De-stress Your Business
Business doesn’t need to be stressful. This weekly podcast is for business owners, leaders, and managers who want to get better results, with less stress. We go deep on tactics you can roll out today, such as freeing up 15 hours per week (!) of your time, empowering your teams, and sorting out employee onboarding. Paddy Mann and Alexis Kingsbury are serial entrepreneurs who have learned these lessons the hard way over the last 15 years, and now support 100s of other business leaders as co-founders at AirManual.
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Episodes
Monday Oct 31, 2022
Monday Oct 31, 2022
When it comes to recruitment, we love to throw around the term “A-player”.
We want to hire A-players! We need more A-players! We only hire A-players!
But… what exactly is an A-player. And can your business really afford one?
Put simply, an A-player is someone who outperforms most other people in a similar position and level.
When you have A-players, you’ get incredible bang for your buck!
Here’s how to hire one:
1/ Choose a specific role
For example, it’s much easier and cheaper to a find an A-player to be your Social Media Manager than it is to find one to be your Head of Marketing
2/ Document your existing processes so they don’t need to be an expert in everything
3/ Look at the key skills they need to excel in this job
Our Social Media Manager will need to be great at copywriting. But they do not need 5 years of Twitter experience!
4/ Hire for these key skills, and alignment with your company values
5/ Find someone who’s in the top 10–20% given the role and compensation
This is how you fill your team with A-players. If we’re specific enough on the role, it becomes very affordable.
We go deeper on this in today’s episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Friday Oct 28, 2022
Within an organization, it’s common for one person to have more than one role.
We sometimes call this wearing more than one hat. And in a really small business, it’s not uncommon for one person to balance 3, 5, or even 10 more hats precariously on their head!
But it’s not just a small business problem.
As you scale up, you’ll always be introducing new teams. New teams will start off with a generalist who wears multiple hats, and over time you’ll hire specialists.
So how do we manage this?
The key is to look a few years into the future. Work out what roles will need to exist.
Then start working as if they already do. If that means that you currently wear 6 and a half hats on your head, then so be it.
Why? It will make your life much easier when it comes to systemizing processes, delegating tasks, and recruiting new employees.
Put simply: It allows you to scale.
We go deeper on this in today’s episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
There are a lot of different people involved when getting ready for a new joiner!
How do we make this easy to manage?
First, work out exactly who needs to be involved and why:
HR will need to support the new joiner before they join, and during company onboarding
Finance will need to set up payroll
IT will need to set up system access
The manager will need to handle role onboarding
An assigned buddy can help to support the new joiner in the first weeks
Then think work out who will be responsible for the overall process.
We want to avoid a lot of handovers that could lead to dropped balls. So let HR be responsible until the end of company onboarding, and then handover to the manager.
Finally, create a checklist for each person involved to use. HR’s checklist can include steps to ask Finance and IT to complete theirs, and to check it actually happens.
We cover all this and more in today’s episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Helpful resources:
- Checklist for HR: https://airmanual.link/templates/hr-onboarding-checklist
- Checklist for manager: https://airmanual.link/templates/manager-onboarding-checklist
- Checklist for Buddy: https://airmanual.link/templates/buddy-checklist
- Checklist for Finance to set up payroll: https://airmanual.link/templates/payroll-checklist
- Checklist for IT to set up system access: https://airmanual.link/templates/system-access-checklist
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Wednesday Oct 26, 2022
Wednesday Oct 26, 2022
Our top tip for employee onboarding? Put the new joiner in the driving seat!
With self-service onboarding:
New joiners can move at their own pace
Teams and managers save hundreds of hours
Managers can focus on coaching rather than lecturing
New joiners get up to speed quicker, and then make fewer mistakes as they have resources to refer back to
We often see total onboarding time cut by 80% (!), and new joiners getting productive within 1 week.
But how do you go about making a self-service employee onboarding process?
And isn’t there a risk of creating something that’s tedious and dull for the new joiner — the opposite of the engaging and motivating experience we want?
That’s our topic for today’s episode of De-Stress Your Business.
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Helpful resources:
- Company onboarding process template: https://airmanual.link/templates/company-onboarding
- Role onboarding process template: https://airmanual.link/templates/role-onboarding
- Set up employee onboarding checklist: https://www.airmanual.link/set-up-employee-onboarding
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
Tuesday Oct 25, 2022
When should employee onboarding start?
A common mistake is to kick it off when the new joiner walks in the door for the first time.
At this point, we’ve already missed an opportunity
Before day one, we can:
Get contracts and policies reviewed
Explain our vision and values
Describe how we work together
Let the joiner know we’ll support their growth
Give the new joiner clarity on how their first day, week, and month will work
In doing so, we help to de-stress the new joiner, turning some of their anxiety into excitement.
And we make day one a lot more fun, as there’s less information to share, and the new joiner can make more progress towards getting productive.
In this episode of De-stress Your Business, we dive deeper into what you can share before day one, how best to do it, and the impact this can have for both the new joiner, and your team!
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Helpful resources:
- Pre-day one onboarding template for new joiner: https://airmanual.link/templates/onboarding-pre-day-one
- Onboarding template for HR: https://airmanual.link/templates/hr-onboarding-checklist
- Onboarding template for manager: https://airmanual.link/templates/manager-onboarding-checklist
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Monday Oct 24, 2022
Monday Oct 24, 2022
When you plan employee onboarding for a specific role, you need to consider both the short and long term goals.
On day one, the new joiner will be excited, but also anxious…
… Will they be able to deliver the value the team needs?
… Will they be welcomed?
… Will they be well supported?
We want to address these concerns as quickly as possible.
So look for a task that the new joiner can get productive in quickly, and focus on helping them get there. For a sales rep, it might be doing sales calls without support. For a software engineer, it might be developing simple features or fixing bugs.
Try to get here in days or weeks, not months.
Looking longer term, we want to help the new joiner to become happy and confident in all areas of their role.
This will take longer, and that’s OK. The key is not to stop until that end goal is achieved.
We go deeper into the essential steps for your role onboarding process in today’s episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Helpful resources:
- Company onboarding process template: https://airmanual.link/templates/company-onboarding
- Role onboarding process template: https://airmanual.link/templates/role-onboarding
- Set up employee onboarding checklist: https://www.airmanual.link/set-up-employee-onboarding
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Friday Oct 21, 2022
Friday Oct 21, 2022
What are the essential steps for a company onboarding process?
The 5 key areas to include are:
1️⃣ Meet the team
2️⃣ Set up tools
3️⃣ Learn about vision, values and goals
4️⃣ Learn how to work together and get support: accountabilities, processes, performance
5️⃣ Learn how the business works: Target market, products, services, competitors, customer stories
This doesn’t need to take long… but it’s important you don’t skip any of this.
Everyone on your team needs this context to perform well. And without it, you can expect bad decisions, mistakes, confusion, conflict… and general stress.
In this episode, we go deeper into why it’s so important, and what to include in each step of the process.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Thursday Oct 20, 2022
Most software engineers and managers hate documenting.
More than that… they openly distrust that the effort of documenting will ever pay off.
Why is that?
It stems from a misconception on what needs to be documented.
Engineers see beautifully maintained technical documentation and best practice documentation, and assume the goal is to replicate that.
But that’s a fools errand… by the time you’ve documented at that level of detail, you’ve cost the teams weeks of progress, and the content you’ve created is already out of date.
Instead, we need to tie all of our documentation to business processes.
Rather than having a document called “System architecture”, you might need to update your documented peer review process. Or add an “Learn about our architecture” step to the onboarding.
In this episode of De-stress Your Business, we go deep into the false beliefs that can hold back software engineering teams, and how to address them.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
How do you deliver employee onboarding that doesn’t suck?
5 guiding principles that make all the difference:
1/ Hold teams accountable for their own onboarding (— HR will only cover the small fraction of onboarding that’s relevant to everyone in the company!)
2/ Get clear on the end goal. We want employees happy and confident in all areas of their role — this is not just about their first few days.
3/ Fix the foundations. You need documented guidance on how tasks are expected to be done in your team. Training without these foundations will be forgotten.
4/ Put the new joiner in the driving seat. A self-service onboarding checklist is a game changer for both the new joiner (who can move at their own pace and never gets blocked) and the team (who free up 100s of hours that would have been spent training/mentoring/fixing mistakes).
5/ Sprinkle on the wow factor. You don’t need a big budget or investment in time — a few little touches like a handwritten note and a personalized gift make a huge impact.
We cover all this and more in this episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Tuesday Oct 18, 2022
Most companies do a bad job of employee onboarding.
We want new employees to be excited, motivated, and confident in their new roles…
Yet many lose that excitement as it gets replaced by anxiety, stress and frustration.
Expectations aren’t clear.
Getting up to speed takes forever.
Mistakes are common.
Empowerment diminishes into micromanagement.
Excitement turns into disillusionment.
Of course, it’s not just stressful for the employee.
The manager and team invest a huge amount of time into supporting the new joiner. And other priorities get derailed.
Why is this?
Why does employee onboarding suck in the most companies?
And what can we do about it?
We discuss all this and more in this episode of De-stress Your Business.
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Want to learn more? Join our weekly webinar and we'll show you how to free up 15 hours per week and remove the constant stress of running a business, without slowing down growth. Visit www.airmanual.co/webinar for all the details!