfect form, and forming their new vision of success;
• Identify the desired outcomes, relevant for the new normal, for every position in the business;
• Engage their people in a conversation on how they will achieve those outcomes; and
• Build shared accountability with their team for achieving a healthy balance between business results and personal well being.

The winds will change, and one day there will be tail winds. How we respond now will set how fast we can go when the winds turn. Now it's time to face the uncertainty and deal with it on our own terms. It starts with you.

There's an elephant in the room, Karen. It's sitting right there on the sofa, getting very comfortable. For goodness sake, don't give it the remote control, especially "in these uncertain times".

Do you see it? It's sitting right there, at the end of that last paragraph. It's hiding in plain sight, so we put some quotation marks around it so that you can spot it more easily.

When were "times" ever certain?

There is no doubt, that nobody is untouched by change. It's been forced on us in a way we rarely have to experience here in Australia. However, that does not make the world less certain than it was before. In some ways the reverse is true - we have now have more rules that influence our lives than we had before.

So why do we feel that everything is now more uncertain?

We are in a situation that very few of us ever imagined. We had our future mapped out in our heads, and it didn't include the risk of spreading a deadly virus. Nor did we imagine that we might have to practice social distancing from some of those we love, that we might have to change the way we work, or that even the act of getting food would need some form of reinvention.

We feel more uncertain because the future only ever existed in our own imaginations - and we never imagined it would be like this.

So now we will have to re-imagine it - and we have a choice.  We can give the elephant the remote control, or we can take control ourselves.
Giving the elephant the remote control means that we will just wait. We'll watch what the elephant wants us to watch, or play what the elephant wants us to play, when it feels like playing it - if it feels like playing it.

The feeling of uncertainty is because what we imagined turned out to be not what happened. Some of what we thought we would do, may not even be possible for some time. So now we can simply re-imagine it. We can take control of our own future, we can be realistic about what wasn't working before, and we can reset our compasses.

Change Agents, now is the time to lead. Let's imagine and communicate a better future, based on what we've learned recently.

We've learned that family and friends matter most, that having savings for a rainy day is a good idea, and that flexible working can 'work' well. Let's imagine working in ways that enhance our well-being, rather than taking from it.

How are we going to invent the future and make the world or work  better, because believe it or not, the elephant has no idea.