No Time to Breathe

The Senior partner controlled all areas of management without any formal Human Resource (HR) structure or quality standards in place, nor any Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, yet he desired the company to be viewed as progressive, with his informal catchcry being 'Passion, Teamwork and Fun'. His operating style was unstructured hence he informed me during our first meeting he loathed the words 'structure' and 'mission'. This was an evident fact as the company was void of a mission or value statement nor had a business or strategic plan in place to cope with exit or succession strategy, yet it was the partners' desire to retire 'rich'.

Divisional cells applied to each area of law being Commercial, Litigation, Family, and Conveyancing. Each cell had a routine way of operating with the Commercial department being the main revenue earner due to the rapid growth of the property market in Cairns. This in turn was creating work load pressure particularly for the conveyancing team and administration staff; hence they felt unappreciated and totally unrewarded for their increased work efforts.

I ascertained there were three main areas of concern for this business overall being the lack of functional structure (no HR systems in place), problems regarding soft skills in relation to improving feedback and managing poor performance, and team development with breakdowns in communication, cooperation and working toward a common goal.

If these issues were not dealt with accordingly the company would experience problems pertaining to staff retention and attraction of new talent should competition become an issue in the future. The probability of staff being poached by competition was high if attractive remuneration and reward packages were offered by opposition along with the promise of a more inclusive culture and career development prospects relating to succession via promotions and partnering opportunities.

If this company was to survive, thrive, and maintain healthy market share then strategies for improvement regarding the 'big picture' required implementation.

The attitudes and perceptions of staff in the scenario were directly affected by various compounding problems, especially pertaining to the lack of a value culture that would normally be linked to a business or strategic plan for future direction. An attitude is tendency of individuals to respond in either a positive or negative way to a particular situation, person or something in the environment. Perception is the process “through which people receive, organise and interpret information from their environment”. People's perceptions are affected by their attitudes, needs, experiences, motives, values and personality.

Furthermore, employees felt under-appreciated due to the skewed value alignment on an operational and strategic level proving that values directly influence behaviour of attitudes, perceptions, performance and HR maintenance. Managing values are imperative to managing attitudes, hence staff want to be respected for who they are as people and to know their contribution of work effort is appreciated.

Employees portrayed distinct negative attitudes about pay being incommensurate to their work effort with issues of unequal pay compared to colleagues, therefore it should be realised the most important attitude relevant in the workplace ...