Tag: employee

Having the benefit of being part of a global entrepreneurial friendship group, made up mostly from people through my travels around world, I am always interested in different models in which employees are remunerated or attracted to an organization.

What works well for one company, may not for another. The big corporate beast can be a lure and it can also deter the best talent - depending on what is most important to any particular individual. If you want to know what keeps employees in the game, and on your team, it may in fact be something that you did not realize.

Start-ups and small businesses

There are so many ways in impress a new recruit when you are on boarding them in your business, but if you thought you had just got a handle on it, then you might want to read a little further.

22 percent of new recruits leave within 45 days of starting, with a staggering 16 percent that leave within the first week. They leave because their expectations (or yours) has not been met. There were lies told in the job interview by either party or the on-boarding process was nothing short of terrible. The reality is we all can do better - and will, if we keep up to date with the rest of the market.

We all know the cost of recruiting new people to the fold, and how expensive it is to lose a good employee, so if we find someone that is a good fit, make sure they know it from every experience they have with your firm.

This week, we did something we never do. We stopped. 

If you ever ask a former employee about what it is like to work for Marketing Eye, they always say that there is never a moment to spare. There is always something to do. 

The nature of our business is marketing. As such, we deliver marketing strategy and campaigns for the clients we work with. If we are not executing marketing strategies, we are increasing followers for clients on social media, researching their competitors, educating ourselves on the latest marketing techniques and in general spending time surfing the internet.

As a person who has employed hundreds of people in my career, I am always amazed at how some people stand out from the crowd, while other's don't.

In today's work environment where work, life balance seems to take precedence, and the millennials and gen-y are looking for more than their predecessors who were mainly happy to be gainfully employed and on a career path that funded their lifestyle - it appears that fewer employees are seeking to be outstanding. They are looking for more than just to be an outstanding employee, but rather a career that is fulfilling, balanced and with the right perks to help them get the outcomes financially they are looking for in their lifetime.

Now, this is not a bad thing. As you get older, you realise that you only live once. This new way of thinking and the younger generation putting life first and career second, can only benefit generations to come.

Where the real problem lies in the blurred line between how to advance your career or how best to maintain your status quo in the workplace.

Humbled by an employee discussion in our Atlanta office, I was pleasantly surprised that given the hypothetical situation of winning the lotto, all employees said that after a brief holiday, they would want to come back to work at Marketing Eye.

The engagement level on a day-to-day basis in our Atlanta office is very high – not to say, other offices are not the same. Company culture is everything and there are many reasons why it has a direct impact on bottom line.

There are a number of lessons learned from having a start-up in Atlanta that is inherently different from other offices we have.

The first being that all employees have chosen each other

Usually, a senior manager or myself makes the ultimate choice on who is going to join the team and in what capacity. Instead, in Atlanta, I have been over-ruled twice, and both times, I had to put my hand up and say that my choice would have been wrong for the team.

Over the years, I have been dumb-founded by what former employees have written on their LinkedIn profiles about what they did while working at Marketing Eye.

The first one that had me gob-smacked was a French assistant, who wrote that she had developed and managed the Marketing Eye brand, building the company’s marketing strategy and executing it.

In reality, she was a personal assistant, who had poor English and was struggling to do any task at all from an administrative perspective. She didn’t write anything, had no contact at all with design or branding but was excellent at organizing my dinner appointments, assisting me with my wardrobe and in general being a great personal assistant, albeit one that could not write on an email on my behalf because of the poor English factor. She worked for me for a few months only which I did it as a favour for her boyfriend who was a good friend at the time. In the end, I had to tell him, that her English was so bad, I couldn’t afford the luxury of her impeccable taste in clothing, makeup and picking restaurants at that stage of my life.

Needy is probably the wrong word. It's more like, are you an employer who knows how much you need your employees?

I am. My employees rock. They are the heart and soul of our business. They work darn hard and as a former employee and now editor of a top business magazine once said to me, "if you work for Marketing Eye, you really work".

It's certainly no holiday. Clients are everything. This is drilled into every single person who works for Marketing Eye over and over again.