Hire the Right Person

The economy is strong, but private sector businesses are still missing out on a great opportunity to improve their production and service by hiring more women.

Julia Gillard just became the first female Australian Prime Minister and women make up more than half the population, so it would seem that women are treated equally. And in the public sector they are.

Almost 60% of the public workforce is made of women, with 34% of senior executive positions held by women.

But opportunities for women aren’t nearly as forthcoming in the private sector where women hold only 12% of management positions, despite owning more than 30% of small businesses.

More women are graduating from university than men, but a report by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modeling states that women in Australia are earning, on average, 17% less in wages.

One issue for women in the workplace is time management. Because women usually have more things to juggle than men, privately owned businesses may think work gets lost in the shuffle. They may be leery of hiring someone who they feel wouldn’t prioritize their job over their family. But businesses should not eschew hiring a talented person because of preconceptions.

A recent survey of working women found that scheduling flexibility was more important than perks like maternity leave. This can be important to small businesses looking to hire talented people and willing to work out a schedule to make the situation work.

In this day and age, small businesses need every advantage they can get. Don’t hire the wrong person just because they can work 9-5 while the right person can’t.

Executive Coaching with a Focus on Performance

Executive coaching delivers great results when an executive is in the hands of a competent executive coach.

If your organisation has had steady sales but profitability is on the decline, employee morale is on the decline and don’t seem to “get” the overall vision of the company, or you, the executive, feels you’re no longer doing what you enjoy and you’re working too hard, your company might need executive coaching with a focus on performance or performance coaching.

Executive coaching isn’t a negative thing meant to help only struggling executives who might not survive the recession. In fact, it is quite the contrary. Executive coaching is a strategy, a secret weapon – top athletes have coaches to guide them to success. With business, it should be no different – to get the top performance, executive coaching could do the trick.

With all the experience from ActionCOACH executive coaches, once hired, they’ll coach you with the goal being a better, more stable organisation. By working with you and giving you “homework,” holding you accountable for things that don’t get done, and pushing you and your team for nothing but your best work, your executive coach will ensure performance improves drastically. Executive coaching is all about results – and good results are what executive coaches strive for.

Executive coaching differs from consulting – the work isn’t done for clients. Clients do the “homework.” But all the work from executive coaching is aimed to do one thing: improve the overall performance of the organisation.
Executive coaching involves hard work, homework, advice, tasks, using strategies and tools, improving marketing, sales and team morale, to create an end product: improved, successful results, and an improved business performance. A certified executive coach can help you accomplish all this –and much more.

Getting executive coaching is an excellent start to achieving the successful organisation you always dreamed of. Executive coaching helps guide executives to their full potential.