People Dynamics Newsletter - People Matters
Issue 47, January 2009 | Back to Newsletters Index
PD News
Happy New Year! Welcome back to another year. We hope you’ve rested up during the holidays and enjoyed the time spent with family and friends.
Emma will be away on holiday in Asia from January 21st to the end of February. She will be travelling to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. We hope she will enjoy the trip and remain safe.
New Career Consulting Services—After requests from our clients we have put together a new service to support employees and managers through redundancy. Please call us to find out more.
Rewarding for Success
It is of great importance that small businesses ensure their employees, especially their top performers, remain happy and motivated during uncertain economic times. While underperforming staff will tend to dig in, increasingly, there will be alternative employment opportunities available for top talent. Businesses who retain the staff that can really make a difference to internal culture, to customer satisfaction, and to contributing to the bottom line, will be better placed to weather the economic storm.
One way to ensure the retention of your best staff is to review your organisation’s reward practices. In these lean financial times, monetary rewards may not as available. Cutting back on bonuses, for example, should be balanced with other non-financial rewards. Options for non-financial rewards are many and varied, but some examples include offering flexible hours, or structured flex time arrangements (such as a 9 day fortnight), training and development, team dinners, and official recognition for excellent performance.
Keep in mind that everyone will value different things. Rewards that would be most appreciated by younger employees (such as training and development opportunities) may not be as effective on employees with young children (who might prefer flexible hours or RDOs). Think about what drives the individual, remembering that what motivates you may be quite different to what motivates them. Finally, be sure to discuss potential reward programs with staff. Regular communication is a pillar of retention, and discussing rewards can often remind people why they like their job.
Legal Update
The ‘dominant reason’ test will be removed from the Age Discrimination Act, making it easier for people to prove they have been discriminated against on the basis of their age.
The change is a critical milestone in protecting and valuing mature-age workers, and it will bring the Act into line with other federal anti-discrimination laws.
The Australian Human Rights Commission received 417 age discrimination complaints between mid 2004 and mid 2008. Almost three-quarters of them were employment-related.