Why it’s time to scrap annual performance reviews

Whilst monitoring career progress has always been a useful reference tool for both employee and employer, the advancement of digital technologies in recent years has significantly transformed the way that individuals and teams can impact business change.

As a result of this continuously accelerating pace of development, a new heightened level of organisational agility is not only desirable, but critical to survival in a growing number of industries. Employees with the highest levels of digital skill will be instrumental in a helping a business to stay flexible and ultimately to prosper. However, the methods of highlighting and managing the best talent are often lagging way behind.

Could employee mental health improve?

It’s no wonder then that some of the largest digital organisations, such as Microsoft, Accenture and Adobe are embracing more regular and informal performance management. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal even reported on how this could improve employee mental health as well as recognition. It seems that reviewing what staff did a year ago (or even six months ago in some cases) is simply not efficient enough in the context of the change which the business needs to master.

Performance management therefore needs to allow for more responsive behaviour changes by employees. By facilitating smaller course changes more often, a higher rate of return is more likely. Deloitte famously discovered that two million management hours annually were being spent assessing staff performance and discussing the outputs of the process. Yet, the majority of staff felt that the results gained by conducting these reviews didn’t match the hours put in.

Deloitte have instead moved to a system that involves regularly asking team leaders about their future actions related to particular team members, helping to ensure consistency. When combined with what they call frequent ‘check-ins’, employee work and productive behaviour can be better supported, ensuring greater clarity, alignment and employee engagement.

Try OKRs instead

A number of other high profile businesses including Google, LinkedIn, Oracle, Twitter and The Guardian have moved to a system of OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results. This methodology for connecting company, team and individual goals and measurable results was originally introduced at Intel in the 1970s. The system involves setting quarterly measurable, definitive objectives at a company, team and individual level, and then supporting those objectives with quantifiable key results, against which performance is measured.

OKRs are often made transparent (at Google for example, everyone’s OKRs from Larry Page the CEO down are available to see on the internal directory) but provide a clear directional focus and expectations, ensure alignment at every level, and a high level of awareness of what others’ priorities are. This brings greater empathy and understanding for individual or team priorities, and giving focus to how an individual might make their own priorities align with someone else’s in order to get stuff done.

Ultimately, whatever performance review methods are implemented within your business, it’s important to keep agile. Reviews should be regular, clear, simple and time-efficient to get the best out of your staff.

This blog entry was adapted by an original post by Neil Perkin at Only Dead Fish.

How to make the most of your marketing plan on a limited budget

Creating an effective marketing plan can be a conundrum for many small business owners, particularly when the budget is on a real shoestring. As a business owner, you’ll need to work out which activities will draw the most amount of leads for the least amount of your precious pounds.

They key to marketing success will generally be down to understanding your audience and customers. Without knowing your audience, you will struggle to market to them and to get your sales messages across. It’s also vital you don’t throw money down the drain and throw good money after bad.

Measuring ROI

Although there are endless ways to measure the results of your campaigns and decipher whether your marketing is working (or not), in its simplest form it’s wise to stick to marketing methods that work for you.

If you are consistently spending money on marketing that isn’t yielding results, then stop it immediately and review if there’s something you could change to improve your return on investment. Just because something should be ‘tried and tested’, if it’s broken and expensive, there’s little point in continuing. Nevertheless, don’t discard it forever. It might be that with a little tweak to your campaign, you’ll start winning those all-important leads.

Utilise low cost options

Channels such as social media may seem like they wouldn’t produce direct results, but if they are utilised correctly, they can be extremely cost effective.

There are so many advertising options with excellent segmentation tools available on platforms such as Facebook, that you can reach your most likely customers with relative ease. You can set yourself a daily budget and target a set number of people depending on their likes and demographic; a tool which is almost unbeatable in certain industries.

With careful monitoring, you can listen to your audience and understand what they say about a particular product or service, helping you to revise and improve your strategy and maybe even your business model.

Traditional marketing isn’t dead

Of course, whilst social is cheap when compared to Pay Per Click and advertising, there’s a reason that businesses are still spending millions every day using more traditional channels. Don’t ignore things like weekly emails and direct mail, just because they are viewed as ‘old hat’. Anything you can do to make yourself more visible is likely to breed success.

You are your business

If you are sitting in your office waiting for the next customer to walk in or ring up, you may be waiting a long time. Your marketing plan needs to revolve around your skills and expertise.

Showcasing your talents becomes a lot easier when you are also active outside of your place of work. Joining networking groups such as BNI and your local Chamber of Commerce will do wonders to help you generate interest in your business. Your customers are far more likely to be engaged when they speak to you directly about what you do and why you do it, rather than reading your emails or watching your ads.

All you need to know when doing DIY Public Relations

For a small business or start-up, promoting any commercial news or success is likely to be a crucial part of marketing your services. But PR can be costly and a real luxury for most burgeoning companies.

PR companies can add huge value when done correctly, particularly if the right strategy and press releases are managed effectively. But, unless you spend thousands per year on a retainer, you are unlikely to receive much more than a few press releases (on most occasions) for your valuable money.

However, there are some DIY options to do PR in house. The good news is that there is nobody more qualified to talk about the business than the owners and directors themselves. Of course, developing a successful PR strategy will take time and resources, but costs can certainly be saved – and the increased customer awareness and increased sales you get in return should be worth it.

All good PR writers are good PR readers

The expression is definitely true in PR: to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. Set aside at least 15 minutes a day to read the news. Learn about media outlets, key reporters, your competitors and how they're talking about themselves. This will help you understand the major media influencers in your industry and start building the connections you need to reach those people.

Respect the journalists

Engage with key journalists well in advance. If you’ve never spoken to a reporter before and suddenly you email them out of the blue asking for coverage, chances are that they won’t be engaged to publish it. Try and get to know any journalists you think will be able to help your PR strategy and send them some praise if there’s an opportunity. Even things such as Twitter retweets or giving them compliments will help your cause.

Journalists will always want to be the recipient of a good story, but unless yours stands out from the crowd, there may be little other reason for your release to be published.

Avoid clichés and jargon

It’s wise to avoid clichés and marketing talk. Phrases like "game changing," "cutting edge," and "disruption" will encourage reporters to switch off immediately. If a journalist is not interested, then your story won’t be published, and nobody will ever read it.

Write about your company the way that you think it will be covered. If you want your story to appear in your local newspaper, try and emulate the kinds of language being used in that publication.

Write a compelling headline

Think of a headline as your pitch. Try and create a compelling subject line to grab your reporter’s attention and in turn the consumer’s. The headline should be punchy and be short enough to read from a smartphone. However, it should still be informative and inviting to encourage further reading. Including words such as ‘new’ or ‘growth’ or ‘success’ could (although not always) help you pass the journalist’s vetting process.

Reverse engineer a successful press release

A successful press release is not just one that you enjoy reading, but one that resembles those covered widely in your industry.

By studying similar press releases that have achieved good coverage by your preferred media outlets, you should be able to make an effective template for yourself. Break down the winning press release into sections and try and understand why they are successful. By emulating success, you’ll give yourself the best chance of achieving the results you desire – so long as there’s no plagiarism!

Five important skills for IT professionals looking to progress

By its nature, tech is rapidly changing industry. It’s also rapidly growing – with the UK’s digital economy up 30% in five years. It’s therefore unsurprising that the skills required by IT professionals are changing just as quickly.

So, if you’re looking to develop your career in tech, it’s important to keep up to date with the latest trends and ensure your CV stands out from the crowd.

"For tech candidates looking to stand out in a sea of CVs, they should be aware of the latest technology trends," said Harry Silvester, Technology Consultant at ESA Group. "Based on hundreds of discussions I’ve had with local hiring managers, the most attractive IT professionals are those who have some experience with emerging technologies, security and mobile.”

Here are some key skills for IT professionals who are looking to bolster their CVs:

1. Mobile technology and cloud computing

Since the introduction of the smartphone, mobile tech has become integral to the way that people and businesses work in the UK. As a result, the mobile industry is now around $50 billion in size - just in creating and deploying mobile apps. Naturally, skilled developers who have experience of both mobile and desktop apps will be more in demand than those who aren’t.

2. Cybersecurity

The lines are becoming blurred between IT specialists and cybersecurity specialists as all hardware and programming now requires some sort of security. With data encryption / protection becoming ever more important in the digital age as hackers become increasingly sophisticated, it’s crucial that security is built into programs and networks at the start of the build, rather than as an afterthought.

3. Willingness to go freelance

A great deal of tech work is built around projects and with the talent shortage in the industry, companies are looking to fill their investments in an agile and flexible manner to boost efficiency. IT professionals who are looking to make their mark, might consider making the transition from becoming an employee to freelancer / contract to make the most of this opportunity.

4. Open to emerging tech

Even just a few years ago, niches such as virtual and augmented reality weren’t making many headlines in the tech world. Now, total revenue in these ‘niches’ are predicted to reach $162 billion in 2020.

By becoming familiar with these and other emerging technologies such as A.I., workers can make themselves much more attractive to companies.

5. Higher-level analysis and decision-making skills

With the rise of big data and analytics, companies can start to save money by automating certain low-level IT functions in areas such as network monitoring. Unfortunately, this can pose a threat to IT jobs.

To avoid any future automation pitfalls, tech professionals should focus on developing skills in decision making, higher level analysis or more creative platforms.

Is working from home the perfect job perk?

The ability to work from home, whether it’s only a few days per month or more regularly, is becoming an increasingly common employee benefit – although it’s still quite a rarity in the UK.

A recent survey has suggested that only 36.5% of UK workers currently do any work from home, despite 90% saying that they could do so if they had the right tools. Plus, 83% of those asked said that flexibility was important to them.

In theory, many of us would jump at the chance to skip the commute and work in our PJs. But is it really as good as it’s cracked up to be?

Here are some things to ask yourself, if you are given the chance to work remotely:

• How self-disciplined and self-motivated am I?
• Am I happy spending long periods of time on my own?
• Am I confident in working without supervision?
• Is there a quiet place to work at home, which is free from distractions?
• Am I more likely to have a better work life balance?
• Will the communication with my colleagues be good enough if it’s only via email / video instead of face-to-face?
• Will I be productive for the same amount of time I would be in the office?

If you are answering yes to most of these, then you are probably already set up to work away from the office.

However, if you are in doubt, then you might need to reconsider whether you really do want some working flexibility.

If you’re still unsure whether home-working is the right thing for you, there are still some options to find out more:

• Ask your colleagues. Do any of your co-workers already spend time away from the office? It may be a good idea to ask them what it’s like, to get a better understanding of the pros and cons.
• Use your networks. Search online for other people’s stories or use sites such as LinkedIn to ask your connections for tips.

If you have decided you're well-suited for remote work and there’s likely to be an opportunity to do so at your company, how do ask your boss the big question?

The best time to do so, is likely to be after you've thought your options through fully. Be prepared to ‘sell’ in the idea and explain how your flexible working will benefit you, your boss, and your company.

If your employer isn't on board with full-time remote work, then perhaps you could bargain for a combination of working in the office and at home throughout the week. That way you may be able to achieve the best of both worlds and boost your overall productivity in the long term.

6 smart tips for when quitting your job

Most people will quit their job at some point in their careers – and often more than once. It can be both scary and exciting, but making big career choices can be difficult.

Quitting can be tied to unhappiness or lack of progression, which in turn can be associated with anger. BUT – don’t make a rash decision that you may ultimately regret.

It’s important to move for the right reasons and to move smartly. Here’s our top 6 tips when considering a career move:

Be prepared

It’s likely you won’t want to quit if you’re not 100% sure that your new position is going to start when you think it will. Be prepared to make a back-up plan, just in case the deal with your new employer doesn’t materialise. It’s very rare for this to happen, but we have seen people give their notice in before contracts are signed – and then find out that the unthinkable happens.

Job deals can ultimately be canned at the last minute. Sometime this is due to lack of funds or a downturn in business, however they can be withdrawn if you aren’t legally allowed to do the job you’ve accepted (e.g. through non-solicitation clauses, or even credit checks). Be sure to have your new job offer in writing, ideally including contracts. This way you will have more safety if your offer is rescinded.

Have some savings

If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, it may hard to outright quit your job and financially survive until you secure your next position.

We’d suggest having at least 2 months of expenses in your accounts before you quit altogether (if not more). This will give you a good buffer to survive on whilst you are waiting for your new salary slip.

Give plenty of notice

Whilst four weeks / one month’s notice is standard and expected in most professions, the more time a departing employee can give, the better. This will help your company enable a smooth transition and will reflect well on your character.

Which brings us to:

Tell your line manager first and never burn a bridge

It’s a good idea to mention to your immediate boss that you are thinking of leaving, before formally informing your company in writing.

This will give them more time to prepare for your replacement and again will help with any future relationship you might have with your former company or line manager. It’s easy to think that you may never have anything to do with your incumbent boss ever again – but it’s surprising how often you might cross paths again in time.

Be direct, but diplomatic

When you quit a job, it's usually because there's a better opportunity for you out there. But if you are leaving because you’re unhappy, this can be more difficult to explain to your outgoing line manager.

Be direct and honest about your unhappiness, but stay away from criticism. This change is ultimately about you, so it’s important to remain positive.

Don’t slack off

It might feel fruitless, but the sensible advice is to keep working hard and avoid coasting for your remaining days in the office.

Step up your game if you can and leave no doubt that you are an exceptional employee. Don’t leave any baggage and finish on the up. This should leave you with a fresh outlook when you start your brand new dream job.