Top tips for getting the most out of Trustees and Staff

Following our Excellence in HR and Trustee Management event in April 2016, the speakers covered the essential top tips for getting the most out of your trustees and staff.

Louise Beasley of Roots HR, encouraged organisations to make sure they adopt the minimum compliance requirements in-line with a number of Legal Acts and policies, and that the relevant information needs to be communicated within the terms and conditions of employment, an employee handbook and employee contracts. Policies should be adopted, practiced and reviewed inline with changing legislation.

2. Clarity around Structures and Processes

Heather Black of our Company, demonstrated the importance of having a clear process and system in place for managing HR, showcasing a HR system and intranet using Salesforce CRM.

Having a good system in place clarifies and manages the HR processes, as it records employee details, time off requests, expense approvals, CPD, contracts, performance reviews and also stores policies. Whilst the intranet can also provides a community to chat with other colleagues about social and business related matters using Salesforce Chatter.

For a free demo of Salesforce CRM contact us

3. Creating High Performing Teams

Jo Wright of Phoenix Training and Coaching spoke about the five pillars for high performing teams. The foundation for a team is a clear goal and objectives that are clearly defined and refined over time.The five pillars are:

• Trust and relationships – appreciation of difference, openness and respectful listening.
• Creative conflict – questioning, creative thinking and challenging, constructive, listening.
• Commitment – buy-in alignment, decision making process, action plan and clarity & communication of decision.
• Accountability – ownership- take, behaviours and feedback.
• Team results – objectives are monitored and judged on.

4. Get the Right Mix of People

Creating a good high performing team takes time and effort to accomplish. Giving people time to develop and learn is important, but it also requires a tough love approach by the leader, with the appreciation that team members who don’t want to or can’t achieve the shared goal need to be dropped and replaced, as a team won’t perform if all members don’t fulfill their part. Getting the right mix of people with the right attributes, skills and knowledge is essential to help achieve the overall goal, so make changes as needed.

5. Getting the Most of Trustees

Nigel Kippax, of Charity Leaders & the Trustee Academy promoted how trustees have a critical leadership role with responsibility for three areas of focus:

• Governance and compliance
• Strategy and performance review with data intelligence and analysis
• Evidence of impact

It’s important to have a trustee board with the right mix of skills and interests to help fulfil their obligation as a board and to work effectively as a team to oversee the work of the organisation. In terms of team working, it’s important they have time to adopt the five pillars mentioned above. Each trustee needs to understand and live out their role and be accountable for overseeing performance in their area of responsibility.

6. Data Intelligence and Evidence

The need for the senior management team and trustees to analyse performance of the organisation against a key performance indicators is essential to aid their decision making and fulfilling their role as a leader. The Balance Scorecard promotes four key areas for management to focus on:

• Organisational Capacity – Resources, Learning and Skills
• Stakeholder and Customer Satisfaction and Impact
• Internal Business Operations – Efficiency and Cost Effectiveness
• Financial Performance – Pipeline, Income and Expenditure

For further guidance on these areas and KPI’s – Click here to download our free Performance Management Guide for Trustees