As an introduction, I thought for our first Blog, I should explain in a little more about the meaning of our business name.   Valere is the Latin word for “be strong”; the basis of the word valour and of course a synonym for courage and bravery.

Throughout my journey in the People and Culture world, I have found the biggest obstacle for employees at all hierarchical levels is the tackling those uncomfortable people issues that affect company performance.  It takes courage to provide feedback and counselling to a person because they are not meeting certain behavioural or performance expectations.   Why is this?  In my experience it boils down to that we can never be certain about how they will react when receiving feedback.  In fact, even providing positive feedback can be a challenge for many leaders, even though it is something that employees crave and when provided has a fundamental impact.  Having one on one performance conversations is one thing, but it typically can get more challenging from there.  Just consider interactions such as providing recruitment feedback, consultation on workplace changes, employee terminations etc.  

The feelings of anxiety and nervousness are normal, but as a result of them, many leaders either consciously or subconsciously neglect to have those very important conversations or do them poorly.  As a result of these important conversations there can be short and longer term consequences for a company’s culture, health and wellbeing of employees and potential legal ramifications.  

The good news is that with practice, it can get easier to have these types of conversations.  Valere People can provide a range of services to assist you through the harder elements of people management.  The key is to act quickly. When you can see performance is slipping, or a change needs to be made, development needs to be provided or an employee needs praise, or your instincts tell you something needs addressing, then the time is right.  Albeit, uncomfortable, addressing an issue as soon as you can, saves a huge and often complicated amount of work later on.  

Talk to Darren at Valere People who can coach you and take a lot of the anxiety out of your people management function.