Sheralyn's Blog

Australia goes girl power with female PM, premier, deputy premier, governer, governer general and lord mayor. Is it true power though or are the females the scape goats in the big boys power games?

How fabulous to see the government finally make a decision to grant paid parental leave but did they have to taint it by putting the burden back on businesses to administer the payment for their employees. Small businesses have enough to comply with already, without the added pressure of administering parental payments. It may even create a disincentive to hire people that are likely to take parental leave. I hope the government comes to its senses before it launches the scheme in Jan 2011.

As a small business owner and a mother of 4 I find it a daily struggle to find the head space I need to work on my business. After a day helping clients I come home to a constant stream of “mum” “mum” “mum”  and “mmm” (that’s the baby).. The answer for me to create some headspace is letting the ocean air invigorate me as stride barefoot through the sands of my local beach. With each step I take solutions to my business problems become clearer. Here I am, last weekend running the Manly 2010 Soft Sand Classic while working on my latest marketing strategy.

As one of the HR judges for the Clubs NSW excellence awards, I had the privilege of attending their very glamorous awards presentation evening last week. As I sat through the evening and put up with MC Vince Sorrenti's jokes, I reflected on how well these awards contributed to these Clubs developing effective human resource practices. Firstly to apply for these awards, including the Outstanding HR Award category the Clubs need to complete an self evaluation and demonstrate how they have achieved the criteria set out in the awards. The application process itself, regardless of winning, provides the Club with a gap analysis of where they should be directing their future efforts to improve working conditions for their employees. For those Clubs selected as finalists, they get to bring along to the presentation evening, a table of representatives from their Club and this alone is a great recognition opportunity. Finally those Clubs that do win awards can use these awards to help market themselves to future employees helping them be able to attract the best talent in town. The other insight for me as an HR professional was that all the Clubs that won the Outstanding HR award categories also won their corresponding Best Club of the Year category too. So it just goes to show, if you invest in your people your organisation is bound to be successful too!