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Start a New Hire Off Right: 7 Steps for an Effective Hiring Process

January 27, 2012 by fpapractice

Various human resource studies over the past four years have listed the top aspects of employee job satisfaction as job security, opportunities to use skills and abilities, the organization’s financial stability, relationships with immediate supervisors, compensation, benefits, career development and direction/culture of the organization. With this in mind a good training and orientation program can and should deliver a strong, positive message to new employees.

Many employer-employee relationships gone wrong can be traced back to a lack of training, orientation and setting expectations. So for your next new hire, have an outlined list of expectations (including job description), and a clearly defined training and orientation program. Having these things in place will help increase the success of your new hire—contractors, too—and come in handy if you need to terminate the wrong hire or contractor agreement.

In conjunction with your current business planning, you may be looking to identify hiring needs for the next year and beyond. Now is a perfect time to create or adjust potential job duties and expectations as well as update training and orientation programs. Here are some steps that may help:

  • Assess your the hiring needs based on your mission and future direction of the practice
  • What resources and investments (include human capital) are needed for the future?
  • What is your firm’s budget for hiring and career development? Keep in mind that we invest upfront for future returns. You want to have the proper balance of necessary skills, abilities and experiences that you will pay for, versus what you are willing to develop in the next hire.
  • In what areas would your firm want to hire employees or hire contractors (outsourcing) and why?
  • If you hire an employee or a contractor, what present and future business goals should be accomplished? What are your timeframes or deadlines for working on and accomplishing these goals? You can use these goals as the basis for the position’s duties and desired results.
  • How are you accomplishing your current goals?  Would a person currently fulfilling part of your business goals be a possible mentor and how? Can this person work with you to create or adjust the duties, expectations and training and orientation program? Your expectations for how to learn and complete the work rest partly on how well you are doing this now, and what changes to personnel or work styles could best meet the changing goals.
  • Understand the caliber of work your firm has now from current employees, contractors or owners/partners. This gives you informal benchmarks for rating the performance of future hires or contractors. The preciseness of these informal benchmarks varies, but they serve as a good starting point.

These broad, underlying questions should be addressed before you get involved in the actual hiring or contracting process.

This article is for informative purposes only and is not to be construed as legal advice. Consult your experts to be aware of federal, local and state regulations and exceptions.

Mary Dunlap, CFP®
Mary Dunlap Consulting
mary.mdunlapconsult@verizon.net
Pottstown, Pa.

Posted in HR/Staff | Leave a Comment »

The Psychology of Giving: New Research Provides Surprising Insights

January 24, 2012 by fpapractice

Although a number of studies have focused on the effect of income on happiness, Elizabeth Dunn, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia, also wanted to understand the effect of spending choices on happiness.

For example, previous research clearly demonstrated that income has a predictably positive effect on level of happiness, but these levels remained flat over time even as income increased.  This finding puzzled Dunn, and she wanted to find out why happiness did not increase along with income. 

Could the reason be, Dunn wondered, that people poured their increasing wealth into purchasing consumer goods that did not provide lasting happiness? As an alternative, could spending money on other people have a more positive impact on well-being than spending money on oneself?

As an initial test of the relationship between spending choices and happiness, Dunn worked with a graduate student and an assistant profession at Harvard Business School to survey a nationally representative sample of Americans. Study participants were first asked to rate their happiness and to report their annual income. Next, they were asked to estimate 1) how much they spent on themselves (bills, expenses and gifts for themselves), and 2) how much they spent on others (gifts for others and donations to charities). Analysis of the data revealed that personal spending was not related to happiness, but higher levels of giving was significantly related to higher levels of happiness.

Next, Dunn and her team studied a group of employees before and after receiving profit-sharing bonuses. The research team was interested to know if choices regarding how an economic windfall was spent would also affect happiness. One month before receiving their bonuses, the employees were asked to report annual income and general happiness. Then approximately six to eight weeks after receiving their bonuses, the participants were asked to report their level of happiness again and how they spent their bonuses: on themselves (bills, expenses, and gifts for themselves), or on others (gifts for others and donations to charities). Analyses of the data again demonstrated no relationship between personal spending and happiness, while spending on others was shown to be a significant predictor of happiness. 

Therefore, with such a positive influence on emotional well-being, why aren’t more people giving or giving more? Dunn believes the reason is that most people don’t know about the connection between giving and happiness. 

In another study, participants were asked to choose a scenario they thought would make them the happiest. Surprisingly, a significant majority replied that personal spending would make them happier than spending on others. 

For most individuals (including your financial planning clients!), increased awareness will be necessary in order to understand and to benefit from the connection between giving and higher levels of happiness. And, as in all of life’s most important lessons, experience is always the best teacher.

To learn more about Dr. Dunn’s research, view a short and entertaining video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwmWHV79vTQ.  

 
Carol Anderson
President
Money Quotient
Poulsbo, Wash.

Posted in Client Skills | 1 Comment »

Don’t Waste Your Time with Partnerships

January 20, 2012 by fpapractice

Centers of influence. Strategic alliances. Referral partners. No matter what you call the other professionals with whom you align yourself in hopes of ultimately receiving a steady stream of new clients, having a partnership strategy is what I consider a must-have component in any adviser’s marketing plan.

The key word here is “strategy.” Without one, I guarantee you will spend countless hours and dollars haphazardly meeting and greeting, passing out cards or mass mailing a lame introduction letter, never really realizing the benefit. Why? Because you are not prioritizing your efforts … you have no defined objectives of your partnering strategy. You are wasting your time. 

The primary purpose of partnering is leverage. With the right partners, you can achieve broader reach and provide more value to a similar audience without doing all of the work yourself. When done correctly, partnerships also come with the fringe benefits of camaraderie, shared success and entrepreneurial support. Partnerships are not about tit-for-tat; but rather a mutual admiration and genuine friendship in many cases.

Here is where the strategy part comes in. Not all partnerships are created equal. You have to decide in advance the type of partners you want to cultivate, which are your top priority and which follow lower on the list. How much time, money and energy will you direct to one partner versus another?

I find it is much easier to make that determination when you break down your list of all possible partnerships into groups according to the part of your marketing efforts they serve and prioritize from there. 

Here are a few examples of the kinds of partnerships you may choose to build: 

Acquisition Partners
You receive direct referrals from these partners. They endorse you outright and serve the exact same type of client that you do either completely (as in a perfect alignment) or with a subset of their audience. You would put higher priority on the 100 percent match, but may know more in the latter category. Balance out your time accordingly. Keep in mind the best partners may not be financial service providers.  

Relationship Marketing Partners
Shepherding leads through to lifelong clients takes continuous communication and outreach on your part. Having this type of partner relieves your burden, provides engagement for your prospects and your clients, and differentiates you from many competitors. How so? They are content providers. You may conduct a one-on-one interview for an email you send, make shared videos, post their guest blogs or use their information for your plans and to pass along to clients. Ahhh, relief!

Brand Building Partners
These are associations (groups to which you belong) and companies with which you are affiliated where you want to align with your brand. By presenting their logo button on your website, your brand is stronger. Plus, your logo/link/brand can reside on their site or in their marketing materials for expanded reach and awareness. You can also leverage relationships with the media in the same way. Include your “as seen in FORBES magazine” on your site for the halo effect and link to the story. Your journalist will thank you. 

Service Solution Partners
As an adviser, we want to meet the full needs of our clients. Service solution partners add value to your pricing because you offer a broader solution for your clients either through your resource list or a more formal service solution arrangement. Prescreened by you, the partners give you a one-stop-shop positioning, which means less risk for clients. You may even have a possible revenue source, too. (Check with compliance!) 

Partnering can be the most valuable marketing strategy you implement, but you must use your time wisely.

Kristin Harad, CFP®
President
Next 10 Clients
San Francisco, CA

Posted in Marketing | 3 Comments »

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