Lots has been written on the difference between a boss and a leader, and there are very few people capable of performing both roles.  The above comic depicts a boss adding extra weight hindering moving the progress of the business.  The leader, in the bottom half of the comic is not, and pulls their own weight.  Other metaphors for a good leader can also be derived from the image –  helping the team with their work and being out front for example.

So you want to be a great leader?  Here’s some ways you can refine your management skills:

• Lead by example. If there is dirty work to do, be the first one to do it when you have the free time to do so.  New employees need to learn how to take out the trash?  Be the one to show them.
• Focus on situations, examples of behaviour and facts, not the person.  If you want to give praise or criticise, it should always be work related.
• Stick to the facts: “Your ability to empathise with the customer is valuable”, not “you’re so funny, people love it!”.  Personalising the job is dangerous.  Some people think that it will build loyalty, and sometimes it will, but it also makes everything personal.  When you have to criticise something, even with facts, they will take it more personally than they should.
• Keep lines of communication open.  Have regular staff meetings (We have CEO Wednesday the first Wednesday of every month here at Staff Squared where everybody gets to grill the boss!).  Invite questions, and thank people for asking them.  Give credit where credit is due.  Inform people of how appreciated their work is on a regular basis, not just at review time.  If you’re always talking to them, nothing will be a surprise, whether it’s praise or a pep talk about challenging situations.
• Discipline isn’t bad.  Many managers shy away from talking to employees about inconsistency.  What they don’t take into account is that allowing employees to continue to perform poorly is guaranteeing they will be fired.  Don’t look at it as discipline – look at it as coaching, or a discussion about their challenge areas. Everyone deserves the chance to fix a mistake. Hiding it from them doesn’t help you or them in the long run.
• Encourage ownership by delegation. Employees love a company when they feel they have some sort of say in how things are done.  It doesn’t matter how minor that contribution is, if they can lay claim to a piece of it, their work performance and happiness will be affected in a great way.  Ask for opinions on future projects, and whenever possible, take all or even small amounts of their feedback and work it into the system.  Give them small independent tasks to perform and take the time to explain why it’s so important.  When they do well, give them praise, and follow up in a week or so to show them the numbers and how what they did affected the business that week

These simple ideas are incredibly effective at bringing your team together to work with you to drive your business forward.  What do you think makes a good boss?  Tell us in the comments section below!

Book leave straight from the calendar

Your calendar now includes a beautiful new interface to allow you and your team to quickly and easily manage company events and staff absence. Simply click the date you wish to create a new absence, select the type of absence and enter the absence details – all from the comfort of the calendar.

New custom types of absence

Up until now you could only manage holiday and sickness from the calendar. Now we’ve added Other as a type of absence where you can set customisable leave types.

For each leave type you can specify whether it should deduct from the employee’s absence allowance. It’s so easy to manage your your company’s Other leave types – you can manage them here.

Synchronise the calendar with your email client

Stay in the loop while you’re not logged in to Staff Squared by synchronising your calendar with your favourite e-mail client or Google Calendar. For more information check out the following help articles:

• Synchronising Google Calendars with Staff Squared
• Synchronising Microsoft Outlook with Staff Squared

We’re here to help!

Got any questions about this or any other Staff Squared features? Just drop support@staffsquared.com a line and we’ll get straight back to you.

Following a big update to Staff Squared due in the next couple of weeks you’ll be able to:

• Book and manage absence straight from the calendar
• Create new types of absence, and decide whether each type deducts holiday allowance
• Take advantage of a much more streamlined calendar interface for managing company event

…and much more.  We’ll let everybody know the new functionality is released, in the meantime, here’s a quick preview of the interface, we hope you love it as much as we do!

Booking a holiday via the calendar

Booking a custom absence via the calendar

Original Virgin blog post: http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/the-way-you-treat-your-employees

We’ve been collecting the most innovative and out of the box job application ideas below. Have you received any fancy job applications?  Let us know in the comments below!

The chocolate bar

This application for a job stood out. Perfect for its target audience, chock full of vapid, meaningless buzzwords but we’re reliably informed that the applicant got the job! We wonder if the applicant was asked to bring more copies of their resume to the job interview…

The infographic

Customising your resume according to your industry is a great way to attract attention from the recruiters who are used to wading through mountains of text heavy documents. This example, sent in for a job at an animation company, demonstrates passion, ability and enthusiasm for his art. If you’re thinking about taking a similar approach, be sure to have a more “traditional” resume lined up ready to go just in case they follow up.

The minimalist approach

So you’ve launched your first start up and it’s been a fly away success. Chances are you don’t need to list your hobbies and education history in the event that you’ve made millions from your first exit. Take the following example from Sergey (co-founder of Google), who is about as likely to need a resume as the Queen of England is likely to require an ID card!

The posh envelope

Sometimes it isn’t the resume itself that catches the recruiter’s eye but instead the letter, or in the following case, the ornate box! The following example was sent in to games maker Blizzard by a wannabe game designer. It goes to show, anybody can apply for a job, and many have qualifications, but this demonstrates motivation and enthusiasm. It shows a willingness to go that extra step, which is worth 10 times more than simply being technically qualified.

The box will almost certainly catch Blizzard’s attention (or cause a bomb scare!).  For extra points –  go the extra mile by turning up to deliver the box in costume.

The honey pot

Historically branding has always been left to the big corps – the Nikes and Apples of the world. In more recent times job applicants are taking lessons learned by the big players and applying it to their search for a job. These people are defining their own “personal brand”, with incredible results.

Rather than attempting to spam the inboxes of all and sundry clever applicants are turning the job application process on its head using the web, and more specifically social media, to attract potential job positions to them.  Take this example from Phil Dub – who set up the website http://www.phildub.com.

The failure

Sadly not all resumes are created equal – and this lacklustre example ticks all of the boxes for being perhaps one of the worst examples we’ve seen. Crammed full of spelling and grammatical errors and poorly laid out – this CV is going nowhere fast.

Every growing business needs an office manager and the sooner you hire one the better.  The best office managers have people skills – and are organised to a fault.  So a good office manager can reduced the administrative burden of HR, keeping staff paperwork in check while handling general HR requests until a full time HR person is needed.  There are also a number of online hr software applications available which will help this process (psst…check out Staff Squared!).

Outsourcing HR to a third party person or HR service provider has its benefits as well as drawbacks, as does distributing HR responsibilities in-house, but both may be stopgap measures rather than long-term solutions.  Eventually, you’ll have to face the HR question head-on.  The longer you wait, the more likely you’re missing opportunities and digging yourself into a hole.

When should a growing company first establish a HR department? What should it look for in its first HR hire?

A number of business owners are perfectionists, and the odd bit of “control freakery”occurs.  This is fine, it’s how they managed to get to the point of having employees which lead to HR becoming an issue at all.

The most important thing for a founder to do is to fire thyself.  An excellent CEO will recognise how valuable his or her time is, and will fire themselves from any roles that are not generating long term value for their business.  It’s also important that a CEO has distance from the business in order to think.

The decision of when to establish a HR department is so dependent on how people-centric your business is and how HR savvy the team you already have in place is.  There isn’t a magic number of employees that necessitates the need for a dedicated HR department although some as a general rule of thumb say 50 employees is the magic number.

In terms of what to look for – demonstrated competence in all areas of HR; the desire to roll-up his or her sleeves and do whatever is required in a growing organisation; someone who will have credibility with senior leaders and staff; someone who can have fun; and chemistry/cultural fit with the leadership team.  Yes it’s a big ask to find somebody with all of these qualities, but it’s one of the most important hires you will make so it’s essential you find the right person.

No pressure then