A-Players. Every employer is asking for them, but what are you doing to attract them? 

There are certain things that A-players are looking for from prospective employers.

8 Things A-Players Want:

1. To work with other A-Players. Are you willing to make a position available if an A-Player applies for a job at your company?
2. Accountability. Does your company have accountability and measurement tools to make the company better? 
3. To know what the long term goals are for the company. Are you sure of your long term goals? Have you shared that with your staff?
4. To not be part of a stagnant company. Are you evolving and changing? 
5. The opportunity to grow within the company. What are you doing with your current staff to nurture them in their personal and professional lives?
6. To not hear phrases like "that's the way we have always done it."
7. Financial transparency. Business is a game, what are you doing to keep score with your team? 
8. Owners who are developing themselves. As a leader in your...

Although mental health is not a new issue, the impact and responsibility we have as business owners is relatively new and how we approach it is not always clear cut. More information and  training is becoming available to us, but a lot of it is from larger companies with greater resources, which can be tough if you’re a small business. With that being said, I understand that one of your biggest challenges is the unknown and we wanted to share 6 simple suggestions:

• Check in often with your staff and actively listen to them.
• Ensure your staff know that their job is not at risk because they share their mental health concerns.
• Talk about mental health with your staff regularly
• Talk about the importance of enough sleep consistently
• Create a work/life balance - don’t contact staff after hours whenever possible
• Consider switching to 4 day work weeks.

I believe open dialogue around mental health and a willingness to understand where your staff are at will make a world of a differenc...

Do you train, motivate and protect your staff like they're the greatest asset you have in your business? 

You put so much work into finding the best people for the job and then training them. But don't assume the team development work ends when their job starts. If you hire an employee and then never speak to them again, you are wasting time, money and potential talent. It creates a  work culture that feels like "come and go" and can lead to high turnover & poor morale.

Here are a few tips to ensure that’s not the case in your business:

• Training is the foundation that will set the tone moving forward. Take the time to share the company's mission and the role they play in that bigger vision.
• Keep morale high among your staff so that you get the best work out of every employee.
• Invest in staff from the beginning and you will have experienced and confident team members to grow with your organization. 
• Develop a career ladder with each employee to allow you to help them achieve the...

Have a weekly team meeting. This one piece of advice I give leadership teams every time I speak with them is also the one thing I seem to get the most push back on. Now, often this is because the meetings they are having are unstructured and therefore unproductive so the idea of doing more of them seems like a waste of time. 

Having and sticking to an agenda will add structure to your management team meeting. It’s the difference between sitting around talking about the business and having a purposeful conversation where you leave with actionable steps. 

Here are some helpful hints and tips for a successful weekly team meeting:

• Have a set agenda (topics for the agenda)
• Good news
• Company scorecards (tracking system)
• Employee and customer headlines
• IDS (identify, discuss solve) issues
• Cascading message (what do we need to communicate to the staff)
• Have a leader for the meeting
• Assign specific tasks to each person prior to ending the meeting.
• Have it at the same time each week...