When it comes to succeeding in business, the strength of your team plays a huge role. Unless you intend to run your operations solo all through the lifetime of your business, it is vital you build a great team that will drive the vision of your business.
Here are some ideas that may help.
Choose character over competency
Success in business tends to be less about skill and more about character and potential. It is very difficult to train character or to change someone’s personality, but it is easy to train learnable skills. Other qualities that you should be looking for include motivation, insight, curiosity, determination and engagement.
Engage your employees
You need to get employees involved in the day-to-day running of your company from early on. Keep them active and build their strengths into your business so that they can help things flourish and get the maximum personal reward from engaging in your company.
Use mentoring
By having your staff mentor other employees, they can reflect and grow themselves while also passing on their own knowledge and wisdom to their colleagues. Mentoring also builds relationships, confidence and helps people who are new to the company to learn more about an organisation.
Build flexibility into work schedules
In today’s marketplace, it is important that people feel valued, and one of the ways you can do that is by enabling them to build their work into their lives. Flexible hours and remote work help to add real benefit to employees, enabling them to take their kids to school or go to performances. Providing a flexible work schedule can really improve the productivity and satisfaction levels of employees.
Another way to boost employee morale is to provide protection for their activities at work. For example, public liability insurance will cover employees in the event of any liability issue targeted at them.
Integrate reward and recognition schemes
It’s a basic human need and one that companies don’t normally pay much attention to – appreciation. By showing people that you appreciate them for doing extra work or going the extra mile, you can make them loyal ambassadors for your company. A simple thank you card, recognition award in front of their peers, or Christmas bonus will go a long way in building a motivated workforce.
Encourage feedback
An organisation that doesn’t have internal feedback dies easily. You need to make sure that people are communicating about how things can be done better in a positive way, and that you yourself receive the feedback that you need to grow your organisation.
You need to be aware of anyone that is hoarding power by stopping information flow and train them on why information must get to the right places. Building regular reviews, target appraisals, and ad hoc feedback into your business processes can be really valuable, if not necessary for success.
Help employees achieve their aims
There’s nothing more frustrating than getting a great employee with potential and character and then seeing them leave to another organisation. To stop this happening, you need to understand the individual goals of your staff and help them achieve those goals. This may be through personal development hours, formal training, or a clear progression path up the career ladder. Equally, it might be by understanding that they will spend more time with their family and offering a day or a week to work from home with shortened hours.
High performing leaders
You need to ensure that your company has great leaders pointing people to the right path. They should be able to communicate the company vision, company values and also show how to deal with challenges and obstacles in a positive, proactive, and solution-focused way. By aligning a great leadership team, your employees will have something to aspire to and will also feel motivated that the company is moving in the right direction in every scenario.
Building and retaining a highly-skilled workforce involves focusing on individuals and ensuring that the leadership is in place to develop them towards their true potentials. The culture of continuous improvement and aspirational personal growth should be a given, and everyone should be working towards a common vision as they strive in their work every day to contribute to the overall goal.
