There is so much talk on how to become a better leader that often, employee growth and satisfaction end up being neglected. Companies and leaders must know which initiatives to take to make a great impact on their employees. After all, a satisfied employee is a productive employee.
Remember, what truly differentiates an organization from the rest is not the product/service they sell but the people in it. What employees deeply crave is opportunities for employee development. Imagine having your company’s centralized hiring unit doing its best to source and recruit talented employees just to watch them leave!
Taking care of your talented workforce means more than offering free lunch and happy hours. No matter what their level, each employee wants to be valued genuinely. If you an employer really want to show they care, they must commit to employee development.
Want to make a difference? Here’s a rundown of ways a company can make its employees better:
1: Turn Your Managers into Coaches
Every employee needs a coach or a mentor at some point. Why not become what they need? So, managers, gear up and become coaches. It all starts with learning about the strengths of your candidates, their motivation, and what drains strength so that you can guide them to the right path. Check up on your people. Ask questions such as what’s going well in their role? What challenges are they facing? How fulfilled they are and what can the company do to improve their employee development initiatives?
2: Offer Career Development Programs
Want to make your employees better? Offer them career advancement opportunities. Put a program in place for training your next set of leaders and you will gain loyal employees who are willing to outperform.
Have a one-on-one session with your employees to discuss the long-term career goals once a year. Offer them the training they need and assign a mentor who coaches them and holds them accountable. This practice won’t just boost employee engagement but widen your talent pool.
3: Encourage Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Allow your employees to learn more about other business departments by offering them cross-departmental training. Why the training? Because most teams are not natural at collaboration and without the right structure, people might fail to connect and this could mean your initiative would fail.
4: Set Up Stay Interviews
Most organizations have exit interviews. Not that these are invaluable but exit interviews don’t really help you retain the employee that’s leaving. This is where stay interviews come to play. This interview is a conversation between the employee and manager where the company addresses issues that are important to employees to make them retain. These interviews must be an open dialogue otherwise what’s the point!
The purpose is to identify what motivates the employee to stay so that together the company and the employee can work towards that goal. It’s a tried and tested technique to improve your internal talent pipeline and get an insight into the areas that need improvement.
5: Take Employee Feedback Seriously and Act on It
Having a feedback system in place isn’t going to make a difference if you’re not acting on that feedback. This could backfire and you could lose employee trust.
Also, employees only share their true opinions and engage with surveys if they know/feel they are being heard. If not, they may stop giving feedback altogether making your retention rate plummet. Successful companies always communicate an action plan with their employees after receiving their feedback.
6: Don’t Neglect Your Managers
Managers need training from time to time too. Employee and manager relationship has a deep impact on employee experience. Not all managers are great leaders. Some don’t know how to properly communicate or motivate their employees. In this situation, it’s not the manager who suffers, but the employees. It directly affects their productivity. It’s pretty evident they will start looking for another job.
Hence, manager training is just as important as other factors discussed above when it comes to retaining an employee. During the training, teach them delegation, time management, interpersonal skills, goal setting, ways to give feedback and praise the team.
Long story short, Employees are more likely to feel driven to do their best work when they are provided the tools to accomplish their tasks successfully and trained to grow in their professions. You better start working on your talent acquisition strategies and employee career development because a company that enjoys a great employee development reputation might just entice the smartest and brightest prospects to join!
