Thoughts and ideas on growing a business

Celtar client Fit For Life is  supporting Positive Aging Week in a very positive manner.

Maintaining fitness as we get older makes a very significant difference to the quality of life of an older person. Nursing home residents will take part in the ‘Fit for Life’ Olympics this week, Positive Aging Week.  The event allows residents, family and nursing home staff to get involved in Fit for Life’s Group Exercise therapy sessions and learn more about the benefits of keeping active in old age.

The Fit for Life Olympics run from 26th to the 30th of September in 22 nursing homes in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Mayo, Kilkenny, Wexford and Wicklow.  Participants, who’ve been training for the event for the past month, will compete against each other in team events such as bowling, magnetic darts, golf and ring toss. Gold, silver and bronze medals will be awarded to winners.

Speaking ahead of the Fit for Life Olympics, Managing Director of Fit for Life, Mark Sweeney said “We here at Fit for Life are committed to improving the quality of life of the older generation.  The Fit for Life Olympics are designed to provide our clients with a fun event where their families and nursing home staff can get involved and see the benefits of keeping active!  Our clients in the 22 nursing homes involved have been practicing their events for the last few weeks and we’re seeing a healthy competitive spirit brewing as a result!”

“Fit for Life’s team of chartered physiotherapists, exercise physiologists, and exercise and rehabilitation specialists have been providing active life services to nursing homes, day care centers and active retirement groups for the past 10 years” added Mr Sweeney.  “Our research and experience over that period has shown that those over 50 can really benefit from keeping active and getting regular exercise.  Our specialised group exercise therapy sessions are designed to provide a fun environment in which participants can improve their flexibility, mobility and balance.”

About Fit for Life:

Fit For Life, was established in 2001 by Mark Sweeney to provide a wide range of services for adults, from the very active right through to those who may need more assistance in their day to day lives.  The company currently employs 22 fully qualified and experienced staff, all of whom are educated to a minimum of a BSc standard in relevant disciplines such as physiotherapy, exercise physiology and exercise and rehabilitation.  All staff are full and practicing members of their respective associations including the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists.

Fit for Life’s mission is to empower the aging Irish population and help them to remain as active and independent as possible, ensuring they achieve and maintain the best quality of life possible.

Fit for Life provides extensive health based services to over 3,000 clients over the age of 60 in over a 100 residential Nursing Homes, Day Care Centre’s, Hospitals and other organisations throughout 26 counties.  It also provides services to community groups and private individuals on a weekly basis.

 www.FitForLife.ie

For further information please contact Mark Sweeney mark@fitforlife.ie

Digital & social media workshop presented by Conor Lynch of Socialmedia.ie & sponsored by Celtar business consultants

This seminar is something I wished to organise for a while, so I am very glad to present the opportunity to clients and other businesses.

Recognising the potential for clients in exploiting digital and social media I have partnered with social media expert Conor Lynch of SocialMedia.ie in this special seminar.

Many business owners & managers I work with don’t want to be left behind  and wish to avail of digital marketing opportunities and the latest ways of communicating with customers.

Benefits & features of seminar

1. Learn how to use social media to reduce marketing costs by generating more qualified leads
2. Hands-on training  – bring your laptop and begin co-creating a digital and social media strategy for your business
3. Training delivered using case studies and examples from participants
4. Training materials and handouts including free eBook: Introduction to Social Media
5. €95 cost – deep discount to Celtar clients – workshop normally priced at €145

When: Wednesday 13^th of July

Time:  9.30am to 2pm, includes light lunch

Where: 133 Capel Street , former Riverdance Studios

For more information about the seminar and Conor Lynch,

And to book & pay please go to

www.socialmedia.ie/services/training/celtar-social-media/

Book early as seats are limited!

Comments on performance management

A characteristic of motivated companies is how they use remuneration and reward strategies to align the goals of people with those of the company.
At Celtar we observe that in many organisations staff are rewarded for average performance. High performers are not encouraged to maintain their performance as there is little recognition of – or reward for – an above average contribution to company objectives.

Often staff, including managers, expect to be rewarded with salary increases for being “in the job”, and individuals appear to work under the maxim

Generally staff and managers would prefer a fair system. The following reward policy makes sense to many;

• A bonus rewards extra value to the company in a current role
• A salary increase rewards extra responsibilities which could be in the current role OR extra responsibilities arising from a promotion. (The increase may be rescinded if responsibilities are inadequately met)

Q. How can reward and benefits policies attract, retain and motivate the best possible workforce to achieve your business objectives?

Ask yourself the following:

1. How competitive is your company compared to similar businesses? Do you match the salaries of your competitors?
2. What benefits do your employees really value? The value of benefits varies for each individual.
3. How can you design a reward and benefit policy that motivates each employee to contribute to your overall success?
4. How much will new reward policies cost your company? What can you afford?
5. Do you need different reward policies or salaries in order to attract and retain employees for different positions?
6. Do your employees understand your rewards policy? Are they clear that there is a relationship between rewards and individual and company performance? How effectively are you communicating the benefits?
7. Could you save money by outsourcing certain payroll administration?
8. How do you collect and analyse employee data (eg. time worked, pay rates, overtime rates, special benefits, holiday time, sickness and other leaves etc.) for reward and benefits purposes? Could special human resource management software improve cost-effectiveness?

The simpler, the better. Performance pay systems, to be effective, require people to understand how their performance is assessed and how their individual performance affects company performance, for example the relationship between IPIs (individual performance indicators) and departmental KPIs (key performance indicators).

Perhaps reward effort as well as performance? Performing well on a difficult task may be rewarded more than an outstanding performance on a less difficult task. It is important to convey this when setting targets, otherwise people may be tempted to try to set easier targets that they know can be exceeded rather than strive for truly superior performance (and contribution).

Performance pay works best when it provides an unambiguously positive incentive to achieve results. The most successful companies provide a competitive base remuneration with additional performance “carrots”.

In summary, it is important to remember that:

• Money talks. Many companies have moved to performance-based remuneration, where a significant component of a manager’s annual pay is linked to achieving targets agreed at the beginning of the work year. This differs from the old merit pay systems that involved incentives that were too small and performance targets that were too ill-defined to really influence behaviour.
• Keep it simple. If people don’t understand how their performance is assessed, or how their individual performance affects on company performance, a performance pay system won’t work. For performance pay to be effective, it must be accompanied by clear communication and constant feedback on progress.
• Get the balance between risk and reward right. Experience suggests that performance pay is most effective when it is genuinely “at risk”, and not just another entitlement (as it appears to be in the Public Sector).

And as a tester an example of reward policy

“You are eligible to participate in the ABC Co. bonus scheme.  This scheme is designed to reward excellent performance in a number of important areas over the course of each financial year.  The areas of performance for which bonus applies are Business Development and/or Project Delivery, Staff Development, Personal Development together with the business unit achieving its targets.  The financial year runs from January through to December with potential of up to 15% of annual salary paid as bonus.  Further details on Individual Performance Indicators will be agreed at your monthly review with your line manager”.

 Celtar advises on how to improve the performance of your staff & how to align their activities with company objectives

Celtar management consultants are a group of expert advisers based in Dublin, Ireland

 King Cody, Kilkenny hurling manager’s road to greatness

Learning from winners

Malachy Clerkin talks to Billy Linehan and a number of top managers to find out what makes this serial winner so special

Excerpt from the Sunday Tribune, 29 August 2010

“Billy Linehan of Celtar business consultants is a board member of the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers. He compares managing a county team to being in charge of a small or medium-sized business and sees in Cody a natural leader more so than a manager. “A leader challenges the status quo,” he says, quoting another management guru, “a manager accepts it”. I think if you are going to be successful on a continuous basis, you need to be challenging it.

“There’s an honesty and a consistency in the way he treats people and that’s the key to keeping people involved and motivated over a long period of time. You rarely hear about tensions between clubs in Kilkenny or hear people complaining that their man didn’t get a fair shot at making the team or even the panel. All you can take from that is that there’s a general acceptance across the board that the man at the top is a man of integrity. That he’s prepared to treat everyone with consistency. I think his personal style is a huge factor. There’s very little mouthing off or bringing attention to himself. You never hear him telling the rest of the world how good he is and all the different ways he’s affected the team.”

For full article see http://www.tribune.ie/sport/hurling/article/2010/aug/29/king-cody/

For more on Celtar business and management consultants see www.Celtar.ie . Celtar provides management advice to leaders of organisations, assisting them to reach their goals.

For more on the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers see

www.IMCA.ie

Threat to Daft.ie?

Are the days of growth finished for Daft.ie,  will the housing sales and rental market now be controlled by home buyers and home owners? This new service will allow both estate agents and private sellers to put their property as an overlay on Google Maps.

The plans were outlined at a conference called Estate Agency Events last week, although Google has declined to give official confirmation.

Shares in the property portal Rightmove fell more than 10% as news emerged, the sharpest faller in the FTSE 350 index of companies for the day.

The new service is expected to launch next year and would be similar to a service Google launched in Australia.

Sarah Beeny says Google will level the property playing field

That site allows estate agents to list properties for free, with pictures taken from its Street View service and listing details on a map.

Speaking to BBC News, Edward Mead – sales director for Douglas & Gordon estate agents – said that the new system would be a win-win situation for both Google and estate agents.

“The technology to do this is already in place and estate agents are a little busier these days, although transactions are still fifty per cent down on what they once were.

“So this service, which is free, will appeal to estate agents’ cost-cutting nature and given that sixty per cent of agents are one-off traders, this will have serious appeal.”

Mr Mead said that Google’s head of property and classified team, Ben Wood, briefed 30 of England’s top estate agents at Estate Agency Events last week, telling them everything about the system, other than an official launch date.

‘Hurt estate agents’

But Sarah Beeny, who presents Channel 4′s Property Ladder and also runs her own home sales property site Tepilo, told BBC News that the service could well damage estate agents in the long run.

“It will hurt estate agents and it will hurt property sites like Rightmove.

“If it does what Google says it will, then it brings the buyer and seller closer together and that could mean removing blocks in the way, and that could mean no longer having to pay extortionate fees to estate agents.

“It will certainly blow Rightmove out of the water. You can only get your property listed on that site if you are an estate agent – what Google will do is level the playing field and they are doing it for free,” she said.

The site would directly link property buyers with vendors

The news shook traders on the London Stock Exchange. At one point, shares in online property portal Rightmove fell by 13% over concern about competition from the world’s biggest search engine, although a late afternoon rally saw them close 10% down at £4.95 a share.

The firm remained bullish, despite the news.

Speaking to BBC News, the company’s commercial director, Miles Shipside, said his business was still strong and the site was still getting lots of traffic.

“It remains to be seen what actually happens,” he said.

“Google is a big name, but they don’t always manage to follow things through on a local level.

“We only list property with estate agents due to UK legislation. Agents offer very good value and charge very competitive rates compared to the rest of the world.

Billy Linehan of Celtar sees this as a threat to property websites and as another innovation that will change the shape of the housing market for sales and rentals.