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

Creating a Culture of Employee Development & Empowerment

employee development and employee empowermentWe talk a lot about the importance of employee empowerment, and for good reason: when employees have more contribution in the way your small law firm or business operates, you stand to reap such rewards as increased productivity, improved employee engagement, satisfaction and loyalty, and the ability to deliver stellar client services—all of which contribute positively to your bottom line.

However, improperly coached or underdeveloped employees may not have the tools they need to be a valuable part of the conversations and decisions about business operations. Before you empower your employees, you need to be sure they are adequately prepared. Creating a culture of employee development at your firm will not only show you what your team is made of, but also instill confidence that your team members are capable of stepping up and taking the lead!

Here are some ways to ensure your corporate culture evolves in the right direction: away from dictating and commanding and towards development and coaching:

1. Practice the art of listening. Listening to your employees, and asking the right questions, is a surefire way to keep your team members motivated. When you can step back from shouting orders and start to tune in to the factors that are impacting productivity, you’ll get a full 360º view of what’s working—and what’s not—at your firm.

2. Remember, there’s no “I” in “Team.” As a leader, you are not an “I.” You are part of the collective “we.” Taking a team-centered approach to running your firm means you’re in the trenches with everyone else—listening, collaborating, and providing feedback to keep projects moving steadily forward. This doesn’t mean that you should forget about providing feedback on an individual level, but it does mean that some of this feedback will be provided as part of the daily dialogue as opposed to formal reviews or surveys.

3. Leverage the strengths of your employees. It’s easy to give employees a list of tasks that need to be completed. But it’s more beneficial to give employees tasks based on their unique skillsets, and ask for their input in how to best tackle those tasks. This challenges individuals to develop creative solutions, unlocks their potential, and ultimately bolsters their confidence while increasing their level of engagement.

4. Implement a “don’t tell” policy. Don’t dole out orders and commands; ask your team members for input and listen to their responses. You’ll draw out some amazing characteristics, unveil some hidden talents, and foster the development of a collaborative “we” culture that makes everyone feel valued, respected and empowered.

At a small law firm or business, it’s so important that every member of the team—leaders, employees and support staff—be capable, engaged and empowered. This is what will give your firm a competitive edge, and ensure its continued growth. Our Team Empowerment Academy guides leaders through the process of becoming coaches rather than commanders, and also offers hundreds of tools and techniques to help employees of any level become well-rounded professionals, prepared to step up and make important decisions for their firm or business.

Contact Hiring & Empowering Solutions

To learn more about the Team Empowerment Academy, or to find our how we can help with employee empowerment, training and development, contact us using the brief form below. We’re happy to provide a demo of our Team Empowerment Academy, or to learn more about what your law firm or business needed to improve performance—and its bottom line.

by

Don’t Worry, We’ve Got These Common But Unexpected Legal Staffing Challenges Under Control…

overcoming unexpected legal staffing challengesRunning a small or solo law practice presents a multitude of challenges that are unique to this particular industry. Most lawyers, when branching out on their own, expect to come face-to-face with adversity on all fronts: building a clientele, finding affordable office space, implementing a compliant IT infrastructure, general operations management, and—of course—staffing their firm with support staff and lawyers. But there are a lot of challenges that entrepreneurial lawyers simply aren’t prepared for.

With over 20 years of experience in legal recruiting and staffing, we can say this with confidence: there are more challenges in this area of small law management than you may think. And your firm’s success is directly dependent on your ability to overcome these challenges.

Some common (but oftentimes unexpected) legal staffing challenges include:

Technology: Technology is always advancing, seemingly everyday. But it’s not the technology itself that is the challenge: most small law firms will leverage an IT system that enables them to produce documents, perform research and file court documents in an efficient manner. The challenge with technology is deciding which members of your team should be trained to use it! Lawyers may expect paralegals or support staff to deal with paperwork, even though it may make more sense for them to learn the systems themselves.

Legal Recruiting: What is your firm doing to find and recruit top paralegals or lawyers? Going to tier 1 law schools and fighting for attention alongside bigger and more-attractive-on-paper law firms? Stop wasting your time—at Hiring & Empowering Solutions, our Smart Hire Solution™ process leverages the power of a database that shows us when top lawyers or support staff leave their jobs, enabling us to act quickly to recruit the best-of-the-best team members for your firm. Recruiting is time consuming, and time is money: partnering with a legal staffing company like ours can free up your firm’s leaders to focus on what they do best: client relationship management and new business generation.

Employee Training & Development: Great, your firm has a team of talented people who are passionate about law and work well together. But, especially at a small law firm, you need your team to have a more well-rounded set of business skills. You need them to be at least a little competent in basically all areas of running a business. Employee training & development programs, like our Team Empowerment Academy, allow small firms to equip their teams with the tools and techniques they need to truly manage a business. Our program is 100% virtual, with weekly master classes and a series of over 200 workshops designed to empower your team members and turn them into effective leaders.

Employee Retention: Have you thought about how your law firm is going to keep its staff happy, year after year? Most small firms can’t offer the huge salaries, bonus programs and benefits packages that larger firms can offer. But we’ve found that team members are sometimes even more excited about non-monetary benefits: more paid time off, the flexibility to work from home, even a special parking spot to thank them for a job well done. If you’re not expressing appreciation for your team, another firm will. Don’t let that happen.

Outsourced Legal Services vs. Full-Time: Your firm landed more cases than usual—maybe a big fee case, or a case that you’ve “sorta” marketed and actually landed. Great news, right? Not necessarily. In our experience, most attorneys freeze, go into analysis paralysis mode, feel they need to sign up for a legal-technical course to get every possible fact pattern, and spin their wheels for weeks before they actually start working on the case. By the time they finally begin work, they’ve lost credibility and integrity with the client, and are feeling stressed they they’re going to be fired and asked for a refund, or worse, that the client will file a grievance to the bar. So, how are you actually planning to get the job done? Is outsourcing to a credible service the best approach, or should your firm go all-in and hire a new attorney, paralegal or legal assistant? Outsourced legal services may be appealing for what you perceive to be a temporary position, but the right person can grow a “one and done” case into something much, much bigger (and more profitable)! If you’re on the fence between outsourced legal services and a full-time employee, schedule a free consultation and we’ll brainstorm the best solution with you!

Whether you’re just beginning the process of going out on your own, or you already run a small or solo law practice, there will always be unexpected staffing challenges waiting to take you by surprise. The good news is that Hiring & Empowering Solutions can help with most of them. There is no challenge that your small law firm can’t overcome with a little help from our team of legal staffing experts. Contact us today to talk about whatever challenges your firm is currently facing—chances are, we can help.

Contact Hiring & Empowering Solutions

As legal staffing experts, we’ve learned the most effective way for leaders and employees to navigate the challenges of running a small or solo law firm. We offer staffing solutions and employee training and development programs, designed for employees and business leaders alike. We can help your firm become more efficient, and more profitable. Contact us and learn how.

by

Say Goodbye to the Employee Evaluation and Hello to Employee Empowerment

say goodbye employee evaluations

Whether you’re a boss or an employee, there is no phrase more cringe-inducing than, “employee evaluation.” Bosses dread the impending pay raise request, employees fret about whatever they’re about to be reprimanded for, and the truth…is that both the boss and the employee have good reason to cringe.

Boutique law firms and other small businesses don’t typically have a process for how and when raises are issued. Employees seeking a raise have one option: to ask for one. And the least invasive way to start this awkward discussion is via an employee review. So they ask their boss to schedule one. Cue the cringing.

Likewise, bosses hate having to step away from revenue-producing activities to discuss problems with their employees—but when the need arises, so does the need for an employee evaluation. Ugh.

So it makes sense that neither a boss nor an employee would want to engage in a formal employee evaluation. And think about what an employee review actually accomplishes: it’s a conversation about pay raises, or about reprimanding an employee for something that happened in the past. Come to think of it, it’s not really a conversation at all—it’s more like a guarded, hide-all-your-cards kind of meeting where both participants are on the defensive. Even best case scenario, the conversation stays amicable but is filled with fluff that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to talk about your employee’s growth potential, and set long-term goals for their performance and professional development?

We say, down with employee evaluations! Down with this archaic and damaging practice that stunts entrepreneurship and drives innovation to a halt. What good comes of asking your employee to answer silly questions, like rating his or her timeliness? Why not save your time and energy and just address issues as they arise, rather than let them fester until one of you requests an employee evaluation? Under no circumstances should an employee ever hear negative feedback for the first time during a formal review. If they don’t know they’re doing something wrong, how can they fix it? And why would you prolong the process of fixing these problems until their review comes around?

And employees shouldn’t be asking for a pay raise in a formal “employee evaluation” setting, either! If the boss is just waiting for an employee to drop the “I want a raise” bomb, they’re only hearing a build-up to the employee’s request, rather than from a productive perspective that could open the door to progressive dialogue.

There is literally no place for employee reviews at boutique law firms or small businesses. The time to banish them was yesterday. Employee evaluations need, need, NEED to be replaced with employee empowerment and engagement. Conversations that drive the development of growth plans, that support an employee’s passions and goals, and that simultaneously meet the current and future demands of a business.

Make Moves Towards Productivity & Growth—for Your Whole Team!

When you’re ready to say goodbye to the employee evaluation and usher in a new era of employee empowerment, download our free workbook, ‘8 Keys to an Empowering Conversation’ and start making the shift from old school, ineffective business practices to new and innovative practices that propel your firm or business to the next level.