Hiring & Empowering Solutions

by

Hold Your Team Members Accountable…to Each Other

micromanagement and accountabilityIf you are micromanaging your employees, please stop! Now. It is literally debilitating to your law firm or business. Micromanagement prevents your business from evolving with the times. It thwarts innovation. It pushes strong team members out the door, hinders workflow, disempowers staff, closes communication channels, and turns “teamwork” into a four letter word.

Shall we continue?

Micromanagement could be the biggest nail in your firm or business’s coffin. Do you find it difficult to delegate responsibility to team members, taking an if-you-want-something-done-right-you-gotta-do-it-yourself approach instead? Do you have high employee turnover, or do you get the feeling that your team members are walking on eggshells around you? Are you the only person at your business responsible for making decisions? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, well, we’re sorry to say it, but…you might be a micromanager.

But there is hope! Many a micromanager has been able to turn their leadership technique around and create a workplace environment rich with empowerment. Here’s how:

1. Hire the right people. The #1 reason why leaders micromanage is because they don’t trust their team members. Hiring quality people who you truly believe are capable of delivering the caliber of work you expect will reduce the need to micromanage them. One of the best pieces of advice we were ever given was this: hire people who are better than you. Put your ego aside and think about that for a minute. Hiring people who are better than you only stands to benefit your firm in the long run.

2. Hold your team members accountable…to each other. Nothing ensures quality control more so than peer pressure. Allowing your staff to provide anonymous feedback about the performance of other team members and departments will create a sense of ownership, and can help you implement systems that keep your team satisfied and productive.

3. Be clear about what you expect. If your staff doesn’t know what you expect, then how can they work towards it? So many times we see micromanagement emerge as a response to poorly communicated expectations. Be clear, give your team specific benchmarks and objectives, and eliminate the need to micromanage them!

4. Empower your employees. Providing your team members with the freedom to engage—meaningfully—in decision-making processes will help them “own their role” at your firm. They’ll be willing to go above and beyond because they know you won’t be sweeping up behind them, changing everything that they’ve done. They’ll be excited about their job, and will take the success (or failure) of your business personally.

5. Recognize your own bad behavior. So the saying goes, the first step is admitting. Once you recognize your own micromanaging tendencies, you can begin to change them. Working with a management consultant or executive coach can be a huge help for those with the tendency to micromanage.

No matter how you look at it, micromanagement is a huge problem that needs to be stopped before it destroys your firm. You want—no, you need—empowered employees who aren’t afraid to step up and lead. Forget about the robots who need to be told what to do, and how to do it. Hire cream-of-the crop-employees, empower them, and you’ll find there is no need to micromanage anything (or anyone) anymore.

Schedule a FREE Discovery Session

Is your firm or business struggling with micromanagement? Are you confident that you have hired amazing people? Are you confident that you have communicated your process for holding your team accountable…to each other? Maybe it’s time to hire your next (or first) superstar hire and empower them to take ownership of your business. Hiring & Empowering Solutions specializes in legal staffing, and offers the only Team Empowerment Academy (TM) in the country. Schedule a 30-minute discovery session with our co-founder, Molly Hall, today. Find out how we can support the evolution of your firm, and ensure its viability today and tomorrow.

schedule a discovery session

by

Increased Productivity and an Improved Bottom Line are Just Secondary Benefits Next to the Cost Savings of Retaining Your Employees

cost savings employee retentionLosing an employee is expensive. The process of finding and training a replacement can cost twice as much as your former employee’s salary. Then, once your new hire is properly trained and onboarded, keeping them engaged and loyal is the next challenge. And it’s a big one…

Companies are usually shocked to learn that financial incentives are not the secret to employee retention. In fact, a 2018 LinkedIn survey reports that an incredible 94 percent of employees admitted they would stay in a position longer if their employer invested in their training and development. Ironically, these employees also claimed that they didn’t have time to continue their educations independently.

The solution? Make employee training and development part of their day-to-day jobs.

The same LinkedIn survey showed that both executives and employees agree that soft skills are highly important: leadership development, communication skills, and team collaboration were just a few of the skills that survey participants identified as instrumental to their careers. And wouldn’t you know, empowering your employees with these skills can—and will—make a magnificent difference in your company or firm’s performance. What a win-win.

Of course, implementing an out-of-the-box training program isn’t enough to yield results for your employees or for your firm. Here are a few tips to help align your training program with the wants of your employees and the needs of your business:

1. Set learning goals. Each member of your team will have his or her own educational objectives. Identify where their goals intersect with the goals of your firm—and voila! You’ve got a mutually beneficial goal that will keep your employee engaged while reaping rewards for your business.

2. Go with the workflow. It doesn’t matter how solid your training and development program is—if it’s not teaching skills that integrate seamlessly with your firm’s operational processes, employees won’t be able to leverage their new skills in a real-world environment. Try to align learning processes with the actual tasks your employees manage on a day-to-day basis. Your employees will be able to feel the improvement in their performance…and your bottom line will feel it, too.

3. Reward your employees for a job well done. It’s simple: employees who feel appreciated and valued are more motivated to perform at the top their ability. When your employees reach their learning goals or measurably improve their performance, reward them however you are able: give them extra flex time or a paid day off, take them out for a nice lunch, grant them the most coveted parking spot for a week. It doesn’t have to be a grand reward—just some way of showing them that their hard work has been noticed and is appreciated.

Increased productivity and an improved bottom line are just secondary benefits next to the cost savings of retaining your employees. Training and development programs are undoubtedly a win for your business and a win for your employees…as long as you find the right program.

Our Team Empowerment Academy is a virtual training program designed to equip leaders and employees with a wide range of hard and soft skills. With over 200 tools and techniques, plus weekly master classes focusing on a variety of subjects, members of our program typically generate measurable results after just eight modules. We help take the guesswork out of employee training and development.

Schedule a FREE Discovery Session

If you’re tired of a revolving door of employees wasting your firm’s time and money, we can help. Whether your challenge is finding and recruiting top talent, training and developing your team, or retaining employees for the long-term, Hiring & Empowering Solutions can help. Schedule your free 30-minute discovery session with Molly today.

schedule a discovery session

by

Your Qualified, Invested Employee Just Quit…Here Are 9 Reasons Why

employee retention why best employee quitAttorneys, listen up. This may comes as a surprise, but your employees do not need your paycheck. Your old war cry of, “It’s so hard to find good help,” has shifted dramatically in favor of employees. Now you may find yourself crying, “It’s so hard to find ANY help…good, bad or the other!” The unemployment rate is momentously low at only 3.9%—with average unemployment rates of 1.9% for attorneys and 3.1% for paralegals, just to add salt to the wound. And recruiting top talent is harder than ever! Gone are the days of publishing an ad and getting hundreds of resumes. Unless you have a giant pay-per-click budget of $1500+ per ad, and can run that ad on multiple recruiting platforms, chances are you’re not going to reach many qualified candidates. And, even then, you have to sit by the phone like a professional recruiter because, if you wait three days to reply to an applicant, they’ll already have multiple offers in hand.

Yes, more than ever employees are in the driver seat and are interviewing your firm, more so than your firm is interviewing them. The quality of the questions coming from the employee’s side have never been richer. They want to know about the firms values, what happened to the employees who came before them, the company’s financial security, and accessibility to leadership, supervisors and trainers, etc. They want to know what the employee manual says, what the training process looks like, what the firm’s quarterly goals are, what the evaluation and raise process is. And the #1 question: what are the uniform communication verticals. They want to know about the management of the firm; their expectations and values.

Then, only after those questions are answered, come the money, benefits and perks inquiries. Shockingly, this is secondary after your potential new hire knows who they will working for. In the words of one job candidate, “The money is secondary after I hear about the communication styles, the availability of management, and their training processes. Regardless of the starting pay and vague promises for ‘opportunity’ and ‘work/life balance,’ if the leaders are unapproachable and don’t see their employees as the greatest asset in their business, I’ll pass.” Again, these are a job candidate’s words.

But it’s not all doom and gloom! If you are willing to be a great employer—and believe in giving your team time, attention and consistent feedback—then you are in mega luck!

Let us try to paint a very real picture for you. We helped a very busy law firm hire a new Legal Assistant. The firm was too busy to focus on hiring—they actually had three new positions available. We started with the first open positions, and then once a new hire was in place, we quickly moved to the second position. The firm was also too busy to schedule the 30-day onboarding process calls included in our Smart Hire Solution program fee. Our COO reminded them several times to get their 30-day onboarding and goal-setting call in the books. As quickly as it was scheduled, it would be cancelled due to “emergencies and crises in the firm.” We finally got the 30-day review (note: we were never able to schedule an initial goal-setting call) in the books, 45-days into the new hire’s start date. We conducted the review call on video—body language says everything—and there were 150 red flags in the managing partner’s, team leader’s and new employee’s body languages. But we ended the call with everyone claiming they were excited, empowered, and ready to the hit the ground running for the next 30-days, and that they couldn’t wait to declare their success in our 60-day review.

One week later, we got a call from the employee. “Molly, I just quit and wanted to provide you with very specific reasons why, so I can support you in finding the best candidate for the working conditions at this firm.”

So here they are. Nine reasons your qualified, invested employee just quit (and what NOT to do if you’d like to retain your employees):

1. Unavailable, unapproachable leadership. The candidate strongly communicated that, “The attorney’s hourly rate is $450 hour. If you needed to talk to her, you’d better be able to go back to your desk and bill the amount of revenue she lost while you were talking to her.”
2. Frustration about the firm’s mission & vision statement.
3. Lack of a structured training process
4. Inconsistent communication.
5. Existing employees are disengaged.
6. Undelivered promises. “We spent more time apologizing, backtracking and making things up to everybody—clients, referral sources and employees. We couldn’t get a win. We never got in the car at the end of our day or week feeling victorious, like, ‘wow, we over delivered.’”
7. Absence of recognition; feeling undervalued and under-appreciated.
8. Lack of office culture. It feels like a factory filled with walking robots.
9. No joy or fun to engage employees on an emotional level.

But here is the good news: if you can make certain you are not making the above nine mistakes and have thoroughly communicated the open position in your employment ads, interviewing, onboarding process, you will land the most qualified, empowered employees that will not only work long hours and protect and defend your time as a business owner, but they will never, ever leave—no matter how much money is waved at them. And this is especially important now, with the current shallow talent pool who have recruiters inboxing them daily with messages saying, “Are you sure you’re happy? I have the most perfect job for you!” Yes, this is actually happening…

Schedule a Free Discovery Session

If you need help implementing a recruiting strategy and revolving-door-proof employee hiring and training plan, schedule a free 30-minute discovery session with Molly. We can discuss the position of your small law firm, determine your recruiting and staffing needs, and identify areas of opportunity for your firm’s culture and leadership development. Click the button below to schedule your free discovery session!

schedule a discovery session

by

Employee Empowerment, Leadership Development & Other Telltale Signs of an Innovative Law Firm

employee empowerment leadership developmentInnovation and lawyering don’t always go hand-in-hand. However, any business growth guru (us included) will tell you that any business, in any industry, needs innovation to thrive. It’s through innovation that businesses gain and maintain a competitive edge, and law firms are not an exception to this rule.

In the legal sector, innovation ultimately enables firms to deliver better quality client services, more efficiently. It keeps law firms relevant in the rapidly-changing legal services landscape. Today, clients don’t just appreciate innovation—they demand it. So let’s give the people what they want! Here are five elements to help you create a culture of innovation at your firm:

1. Empowerment, empowerment, empowerment: We love employee empowerment. We love employee empowerment so much, in fact, that it’s part of our company name. When it comes to driving innovation, there is no faster way to stomp out the sparks of ingenuity than by failing to empower your people. Firms spend thousands of dollars finding, recruiting and hiring top legal talent—don’t waste your investment by telling these highly qualified people where to go and how to get there.

employee empowerment leadership development

Download Our Free e-Book

Empower your employees to follow their intuition and lead your firm to success—download our free e-Book, Intrapreneurs in an Entreprenur’s World: How to Empower Your Employees to Step Up and Lead and take the first step towards creating a future of innovation at your firm.

 

2. Acknowledge hard truths: Not every innovative idea is going to be a success—and if they were, how would you learn and grow? Failure is not the problem; failing to recognize when a project or initiative is dead in the water…is. Cut your losses, stop hemorrhaging resources, analyze why the project failed and what your team has learned as a result, and move on to the next innovative idea.

3. Foster a sense of community: Often times, innovation leads to change—and that is a scary prospect to many employees and leaders alike. However, when your team takes a collaborative approach to brainstorming or problem solving, the feeling that they are all in it together can overcome the fear of impending change and propel your firm towards game-changing innovation.

4. Set challenging goals: Simply stated, challenging goals push employees to perform at extraordinary levels. Challenging goals force innovation. Any firm can set goals that are realistic and easily-achievable. Truly innovative firms, however, will push their people into that sweet spot where a difficult objective results in the development of nontraditional solutions to traditional challenges.

5. Invest in leadership development: Without great leaders, innovation is sure to stall out. The leader(s) at your firm must be passionate about and capable of empowering employees. They must be able to humbly and graciously accept failure. They must be able to bring a team together, and set aggressive goals for them to reach. Do you trust your leaders to make decisions in the ambiguous situations that innovation will most likely create? Do your leaders have what it takes to make spur-of-the-moment choices, without much data to support those choices? Our Team Empowerment Academy is a virtual training and development program designed to equip leaders and employees with the tools and techniques they need to bring their careers and your firm to the next level—learn more about this one-of-a-kind program here.

If you think your law firm is exempt from the need to innovate, think again. Innovation is a requirement in today’s ever-changing legal environment, and your firm’s ability to gain competitive advantage and remain relevant absolutely depends on it.

Contact Hiring & Empowering Solutions

Hiring & Empowering Solutions offers recruiting and staffing services for small law firms and businesses. In addition to legal staffing solutions, we also offer employee empowerment, training and development programs designed to induce innovative thinking and, ultimately, improve your ability to deliver client services in a highly effective, highly efficient way. To learn more about how we can support your small law firm or business, contact us today.

by

Crying Solo: Understaffed, Overworked & Other Unnecessary (but Common) Complaints of Today’s Solopreneur

understaffed, overworked, crying soloEarlier this month—and maybe you’ve followed the story—a careless attorney, wanting to appeal a contempt order issued against his client, was forced to seek an extension of time due to a Microsoft Word failure. Trust us, we completely understand how quickly an unexpected technological setback can send even the most well-organized plan south without a moment’s notice. But as the legal world chided this attorney for his incompetence, this attorney felt the need to make an excuse to defend his actions: I’m a solo practitioner with limited resources.

What’s worse, is that he is not the first solo practitioner to use this as an excuse for ineptitude. In 2018 alone, there are dozens of cases where solo lawyers cited being understaffed or overworked as a reason why their representation was inadequate, or why their filings were late, etc.

We partner with solo and small law firms across the country, helping these hardworking attorneys with recruiting, staffing, employee training, leadership development—essentially everything they need to never have to complain about being understaffed or overworked. As we’ve worked with literally thousands of lawyers, we know only too well the real struggles that come along with being a solo practitioner: work-life balance (or the lack thereof); developing the willpower to be accountable to yourself (it’s so much harder than it sounds); and the sheer amount of stress that comes along with going out on your own. The last thing a talented and capable solopreneur needs to add to that list of challenges is having to prove that they can handle a big case…and it’s much harder to do that with so many less-than-competent attorneys running around crying solo.

Knowing when you need legal support staff—and how to find, recruit, hire and pay for a new employee—is the first step in never having to cry understaffed or overworked again. The right hire will not only be able to take loads of work off your very full plate, but can be empowered to become an efficient, resourceful and profitable asset to your firm.

For all the challenges that come along with being a solo practitioner, there are twice as many benefits: having full control over your legal services destiny; creating a niche-specifc practice vs. taking on all types of clients with a wide variety of legal needs because it is all about the billable hour; designing the work environment of your dreams; the flexibility of setting your own (sometimes unconventional) work hours…the list goes on. Having Hiring & Empowering Solutions in your corner can make the benefits of solo law practice even sweeter. We take the guesswork out of legal staffing and employee training and development, which can save a solo practitioner from feeling understaffed and overworked—not to mention thousands of dollars and countless hours of lost time.

Contact Hiring & Empowering Solutions

If you find yourself crying solo, maybe it’s time to reach out and contact our team. We’re happy to offer a complimentary consultation to discuss your pain points and find a solution that could save you time, money, sweat and (sometimes) tears. Contact us today to learn more.