089 – From Hire to Fire and Everything in Between an Interview with Natasha Hawker

Show 089

In Show 089- From Hire to Fire and Everything in Between an Interview with Natasha Hawker originally broadcast on Facebook Live on Wednesday 9 May 2018 we explore this interesting topic.

Download a copy of the workbook for today’s episode here: 089 Worksheet

Show Notes

Today, we’ve invited Natasha Hawker, the owner and director of Employee Matters to join us on the podcast.  She is a senior HR practitioner, speaker, author and trainer.  She is an expert in employee management, recruitment and mediation.  She’s been published in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.  She’s also the author of From Hire to Fire & Everything in Between.  Natasha believes that small business is the backbone of the country and she’s driven to help them grow.  We’ve worked with Natasha for several years and we’re excited to have her on the show.

Natasha started her career in finance, trading bonds for millions of dollars.  Everyone kept telling her that she would be great in personnel.  She moved into a recruitment consultancy which wasn’t  very enjoyable experience.  She was then hired by Accenture which became her lucky break.  It helped her to gain a good footing in HR management.  Six years ago she founded her own firm.  The average small to medium business doesn’t know much about human resources.  Natasha focused her business of providing those companies with quality HR management.

As your company enters Phase 4: Bringing on Employees you need to make sure you’re following the best practices.  Getting this phase wrong can produce an enormous amount of unnecessary stress.  That phase begins with hiring staff.  Natasha says businesses often don’t know when to begin hiring.  The other mistake is knowing who to hire and what skills they need.  The staff needs to be aligned with your business.  They need to fit into your business culture.  This isn’t a small detail.  It’s critical to the success of your business.

Finding the right person that’s aligned to your business isn’t easy.  Everyone doesn’t have to be exactly like you.  In fact, it’s the opposite.  You need to find people that have a different skill set than your own.  Alignment is all about the business culture you’ve created.  If you like to work hard, play hard you can’t hire a group of people that just play hard.  Sourcing your employees starts with making sure your corporate brand and your mission vision have to be the same.  Your values have to reflect your brand.  Once those values are in place it will help to attract the right people.

Increasingly, you don’t have to rely on job boards to find the right people.  Social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook have become incredibly important.  Natasha believes that good people know god people.  Don’t be shy about asking colleagues to recommend someone for your business.  It’s a very tight labour market right now.  Finding qualified people is very difficult.  When you do find someone be sure to snap them up otherwise your competitors will hire that person instead.

You need to be very clear with your candidates about what kind of business you operate.  Put the candidate at the center of your recruitment practices.  Treat everyone with respect.  Make their experience so positive that even those who don’t get the job will still respect your company.  Behaviour interviews are really important.  Past behaviour will predict how they will work in the future.  Ask about how they deal with tight deadlines.  How will they behave under stressful conditions?  A culture interview is also important.  Ask about the favourite places they’ve worked at in the past and why.

Natasha says the first rule of leadership is that everything is your fault.  What she means is that great leaders need to be authentic.  You don’t have to be perfect but you do need to take responsibility for everything in your business.  What that means in practice is making sure you’ve created failsafes in your management.  Leaders need to have integrity and have to surround themselves with people who are better than themselves.  You have to build, maintain and your business culture at all costs.  Leaders also have to be continually educating themselves.  Training and education should never stop.

What book are your reading right now?

What book should every business owner read?

Smart Business Exit by Geoff Green

If you could give advice to your younger self what would it be?

Back yourself.  You’re worth more than you think.

Additional Resources from Natasha

More about this Show

We started Business Legal Lifecycle to create a simple way for you to understand complex legal terms.  Most importantly we want to help you to develop a plan to take your business successfully into the future.  There’s a startling statistic the underscores the importance of developing a solid plan.  The majority of business owners are just seven months away from losing everything.  A single aspect of your business that is not set-up correctly can shut down your whole operation very quickly.   Legal advice is not cheap and even when you can afford it there is often a divide between lawyers and their clients.  We want to close that gap once and for all.  We want to put legal knowledge and tools into your hand to prevent the worst from happening to you.

Twice a week we are going to deliver those tools right to your home or office with Business Legal Lifecycle TV.  We’ll start the week with Fast Fix Monday, a short 5-10 minute video that will tackle a single issue that businesses have to deal with.  Then on Wednesday’s our main show will feature with more fulsome discussions and interviews all delivered in a straightforward and easy to understand format.

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