Presentations Can Impact Staff Buy-In

Powerful presentations are our most critical tools in an organisation today. We use them to build buy-in with our team members, to communicate our big ideas and connect with employees to inspire them into action.

Yet, the majority of the time, our presentations are bland and boring, and the only impact they have is to get staff running for the doors (if they haven’t already fallen asleep in their seats).

Our important and urgent messages are hidden in badly designed slides, complex paragraphs of information, and screens of bullet points that have no clear purpose or call to action.

While you may not be able to magically transform a poor presentation into a powerful one overnight, to truly educate or inspire your team to leap from their seats with glee (not to flee), here are some small changes you can start with.

Pick One Key Message

When you present, pick one clear message to structure your presentation around, and then repeat that message throughout to make sure the message sticks. It is that one idea, purpose or point that is the glue that holds everything else together.

Once there is a clear bumper sticker message then it’s easy to figure out what the key take-home message for the audience and what it is they should do as a result.

Anything else in the presentation that does not align to this message should be deleted, stripped out and banished. What gets left out of a presentation is more important than what goes in.

Make It Emotional

In business we’ve traditionally been thought to do the opposite; to just present the facts. But these days, the best presenters are those who can use a combination of facts and emotion to explain a future place that everyone in the organisation wants to work towards.

Use images that match your words and make your team feel an emotion, whether that’s excited, happy, angry or sad. You may use video in place of static images to make their message more memorable.

Remember, people buy from people they like. We buy based on how we feel about something – or someone.

It’s your passion and authenticity that will help you to bond with your team, so they feel like you’re all in this together, instead of you just barking out orders of what they need to do. That emotional pull is what will impact your team’s decision to “buy in”to what you are saying.

Be Honest

It’s important to not try and hire or cover up negative information or numbers. Nothing turns your team off more than when you lie about your financial position.

You need to treat your team as equals. Provide your employees with confidence going forward. Be future focused and take ownership of the problem.

Explain the steps you’re implementing to turn things around to minimise loss, and how your team can help with this too.

You need to be open and honest about where you are at right now, and what is involved in the journey to get where you are going – together. Leave them inspired, not deflated like it is their fault.

Bad slides and presentations are used like a security blanket to hide things under. So start with small changes to your content and attitude, and stop hiding and hoping for the best. Your team will respect you for that.

Source: The Star, 2nd Sept 2017

Building Trust, Boosting Productivity

An organisation that is committed to work-life integration has more productive and loyal employees.

Trust is defined as confidence in and reliance on the integrity, ability or character of a person or thing. Intuitively, everybody expects and exercises trust in his relationships.

Studies have consistently shown that high levels of trust bring substantial rewards. The Great Place to Work Institute, which has been tracking levels of employee trust in management for over 25 years, showed that the financial returns of the 100 Best Companies (with high employee trust) are better than their lower-trust peers.

Their long-term performance as a group is superior to that of comparable groups of companies such as the S&P 500. Apart from stronger performance and resilience in weathering economic downturns, other advantages include:

• Attracting better talent;
• Experiencing less voluntary turnover;
• Enjoying higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty;
• Fostering greater innovation, creativity and higher productivity; and
• Enhanced public reputation.

More companies are offering flexible work arrangements today to attract and retain talent and to differentiate themselves from competitors.

A culture of trust is crucial in ensuring the effective implementation of work-life integration programmes that will translate into real benefits for employees and employers.

Here are ways to enhance a company’s trust culture:

1. Set Clear and Mutually Agreeable Key Performance Indicators

Employers should help employees understand business priorities and encourage them to be equally clear about their personal priorities.

With all cards on the table, schedules and assignments can be arranged in ways that satisfy both sides. This way, employees are given specific goals but have autonomy over how to achieve these goals.

2. Keep The Communication Flowing

Companies must continually share their vision, values, business strategy and direction with employees and follow up on what they have been assigned to do. Employees should understand business objectives well to help bring the vision and strategies to fruition.

HSL Constructor is one employer who believes in having an open door policy. New employees share their concerns with management through feedback forms and meetings with the management. Also, HSL advocates that to be trusted, one has to learn to trust others.

3. Focus on Relationship-Building

Employers should respect and support employees as “whole people” with important roles outside the workplace. By showing a sincere interest in the lives of their employees, managers will foster trust with their employees, enabling them to tackle their work-life conflicts effectively.

4. Engage and Empower Employees to Solve Problems

To build loyalty, managers need to actively engage their employees in contributing their ideas and creative solutions to solve problems and improve processes.

Empower staff to formulate solutions, and when implemented, give credit to those who contributed.

At Cherie Hearts, a local company that provides child and student care services, the focus on work-life harmony has resulted in a high-trust and loyal environment.

Members of the staff are encouraged to provide feedback and be open in communicating with the management and the human resource department. By doing this, the company gets the performance it wants, and the employees can meet their personal and family needs.

5. Walk the Talk

Good managers know that actions speak louder than words, particularly in how they encourage their staff to embrace work-life balance.

The commitment to rethink and redesign work processes and experiment with new work options that replace the office-centered work model will demonstrate to and instill trust in employees that their company truly cares for them. Many solutions become possible when employers think out of the box and walk the talk.

Companies that work on building up their trust capital will find that they do not have more balanced, engaged and loyal employees. They also experience higher levels of productivity and creativity, which in turn lead to greater profitability and enhanced corporate reputation.

Source: Singapore Straits Times/Asia News Network

 

Hiring Women In The Workplace

Women are part of the untapped workforce that employers need but often sidestep

Women today have been described as the main driving force behind decades of growth.

With technology and education within reach, women have infiltrated the gender barrier over the decades, and are now able to ascend the corporate ladder and start their own business ventures, which were previously dominated by men.

It is estimated that women account for more than half of the world’s output. By 2025, the number of women in the workforce is expected to surpass men by 2 to 11. In the United States alone, women hold 49. 1 per cent of the nation’s jobs, while in Asia, the female labour force participation has been growing steadily over the last five years. Nonetheless, more can be done to encourage women, particularly those who have been out of the workforce, to come back to work.

Workplace Diversity

Diversity in the workplace is key to maintaining an organisation’s competitive advantage. Research has shown that a diverse workforce not only promotes creativity, but also encourages critical analysis. This is helpful in improving company practices and services. The positive vibe will help to attract the best talents and develop the company’s brand as an employer of choice.

Talent comes in all shapes and sizes and from various backgrounds and lifestyles – new mothers and mature women with grown children included. Such diversity can bring positive change to the organisation. For example, in a traditionally male-dominated industry, women can not only bring a refreshing change to the workplace but also present alternative perspectives.

With the current economic climate and widespread retrenchments, skill shortages are prevalent in some industries while those who were spared the axe are faced with greatly increased workloads. Women rejoining or entering the workforce, especially trained professionals who have been upgrading themselves, can help to bridge skills gaps.

However, while many women are keen to enter or re-join the workforce, they face unique challenges such as the fear of prejudice from employers or the difficulty of translating their skills in raising children and managing the household to the corporate world.

The Glass Ceiling

According to a study by the University of Texas in the United States, the top three reasons why women exit the workforce are family-centric – personal or familial obligations, excessive work hours that prevented them from meeting familial obligations and the personal choice to be a stay-at-home wife or mother.

Recessions will compel many women to enter or rejoin the workforce to supplement the household income. However, many of them will find themselves disadvantaged primarily because they have been out of the workplace for some time and their skills are no longer relevant.

Furthermore, with employers’ more stringent hiring requirements, these women face fierce competition from the retrenched, fresh graduates and mid-career switchers.

Additionally, women’s obligations to family are also seen negatively by some employers who equate family priorities to lack of commitment. Such perceptions also hamper women’s opportunities to advance their careers.

Paradigm Shift

To attract and retain valuable women staff, there must be a paradigm shift where mindsets are concerned. Working mothers and older women can still contribute to the organisation, given a supportive work environment to help them balance work and family commitments.

During tough economic times, flexibility can bring some of the best talent to fill in the gaps, especially if hiring permanent employees is not an option. Studies have shown that organisations with high levels of flexibility reported strong job satisfaction.

For women who are keen on returning to the workforce full-time, part-time or flexi-work can also be implemented as a gradual transition to full-time work. For working mothers, flexible working arrangements can help them manage their familial obligations without compromising their responsibilities at work.

Additionally, career-development or leadership programmes not only motivate working mothers, but also demonstrate how they are valued by their employers. Such practices will promote loyal staff while building up the employer brand.

With a supportive network and family-friendly environment, working women can more easily attend to their personal lives and individual career goals. Being more focused and committed at work would mean they are able to contribute to the organisation to the best of their abilities.

 

 

What To Look Out For In A Prospectus

In every initial public offering (IPO), the vendors, who are mostly the major shareholders of the company, will distribute a prospectus to provide the required information.

However, many investors find it difficult to digest the information provided in the prospectus. In this article, we will briefly go through a few basic pointers for investors to consider before taking up any IPOs.

The most important factor to be considered is the key owners of the IPO company. Despite the lack of track records and the difficulty in determining the quality of the management, we can still get some details on the background, qualifications and experiences of the key owners and management team.

If the majority of the board of directors is comprised of family members, we can expect this family-owned business to exist for a long time.

If the key owner has some corporate finance experiences, we should expect more corporate proposals from this company on, for example, merger and acquisition activities, right issues and share buybacks.

For operational efficiency, the chief executive officer should possess relevant and long period of working experiences in the core business activities of the company.

Besides this, the independent directors need to have adequate financial training and related working experiences to provide useful inputs to the board of directors.

There are two main types of share offerings – offer-for-sale and public issue. The key difference between these two is that the sale proceeds from offer-for-sale will go directly to the vendors whereas proceeds from public issue will go directly to the company.

The company will need to explain how it plans to use the proceeds – whether the money will be used to fund working capital, reduce bank borrowings or for future expansions.

If the majority of the offering is offer-for-sale, then we will need to be careful as this may mean that the IPO is providing an exit strategy for some key owners of the company.

We may also need to take a discount on the future prospects stated in the prospectus.

As there will be a lot of uncertainties on the company’s growth prospects, we need to check whether the expansion plans stated are realistic and reasonable, given the size and capacity of the company.

Sometimes, certain owners may be too ambitious in their outlook.

In addition, we need to understand the company’s background, production capacity, types of products, locations of its factories, key major suppliers, customers and competitors.

We need to check the company’s sustainable competitive advantages, such as possession of any intellectual properties, technology, patents, trademarks, licenses as well as strong and recognisable brands.

Other factors to look at are whether the company is dominant in any particular geographical region and niche market, or whether there is a wide distribution network, strong marketing team as well as research and development capability.

A lot of newly listed companies will also explain in detail the risk factors associated with investing in it in the executive summary of the prospectus. Although some may appear to be standard information, we can still get a feel of the inside risk factors about the company.

Examples of special risk considerations are dependence on a few key customers and suppliers, expiration of its patents as well as special arrangements with key major shareholders, suppliers and customers.

We notice that not many investors were excited about some of the recent IPOs. One of the possible reasons was that the offer price was too expensive.

Despite higher stock market volumes, we still have a lot of listed companies selling very cheap valuations. If the pricing of the IPO is far above the overall market average valuation, the stock may be hammered down below its IPO prices after the listing of the company.

We can use price-earnings ratio and price-to-book ratio to determine the value of the companies. A good company needs to state its dividend payout policy. Even though there may be slight differences compared with the actual dividend payment, investors still need to compute the potential dividend yields from the company’s dividend payments.