You may be the mastermind behind the business idea that has led to establishing your company, but your employees are the backbone of its success. No brand, no matter how necessary it may be, is immune to failure caused by poor internal structure and leadership.
After all, choosing, building, and growing a strong team is the true reflection of your own leadership skills – so if you are not happy with your employees, you might want to look at your own decision-making process to see what needs fixing.
To make the most of your teams’ potential and enable them to grow within your company, you can create a designated strategy that will ensure you employ the right people and give them the right tools and support to chase their goals.
Ensure transparent communication
Too often important information gets lost in translation simply because people focus on roles, expectations, and not on the goal. Fostering transparency involves constant improvements in every layer of your company’s communication channels. From how your team-mates discuss tasks assigned to them, all the way to how they feel about voicing their thoughts in a meeting with their superiors, open lines of communication allow you to see gaps that need filling.
That includes your own performance as their superior. Encouraging criticism with an emphasis on positive, actionable advice is a great way to make a statement that sharing experience and expertise should be a two-way street, one that aims to improve the whole system, not single out the weakest link – on the contrary, transparency strives to help you overcome those weaknesses.
Perfect your hiring process
In all fairness, any human being is fallible, and has the potential to become that “rogue” employee that might smear the reputation of your business. Still, the majority of control remains in your own hands if you devise an ironclad hiring and onboarding process to minimize the risk of hiring the wrong people for the post.
Think about all the steps of your elimination process – is the interview a valid way to hire for each particular job in your company? Do you have tests included? Have you specified the skills you value for a position? Of course, all of these, and other relevant aspects of your hiring system should be standardized, so that your HR team can handle the process independently.
Focus on diversity
The idea that great minds think alike may be the most dangerous one to assume when it comes to choosing your next employee. In fact, constantly hiring the same “type” of personality for many of your roles can actually limit the creativity your company needs to thrive. On the other hand, diversity in every possible sense of the word, not just in terms of gender or experience, is the driving force of success.
If you find yourself constantly using the same “templated” hiring system, you can consult a disability employment services provider in order to create a more inclusive work environment and find the employees that match your needs without necessarily matching a “type”. These experts are there to ensure that each employee has enough support and guidance to adapt to their new job, and that you can help them flourish in their new post as they enrich your company culture.
Stay clear in setting goals
Even if you do manage to pick the perfect crew to handle your business, and your hiring practices are superb, another piece of the puzzle can wreck the whole effort if it’s not applied properly – your own expectations. When there’s a project to be handled, each team member needs to know precisely what their job entails, each milestone they should meet, as well as the final goal for the entire project.
Without systematically setting goals, you risk overworking and underutilizing some of your most valued team assets. Those who end up working too much may compromise the quality of their work to meet a deadline, while those who are uncertain about their role won’t be able to do their best. Prepare a detailed outline for each position in your company, so that every employee, present or future, knows precisely what their role entails. Then make sure you apply the outline to each project, so that you can match the job to the person with the right skillset.
Offer continuous learning options
No employee should feel “stuck” in their current job, or your company, for that matter. The previous step that focuses on setting goals can also be used to create a line of growth for each position, so that your potential employees know where this road may take them. If someone craves for a managerial role down the line, perhaps they would be happy to do so under your wing.
Having transparent communication also makes for a great portion of this growing strategy – you should encourage each of your employees to share their knowledge and pass on their skills to others. Mentorship programs should be rewarded, and organizing seminars and lectures, and visiting conferences should all be a part of your plan to grow your company. By investing in your employees and by letting them expand their knowledge base, you will strengthen the backbone of your business.
