Hiring & Empowering Solutions

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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.

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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.

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Why Employee Training & Development Programs Don’t Offer an Immediate Solution

employee training and development programSmall law firms are investing more than ever in employee training and development, seeking to better engage their employees and keep them invested in their jobs for the long-term. Don’t get us wrong, employee training and development is hugely important to any small or solo law practice. But we see it time and time again: law firm leadership identifies a learning opportunity or behavioral problem and thinks that investing in an employee training and development program will offer an immediate solution.

But an employee training and development program is only as effective as a law firm’s leadership. If your firm’s leadership has not clarified which groups and individuals are responsible for making certain decisions, they are negating your training efforts. If authority has been delegated in a silo—and only at the very tippity-top of that silo—you are impeding your own team training efforts. If you have not outlined a measurable way to hold your employees accountable for decision-making, then you are standing in your own way. And you need to step aside.

Employee training and development is a highly-effective solution for a lot of traditional business problems: it helps keep balls in the air rather than constantly dropping; it snuffs out office drama; it streamlines operations and keeps your firm running like a well-oiled machine; it draws out each employee’s superpowers; and it empowers your employees to step up and lead rather than await orders and execute as dictated.

But if, at the core of your firm, you’re not meeting these three requirements, there isn’t a training and development program in the world that could help you:

1. An internal system that is aligned with your training & development goals. So, you want your team to feel more ownership of the firm and its performance—you want them to make confident decisions and run with their intrepreneurial ideas. But is your firm structured in a way that enables this level of employee empowerment? Or do you have a managerially “tall” organization, where each layer of leadership is required to approve decisions? Is access to important information limited to certain members of your leadership team? If employees keep running into red tape and feel that they need to ask permission to make even the tiniest decision, how can they be empowered to become leaders?

2. Leaders who are 100% committed to making positive changes at your firm. You’ve taken the first step and figured out the root cause of dysfunction at your firm. Now, are your leaders willing to make changes that solve internal problems and open the doors to an effective employee training and development program? If leaders aren’t ready to relinquish control of your firm’s decision-making processes and trust that their newly-empowered team would be capable of calling the shots, then training and development efforts will be moot.

3. Find solutions, not bandaids. There is the case of one particular firm leader whose team kept reporting back to her that they were stressed out and overworked. With the best of intentions, she rolled out a mindfulness workshop at her firm. This would reduce stress, right? But even though her team reported back that the mindfulness workshop was “interesting”…it still didn’t reduce their stress. The problem is that, to reduce stress, the root cause of that stress needs to be addressed. The mindfulness workshop was just a bandaid—not a long-term solution.

Implementing an employee training and development program under the wrong conditions is a waste of time and money. If you’re unsure about the conditions at your law firm, we’d love the opportunity to connect and assess your situation. Depending on where you are, our Team Empowerment Solution might be the perfect fit for your firm’s leadership and employees alike. Schedule a free discovery session with Molly and find out if your firm is ready to empower its employees and equip them with the tools they need to grow your business.

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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!

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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.