By Katie Davis W e speak with hundreds of CEOs and Managers each month and ask their secrets to success and if every case having great employees is the reason that they continue to be leaders in the industry that they are the lifeline for a company and the most valuable resource that determines success or failure of any business, large or small. An effective and well skilled workforce can efficiently achieve a company’s goals and vision however, an inefficient workforce can turn out to be a huge liability for the organization. Therefore, it is essential for any company to develop their employees’ skills and enable them to contribute their best efforts in the pursuit of company’s business plans and targeted goals. This is what we have been told are the four key techniques to develop your employees skills to achieve an effective and progressive workforce: INDIVIDUAL AND PERSONALIZED DEVELOPMENT PLANS Your company’s workforce is made up of employees that have their own way of learning and their own unique skills set, each with strengths and areas of opportunity. It is important to have general training on policy and proce- dures when creating employee training and organizational developmental programs, but you must understand the diversity of your workforce. By developing personalized development plans tailored to the specific needs of each individual employee. This will help make your company identify the professional goals and career aspirations of your employees and develop each employees career path as per their skills and growth expectations. DEVELOP KEY PERFORMANCE METRICS Your company must create a quantitative approach to work, tasks and goals is an effective strategy to quantify your system of performance evaluation. Having specific goals related to ones performance will develop an under- standing among your employees about what the company expects from them and how much they have to deliver in terms of productivity and efficiency in order to make it to their respective goals. Establishing key performance objectives and tying them with specific, quan- tified target is a smart technique to develop your employees and create a healthy competitive culture at the workplace. EXPAND THEIR ROLE OUTSIDE THEIR COMFORT ZONE When developing employees it is important to assign them the tasks based on their own specific skills as this will give them the opportunity to become an expert in that area and not everyone in the company will want to move to the top. However for those employees that want to advance, you want to prepare these employees for more diverse and larger job roles. You will need them to understand that as they move up the company ladder that they will need an awareness and understanding of various tasks and oper- ations being performed within the company.
Key parts to this are internal hiring - whenever possible, job rotations and creating integrated teams of employ- ees for special projects which is a key strategy to develop the skill sets of your employees and prepare them for the more senior roles and posi- tions in the company. It is essential for any company to develop their employees’ skills and enable them to contribute their best efforts in the pursuit of company’s business plans and targeted goals. CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK This is the most important of the four key techniques of the development of your employees and your company’s workforce. You must keep track of the progress in the development of each employee, not just the company as a whole. Plus not only do you need to document the development, you need to be providing regular feedback to your employees, both positive and constructive to ensure that the employees maintain their efficiency and perform their assigned job roles to the best of their ability. Make sure that you acknowledge the efforts of your employees, appreci- ate the accomplishments and make the recommendations where you think there is room for improvement and do not forget to ask them how you are doing to help them develop. Feedback needs to be open and honest and 360 degrees. Once all parties give their feedback, then it is time to go back through the steps and repeat as this will now be the expected culture to grow your employees and the business.
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MAY 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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