New Year’s Resolutions – And how they can affect your employees

As soon as 1st December hits, the craziness starts to set in. Only 25 days until Christmas, only this many days until the office closes, only 31 days until The New Year!

For most firms, December is focused on getting in last minute client meetings, hitting those end of year deadlines and ensuring that everything is wrapped up by the time the office closes for Christmas.

But what about your staff? They are pushing themselves to the limit and ensuring all the work gets done and have been all year. With the rush of work before the Christmas break, I find many employees setting New Year’s Resolutions such as ‘Get a new job’ which isn’t what you want them thinking of, especially in today’s tough candidate market.

So, a simple way some firms are pre-empting this rush of resignations that we see in the early part of the year is to have end of year staff reviews which reflect on their performance over the last 6 months, what their goals are and helping them set targets to achieve those goals in the new year. A less formal catch up than the normal EOFY Performance Review, these meetings are often held over a coffee and used as a ‘check in’ with their staff; and Partners say that this is working well with their employees who appreciate another (less formal) check in.

Candidates coming to me looking for new employment often site ‘lack of appreciation’ or ‘lack of communication’ as a major factor in their search for new employment. The implementation of regular informal check ins to see how staff are travelling, what they might need extra training on or just how they are coping with their workload is proving to increase the tenure of staff, especially in the first few months of the new year.

So would you try it? If you’d like more information or even a copy of my free template for end of year check ins to get you started on the right track, contact me today at charlene@thehirelab.com.au