🖐️ Are you sick of hearing this from your employees? Here's how to make it stop.
July 24, 2024
This week's must-reads:
- A template that breaks down your flex-first policy.
- How to stop getting those dreaded "Can I?" questions from employees.
- The secret to transforming subpar training material.
- And seven essential steps to get those creative juices flowing.
STARTER PACK
Template of the week: Flexible Working Hours Policy
Take a look at your calendar, and tell us what you see. Meetings, doctors’ appointments, heads-down work time blocks, your kids’ activities — basically, a mish-mash of your job and your life outside of it.
But no one said life was perfect, and sometimes schedules and activities overlap — making it harder for your team to find that coveted work-life balance. One solution: offering a more flexible work schedule for your employees to fit everything they need to do for you around everything else they need to take care of for themselves.
👉 So, set your expectations with this Flexible Working Hours Policy template. It outlines your guidelines for a freer work schedule with rules — that way, your team knows exactly what is and isn’t allowed.
Check out our entire template archive of free and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Get a demo.
GIVE 'EM THE STINK EYE
What leaders should be ‘sick’ of hearing of from employees
Let’s talk about this viral post:
Earlier this month, an entrepreneur went viral for sharing a list of “things I’m sick of hearing from my employees” — with questions like “My child is sick, can I rush off?” and “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, is that okay?” — followed by the words “I don’t care.”
But before you pick up your pitchforks, that wasn’t the entire post.
Go on…
Turns out that this entrepreneur doesn’t care because he trusts his employees. He hired them to do a job, and he knows they’ll get it done.
So, coming into the office late or leaving early isn’t something that requires permission, especially if it’s to help them maintain balance with their personal lives. It’s all a-okay as long as they do the job they were hired to do.
But not all companies work that way.
Many service businesses need to be staffed with a certain number of employees at any given time — which means that having team members leave and show up off-schedule is not an option.
So, here’s the takeaway: No matter what your policy is (whether you’re cool with flexible hours or you need employees on a stricter schedule), document it.
Your employees need to know what’s allowed at your business. Maybe you “don’t care” — then put a flexible working hours policy into your employee handbook (you can steal our template above 👆). And if you do care, make sure those expectations are documented and shared with your team. (Maybe add in some caveats about what to do if these types of questions do come up.)
TRAINUAL TIPS & TRICKS
Enhance your training — effortlessly
You don’t have to be an award-winning author to document award-winning training. In fact, you just need to jot down your high-level ideas and Trainual can perfect it. (Why waste time — say lot word when few word Trainual do trick?)
Just use these ten different smart tools that can transform your writing in a couple of clicks:
- Make shorter. Beef up anything that’s lacking.
- Make longer. Too wordy? Say less.
- Change tone. Choose one of 21 tone-of-voice options to make text sound more professional, confident, conversational, and more.
- Simplify. Explain it like you would to a 5th grader.
- Emojify. Sprinkle in some relevant emojis. 🤩
- Fix grammar and spelling. Just in case there’s a typo or two.
- Translate. Choose one of 25 different languages.
- Rephrase. Mix it up a little.
- Complete. No brain power left? No problem.
- Summarize. Boil it down to the essentials.
Needless to say, if you need a confidence boost as you get your writing groove on, Trainual smart tools have your back.
GET THE JUICES FLOWING
This brainstorming technique will transform your creative process
Brainstorm alert!
From product development to marketing, creativity is pretty essential to the growth and development of your business. Otherwise, things get stale, and you end up in the worst way imaginable: bo-ring.
But creativity isn’t easy.
Unless you’re the type of person who comes up with ideas at the drop of a hat (can you sense the jealousy?), creativity may not come naturally to you. But that shouldn’t stop you. The next time you start a brainstorming session or you have a problem that needs a creative solution, all you need to do is SCAMPER:
- Substitute. Break your idea into parts — people, materials, processes, etc. Now, start substituting the “who” and “what” and see if that sparks new alternatives.
- Combine. Take your existing parts and substitutes, and start combining them. Can you come up with better outcomes?
- Adapt. Now that you’re diving deeper into your idea, what can you transform — be it a process or a component — to make it better?
- Modify. Substitutions, combinations, and adaptations are all types of modification. Now, what can you change about your idea that doesn’t fall into one of these categories?
- Put to another use. Imagine you had to use your idea for something else — what would that look like?
- Eliminate. It’s time to kill your darlings — what could you remove from your idea to make it better than it is? Find any unnecessary components.
- Reverse. Turn your idea around, do things in reverse order, or turn it upside down — what shakes out?