PCE Training

25/02/2020

We have added a service to PCE Training!
Given that we have provided this service to a selected client only over the last two years, we recognise the need for expanding this and offering it to all existing and future clients.

Independent Project Management

Understanding the difficulty in juggling your normal activities on a daily basis without having to manage your projects, we are here to help. Contact us for a free consultation where we can review your upcoming project and provide you with a plan to manage it on your behalf.

20/11/2017

Workplace Behaviour - Achieving Positive Engagement

19/11/2017

How is your workplace doing?

Employer Employee Relations Let’s face some of the facts about the employer and employee relations. No employer hires an employee with the intention of making their time at work as miserable as possible. In the same instance, no employee joins a company with the sole purpose of making things difficu...

30/10/2017

Building Your Team
Let's have a look at two of the factors that impact on attracting the best candidates to join your team:
Perceived working conditions
What your employees and clients say about your business could have a big impact on your potential candidates. Now more than ever it is easy to find comments about your business culture.
Remember, you want to attract the best skill to your business, and these are the people that will also do research on your business before thinking about joining you.
Team culture.
This is a big decider for potential employees. If you have a strong and positive team culture, you will attract champions to your business.
Now for the big decider! As much as potential employees may research conditions at your business, you need to do the same before employing them. Just employing them on skills only may not be the best option for your business. Make sure to look at how they would fit in your current team, how they would interact with your clients and what value could they bring to your business overall.
Your team is the backbone of your business. How they represent your business is what will keep your clients coming back so make sure to focus on building the best team that fits your business.
If you want to know more about positive engagement in the workplace, contact Francois at PCE Training for your free consultation.

15/10/2017

High Staff Turnover?

When considering the cost of an employee it goes way beyond just the salary package. You put a lot of time and resources into training, uniform, equipment etc. Every time you have an employee leave, the cycle starts again and the cost keeps adding up. Should we not take the time to look at how to retain our staff?

Is it just about the direct cost? Consider what a high staff turnover does to the rest of your team and the overall motivation of your employees. Invariably, when you have one unhappy staff member, it starts impacting on the rest of your team and before you know it, you have 3 or 4 unhappy staff members. Suddenly even the smallest problem becomes a big issue.
Have you ever found yourself saying?

 staff will just move from one job to the other no matter what we do,
 there is no point in training staff because they will leave once they have the new skill(s),
 the only thing that motivates staff is more money

The fact is that we seem to be struggling with the expectations placed on employers today. Staff expect more from their work than just the salary offered. This is not something new. It has been around for many years but today employees are more likely to move to another job when their expectations are not met. So, what are these expectations?
 Job Fulfilment
 Recognition
 Career path
 Communication
 Leadership
Get this right and you are more likely to have a dedicated and positively engaged team helping you grow your business. Get it wrong, and you will struggle to find the right staff, and keep them!

It is all about establishing the right environment in which people will feel motivated to do their work. What do you as an employer stand to gain from doing it?

 Improved Productivity
 Improved Staff Retention
 Improved Client Retention
 Decreased Absenteeism

These are just some of the key benefits for your business.
If you need help getting your team engaged, feel free to contact Francois for a free consultation and let’s work together to getting your workplace the place everyone wants to be in.
T 1300 663 331 or email [email protected]

18/09/2017

Finding the right Performance Management Strategy

When it comes to managing your business, it is not just a question of putting policies and procedures in place and watching it work its magic. The same goes for managing performance. There are many performance management systems available to implement, but many business owners feel frustrated because it does not always work.

Let’s look at some of the reasons for it failing:
• Generic system
• Zero staff input
• No specified targets
• No follow-through

If you are serious about getting positive engagement from your employees, you need to ensure you create the right platform for it and performance management forms an integral part of it. The performance management system you implement is not a punishment tool! If you use it to point out only the things your staff did not do, the system will have the opposite result to what you hoped for.

Implement the system correctly, and you will find it becomes a very powerful management tool that delivers results. Make sure you involve employees throughout the implementation and setting of goals/targets, follow through on agreed actions and make sure the system is designed around your business.
What should it be used for?

The whole idea of performance management is exactly what the name states – improving overall performance. This unfortunately is where we tend to apply the expected outcome only and miss the opportunities a good system will highlight.

Consider the case where an employee did not meet an agreed to target. Your job is to understand the reason(s) for it. Is it because of a lack of training, is the person in the role that best suits his/her skills etc. These are the opportunities to identify when working through the system. If you find it is because of training required, follow through and provide the training.

This will give the employee the required additional skills, but also builds trust with them as they realise the system is not a punishment tool for management.

How well is your performance management system working?

If you have any questions, or would like some information on how to best implement your system, feel free to contact Francois at PCE Training for a free consultation.

[email protected] or call 1300 663 331

02/08/2017

13/07/2017

Understanding the Impact of Positive Engagement

Achieving positive engagement is not just about everyone getting along at work. The impact on your business stretches way beyond that. Where you have transformed your workplace to achieve this, you will also find improved productivity, improved client relations and it is easier to retain your key staff.
Let’s focus on improved client relations first. Where you have clients that are happy with your service or product, they are more likely to recommend your business to friends and family. Not only that, they will also use your business to address their future needs, thus providing long term support.

The referrals to friends and family allows for new clients thus establishing the platform for growth. They key here is to also ensure these new clients receive the same levels of service to ensure they become long term clients. Apart from retaining these new clients, you have the next level of referrals in place and the client base continues to grow.

This is what you can achieve with positive engagement. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true when employees are disengaged. This time the word of mouth advertising is not what you want as this leads to the loss of clients. The old saying of ‘a satisfied client will tell one or two people about it, but the unhappy client will tell 100 people’ can have far reaching implications on your business.

As a business owner, it is up to you to ensure you strive for positive engagement. This is done through quality leadership and a continued development process. In today’s workplace, it is a far bigger challenge than what most of us thought possible. Employees have higher expectations from their employer and if these are not met, the ones you want to keep will end up leaving, while those that you most likely should not have employed in the first place, are generally the ones that stay.

Add these challenges to those of managing your business, and you have a perfect recipe for ‘overwhelm’. It gets to a point where you accept that you will continue to have staff issues and it is just a matter of continuing to do damage control where needed. This unfortunately leaves you constantly trying to replace staff, dealing with unhappy clients and at times carrying out costly rework. Should this time not be spent on those tasks you should rather be doing? Assume that you are spending 17% of your time on these issues every day, imagine what you could achieve if you had this time back to focus on growing your business.

Thus far we have only touched on client relations. Now think of improving productivity. We constantly are trying to find ways to improve our profit margins. The problem is that it is not possible to simply increase the price of a product or service. Pricing is pretty much dictated by the market demands. This means you need to find a way to get this product or service to your client, at a better margin, without increasing your price. This brings you to productivity. By improving productivity, you will improve your margin. Although we all know this, we still struggle to bring the two together. Once again, this is where focusing on positive engagement brings you to a point where you can improve productivity and thus, improve your profitability.

If you find yourself struggling with employee engagement, it is time to get the help you deserve to get your business back on track.

11/07/2017

We focus a lot on working with the business owner when it comes to creating the best possible workplace and achieving positive engagement. This does

06/07/2017

The Business Process Review
https://youtu.be/m562f1rvJ-M

Tips on the Business Process Review