The secret life of employees!

Ever wondered what is going on for your employees at the different stages of their development in your business? Have a peek into their world

For more help managing your team contact us

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Want what they are having?

"It is amazingly refreshing and rejuvenating to be able to plan for the future and make proactive decisions about the direction of the business, and see the limitless opportunities that are in front of us rather than the usual fire fighting and reactive responding that we were so accustomed to.

"As a small 12 y.o. family run business of 15 people, we were frustrated with the constant bush fire fighting we found ourselves doing, to keep the business ticking along. It was totally exhausting dealing with the never- ending queue of issues that needed to be resolved. The more issues that arose; the more hopeless the situation appeared to be. There was a point where we were asking, why do we even bother? It seemed like we were running out of options and everything just seemed to be just one big tangled ball of string; which one do we pull on first to try and unravel the mess? How do other businesses do it? There must be a better way!

"White Room Group’s involvement in our business brought a systematic and very comprehensive overhaul of the business. Cleaning things up from inside out, and giving everyone involved, the clarity they craved around expectations and responsibilities, has meant that we saw a very quick change in our business’s landscape and the storms on the horizon have just cleared away to blue sky!

"Now, 12 months down the road, we are looking forward to delivering a better that expected result for a financial year that we were not expecting to get through at all before White Room came on board. So far, we have seen an ROI of about 12.5 times the investment for the services of White Room Group – and that is just in the first 12 months!"

Hannan Technical Services

Read the full testimonial here

Get some of what they are having now

Book an initial meeting. The coffee is on us!
Call 0413 670 417
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Hot Topics: Staff Incentives

Great article and report on creating incentives for staff based on the same principles as we discussed in an earlier post.

download the article

Hot Topics: Fair Dismissal

This is an excellent, simple and “straight from the horses mouth” piece on the process of fair dismissal in a small business (under 15 staff).

We are using this with our clients who are unclear about where they stand.

download the article here

Business Budgeting or Where are you going in the next 12 months?

Federal budget time is a good time to schedule doing your own business’ budget. While the Government’s probably took months to prepare, most small businesses can get it done in under an hour.

Really, it’s not the onerous event most owners think and it can provide you with so much value as a benchmarking tool to measure your business’ performance and manage expectations. We really don’t know how any business manages without one. For us, it would be like starting out on a trek without a destination in mind. It isn’t going to end well.

Now the key to speeding up the process is to realise that you don’t need to do this exercise line by line. As far as the expenses are concerned, about 80% of the expense lines won’t have changed much from last year except for a bit of CPI. We have seen some very complicated spreadsheets that would scare even the most seasoned of us but a similar result can be achieved with a simpler approach.

The key things to pay attention to are the big items; your sales forecast, your wages cost, cost of goods/sales (as applicable) and then any additional investment in growth, like marketing, staff, IT etc.

Once your March quarter accounts are complete, you have all the information you need to do your budget. To get started you can simply export your P & L into an Excel spreadsheet from your accounting software to have a ready-made and perfectly tailored structure to complete your budget.

For the full how-to on creating your budget click here.

Book an initial meeting. The coffee is on us!
Call 0413 670 417
Email support@whiteroomgroup.com.au
Visit www.whiteroomgroup.com.au

Dis-incentive programs and how to avoid getting one

A poorly designed incentive program can be unmotivating at the least and produce little, or in the worst case, a costly program that is difficult to exit.

We have seen them all and have some tips on what not to do and a downloadable process on how to design an effective and relevant-to-your business program.

Don’ts for incentive program design

1. Don’t pick up another business’s incentive program and apply it to your business.
2. Don’t run the same incentive year after year without reviewing your business strategy, capacity and objectives. For example, you may be in a phase where client retention is more profitable, so increasing the value of each client is the objective and there is less emphasis and target allocated to client acquisition.
3. Don’t make up or rough out the numbers. Model out the scenarios and calculate the cost and return to the business and value to the revenue producers. You will also likely identify administration issues or audit requirements.
4. Don’t build an incentive where external influences can contribute to the target’s achievement. For example, exchange rates improve and push up the value of the sales. Rises in the share market contribute to growth of funds under management and increase commissions received as revenue. Make sure it rewards the actual efforts and activity of the revenue producer.
5. Don’t forget that an incentive is part of a remuneration package and you need to account for any base salary in your calculations and identify what that rewards.
6. Don’t not set a base sales performance target. You need to be able to manage under performance in your business. Just covering a producer’s base salary in sales or achieving last years result is not necessarily going to get the business to where it wants to go and is consuming your valuable resources.

Now that you know what not to do, click here to get the good stuff on designing an effective program.

Book an initial meeting. The coffee is on us!
Call 0413 670 417
Email support@whiteroomgroup.com.au
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Getting on it!

Much is made in the media, in business education and publications about the concept of working “on” the business not “in” it in. There is no disagreement from business owners about that, but the problem remains.

Even some very commercially savvy and experienced business people from the corporate world we met recently are struggling to action the concept now as small business owners, and are frustrated by the progress of the development of their business. That they were a partnership was no solution to the problem.

Corporates have extensive resources in people, system and methodology, to deliver in parallel, action in the three areas of a business; administration, production and planning.

For small business this concept, as so many others in small business, needs to turn from problem to solution and implement-able ideas based on their resource levels for there to be significant progress. There is an overwhelming amount of business tips, ideas, education and information available yet very little actionable stuff.

So if you are ready to get “on” it in your business and want to know how to get out of the day to day then click here to download the process we use with clients to break the nexus of making the time to work on the business when it seems your days are already full to overflowing.

Book an initial meeting. The coffee is on us!
Call 0413 670 417
Email support@whiteroomgroup.com.au
Visit www.whiteroomgroup.com.au