Could double ‘Black Fridays’ impact staff productivity in Welsh SMEs?

In Wales, Black Friday is the last Friday before Christmas, and the most popular night for office parties.

It’s thus called because historically, miners coming out of the pits covered in coal (and therefore black) would hit the town for a drink after work. As time has passed, the tradition is endemic in many Welsh industries, but spare a thought for the emergency services who find it incredibly hard.

This year is looking particularly challenging – with double the usual challenges.  That’s because many business owners are unwilling to hit the town on the Friday before Christmas Eve, so many of the parties have been booked the week before – however, most of the staff seem so far to be regarding this as an ‘extra night’ of partying and have made their own plans for the following week.

Trying to make plans for our own team meal was challenging – everywhere on both days was full, and that was before the end of October.  A friend who owns a bar in Cardiff is rubbing his hands with glee!

Whilst it’s indeed, great for hospitality, as an HR Software specialist, I see the other side of workplace Christmas parties.

On the day itself, HR sees increased holiday requests to get ready early, and hit the beer before the rest.  It’s easier if you have HR software with a built in leave planner, like Activ Absence, because you can restrict leave during busy periods using the system.  However, that’s not a common scenario in Wales.

Doing it over the phone or with a wall planner, faced with 10 leave requests all at once, lots of pleading faces, and 10 sob stories, managers can easily feel overwhelmed and just give in, leaving the office short staffed, or say no to some, leading to accusations of nepotism and a bad atmosphere when everyone is supposed to be socialising.

Then, after the party, there’s almost always fallout.  The faux pas, the post-party photos on social media, the well-intentioned teasing that got out of hand, incidents, allegations and alcohol fuelled arguments - the scenarios that mean HR rarely relax at staff parties.

Even if managers get through all that unscathed, Black Friday almost always heralds the start of a winding down at work that can escalate into further sickies, poor performance and a general lack of care among those who have to work up until Christmas Eve.

Normally, we are only talking a day or two, but with most Welsh businesses hitting the town a week earlier than normal, there’s a full week of potential low productivity followed by, in many cases, more partying at the end of it – I doubt there will be many minds focused on work in the week in between – and then, on the next party Friday, it starts all over again.

For managers, it doesn’t end there.

After the Christmas break, there’s more people-challenges because it’s a new Annual Leave Year.

Tech can really help here, but there are only a few SMEs who have invested in absence management software in Wales (it’s a different story over the border).

While all the other staff are chatting about what they had for Christmas, HR will therefore have the annual joy of merging spreadsheets and manually calculating the end of year leave report, deciding who can carry what over to the next year, who did and didn’t use all their holiday and what next year’s leave allowances are for every member of staff.  These annual leave calculations can be complex for part time workers, and it typically takes 4 or 5 days in organisations with 100 staff or more.

Of course, not everyone has an HR Manager – small business owners are often left to figure it out themselves.  They, too, would really benefit from a system like Activ Absence which takes some of the pressure off at this challenging time of year. A new appraisals system is also probably on their wish list, so that when appraisals meetings start, usually at the end of January, they aren’t passing bits of paper to and fro and are actually delivering performance reviews that deliver improved performance!

There are lots of new rules expected for 2017, especially about contractors, pay rates etc. expected over the next 12 months and a looming Brexit, so without an easy way of communicating staff policy handbooks using software, managers could also be facing a long wait at the Photocopier.

For those managers who don’t get Santa’s software wishlist, this December is  harder than most – so we hope that staff will not judge them too harshly if they aren’t celebrating quite so loudly as everyone else.

As for those who are reading this thinking “I will do better next year”, it is still possible to get cloud based HR software in place by 1st January – and it costs less than you may think.

Either way, I wish the people who keep welsh businesses running a very Merry Christmas, and hope you escape the double Black Friday unscathed.

Here’s to a prosperous 2017 (and a Six Nations win) for Wales!

Adrian Lewis

HR in October - the calm before the perfect storm

My colleague came into work this morning telling me that her car’s warning light for ice had come on during her journey to work, as the temperatures outside hit below 4 degrees.

Looking out of the window you’d never believe it, it’s a beautifully sunny day – but winter is fast approaching, along with the end of the annual leave year. It’s usually the time of year when software providers see an influx of enquiries from businesses keen to get new staff holiday planning and performance review software in place for the new leave year.

 I absolutely recommend anyone thinking about putting in a cloud based leave planner for January 2017 book a demo now, because getting everyone in the business on board can take longer than you think, and we know from experience that the end of year is a stressful time for HR Managers. October and early November represents the calm before the storm.

Come mid November, in companies where leave can’t be carried forward, staff get the heebie jeebies because they haven’t used all their holiday entitlement. It’s often only absent mindedness rather than deliberate, but nobody wants to lose their annual leave if they can’t carry it over.

They obviously can’t all take time off at the same time, so its a leave request race – and where clashes follow, particularly when there is a ‘no carryover’ policy, the HR Manager is like Solomon, stepping in to try and make as fair a decision as possible without leaving the business short staffed.

It’s a challenging time anyway, for other reasons. HR are often busy dealing with the seasonal fallout that follows a flurry of office parties – workplace scandals, disagreements that get fuelled by alcohol, social media challenges, staff turning up hungover and staff not turning up at all – and trying to find replacement cover at short notice.

As if they already don’t have enough to deal with, ‘flu season kicks in.  You’ll usually find the HR Manager sniffling their way through the day, unable to take time off when they are themselves unwell, because they simply have too much to do!

When they finally settle down in front of their Christmas Dinner, HR managers will have justified every penny of their whole year’s salary in one month, but those who don’t have a system in place will face a bigger horror when they return – the end of year annual leave report.

 All of this adds up to a very stressful period, and one that will be made worse if you’ve left it until December to start booking absence management software demonstrations.

We are here to help, and here to advise our customers – if you want new software for the next annual leave year, contact us before the storm starts to bite, and we’ll do what we can to help make next winter a little less painful.

The language of performance appraisals

Just because we are a developer of Performance Appraisals Software doesn't mean the Activ Appraisals team don't have a sense of humour.  This cartoon may be tongue in cheek, but sadly it is the fly-by-seat approach to conducting appraisals that can be adopted by line managers.

Appraisals Cartoon from HR Daily Advisor

We know that HR Managers know how to do performance appraisals in such a way that it leaves employees more motivated and engaged - but here's a post on some of the politically correct language to describe certain office behaviours during appraisals.  It made us smile so we decided to share:

"Good at identifying management problems": Moans a lot
"Gets along extremely well with superiors and subordinates alike": A coward.
"Happy": Paid too much.
"Hard worker": Usually does it the hard way.
"Indifferent to instruction": Knows more than superiors.
"Internationally known": Likes to go to conferences and trade shows in Las Vegas.
"Is well informed": Knows all office gossip and where all the skeletons are kept.
"Inspires the cooperation of others": Gets everyone else to do their work.
"Is unusually loyal": Wanted by no-one else.
"Keen sense of humour": Knows lots of dirty jokes.
"Keeps informed on business issues: Subscribes to Playboy and National Enquirer.
"Listens well": Has no ideas of his own and never contributes to discussions.
"Maintains a high degree of participation": Comes to work on time.
"Maintains professional attitude": A snob.
"Meticulous in attention to detail": A nitpicker.
"Mover and shaker": Favours steamroller tactics without regard for other opinions.

If you'd like a free demonstration of the latest version of Activ Appraisals (and/or a free trial) just click here and we'll be happy to help!

How to conduct successful performance reviews

Guest blog by Adrian Lewis, Commercial Director of Activ Appraisals

Whether you use appraisals software or not, delivering an appraisal of someone’s performance is an opportunity to engage people, motivate them and set their goals and objectives in line with the priorities of your business.

It is therefore vital that managers view performance appraisals as more than just a paper chasing exercise.  Appraisals software can help provide a framework for the process, but enthusiasm, energy and drive from the line manager is the most important part in delivering a successful appraisal.
However, having a consistent process will at least ensure conformity and fairness.  Our appraisals software simply automates the process, but it doesn’t have to be automated to give best results – here’s our tips to help deliver appraisals that work:

Obtain Feedback from your employee ahead of the meeting

It is possible to take feedback from an employee during the appraisal meeting with a simple ‘how do you think you are doing?’.  However, this does not give managers the opportunity to plan their response to any issues raised and the staff member concerned may feel a little awkward bringing any issues up.

We recommend using employee questionnaires – whilst Activ Appraisals software allows you to create any number of different questionnaires to suit different job roles, and automatically forwards it to the employee ahead of a review meeting, there is nothing (apart from the admin of course!) to stop you managers doing this manually.  You can then use the meeting itself to discuss any points arising from employee feedback at the beginning of the meeting.

It is important as part of this process to agree the goals your employee would like to achieve.

 Keep reading

As Activ People HR launches the new Activ Appraisals Website, Adrian asks, are Appraisals a thing of the past?

Adrian Lewis is the Commercial Director for Activ People HR


Performance appraisals receive conflicting press. The need for them or otherwise is proving hard to settle in the HR world.

One minute we are being told that performance appraisals are dead, with the CIPD reporting in 2015 that 2/3 of businesses want to restructure the process and 1 in 20 businesses are planning to scrap performance appraisals altogether.

Skip forward 12 months and the CIPD are reporting on a CEB study that found employers who scrapped appraisals have seen ‘significant’ drops in productivity – so where does HR go next?

In my experience, many SME’s have never used appraisals anyway, but lots of them are saying they need to and they are looking for appraisals software to help manage the task.

As our blue chip customers speak to us about improving existing processes, most of the SME's I speak to have no formal structure in place for staff appraisals and it's high on their list of priorities. The new research and the UK’s productivity gap brings appraisals back to the table – but for many, introducing performance appraisals was ON the table anyway - and our new website, www.activappraisals.co.uk, is already receiving praise!

The Way we Were

The old, outdated model is definitely NOT the way to implement performance appraisals. With annual reviews linked to pay and the opinion of just one manager, both staff and managers simply found the process stressful and unhelpful.

In older structures, standards would vary widely from one appraiser to another and whilst the review should relate to a whole year, in practice it only related to the last few weeks and was purely based on the reviewer’s current opinion on the reviewee’s performance – records were either non existent or messy, goals were arbitrary and the endless exchange of Word documents created a challenge - and we wonder why it didn’t work well!

I’m not surprised some larger businesses scrapped the process – but the drop in productivity shows that scrapping them is not working either, so rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater, the UK needs to tackle its productivity issues and start to engage their people in a constructive way. Those who have improved the performance review process are already seeing results.

Adobe succeeds with Process Reform

Software giants Adobe have replaced annual performance appraisals with a system of ongoing feedback - results are very encouraging.

An employee or a manager can request a “check-in” meeting every three months.

Before the meeting, the manager requests feedback from the employee, and also obtains feedback from their peers across different levels, including co-workers and other managers. The results give the manager a wider perspective on staff performance. The manager can then tailor their advice accordingly. The approach is collaborative, continuous and engages both sides. Group performance is also evaluated, leading to a more rational determination of group compensation.

The results speak for themselves: Since changing the process, Adobe have experienced a 30 percent reduction in voluntary staff turnover – which is rare in a highly competitive talent environment.

Automation can make it easier

Our Bridgend-based team recently celebrated the launch of a new version of our Activ Appraisals software, which helps businesses conduct more effective performance reviews. The same steps could be followed manually, but the automation makes it less time consuming and avoids a flurry back and forth of Word documents and emails.

Firstly, HR are able to set up a competency framework, so that line managers have a consistent standard throughout the business against which to assess employees.
Managers can choose the frequency of the review meetings, but employees are involved in the process, rather than just called to attend a review meeting.

Managers can still elect to do traditional annual appraisals if they prefer, however there are conscious changes which improve consistency within the process and more importantly, engage employees better. For dynamic employers keen to move towards a more frequent ‘Adobe style’ process, the system works brilliantly.

Managers can choose the frequency of the review meetings, but employees are involved in the process, rather than just called to attend a review meeting. Employee feedback is requested automatically ahead of the meeting, which the manager will have chance to review in advance. The system also allows managers to implement peer reviews, commonly called 360 degree reviews, though not everyone uses this feature.

Setting Smart Objectives

In order for performance objectives to work, it is universally agreed that they need to be SMART:

· (S) Specific
· (M) Measurable
· (A) Achieveable
· (R) Realistic and
· (T) Time framed

The Activ Appraisals system helps managers create objective statements in a SMART format.

Post meeting, managers can review or modify objectives at any time and employees are automatically notified. The system also allows employees to add their own SMART objectives and request training at any time, automatically notifying the manager.

Businesses using the Activ Appraisals software have praised its ability to improve the success of performance reviews. The ability to tailor the software to suit business processes is often praised by customers like Kleinwort Benson, although success is largely down to the improvements that the software makes to the process itself.

Encouraging an Individual Approach within a consistent Framework

Whilst software can help, the secret to helping line managers ‘get reviews right’ is to consider employees as individuals, encouraging dialogue and acknowledging and rewarding individuals whilst maintaining consistency in approach.

Focusing on an individual and taking their input consultatively recognises their worth and promotes a flexible approach and individual coaching – which usually produces better results.

Far from being dead, regular performance appraisals can be empowering and can leave an employee feeling more motivated and a vital part of the team. In a climate where competition for talent is hotting up, and the productivity gap is a constant challenge, I'd argue that not embracing some form of performance review leaves SME's missing a trick.

For the many SME’s who are struggling without them, I'm told implementing performance reviews is very much on the table.

HR must change “fundamentally” in the digital age, says Direct Line HR director…

The influence of technology in business is going to have a huge impact on the HR function, according to Mark Martin, HR director of insurance firm Direct Line.

Speaking yesterday at HR Tech Europe Spring Warm-up in London, Martin said HR needs to assess its role in the digital age. 

He said that as people data and management becomes more important to senior executives, HR must figure out how to support this. 

He said: “Business does business – the reason the executives are happy for someone else to get on with the people stuff is because they don’t see the importance of it – I’m sorry but that’s a fact. “What technology is going to do is fundamentally change that. Executives will see what HR does as important, and then they will want to do it. They’re not going to ask someone else to do their talent management analytics for them.” (For more on this story see www.hrmagazine.co.uk) 

We understand the headache of managing all of your HR policies and procedures and have the just the things to help… 

Activ Appraisals offers performance appraisals software that is simple and easy to use.  It gives HR the flexibility to manage your appraisal process in the way that best suits your organisation. 

Activ Appraisals is accessible through a cost effective annual Software as a Service (SaaS) contract. What that means to you is that we take away the headache of data security, confidentiality and system updates. 

The solution can be set-up rapidly to your business requirement with no software to download or install and accessible securely via username and password.

Manage your appraisal configurations with a user friendly administration interface that allows you to manage questionnaires, monitor progress and review reports. 

Contact us today for more information and to see how we can streamline all of your HR processes…

Call 01792 654154 or email sales@activabsence.co.uk