Author: Ole Buch, Owner and CEO Ɩ 100 PLUS consultancy Ɩ IPTER partner in Denmark
Employees are most often a company’s most important resource.
Retaining skilled and committed managers and employees should therefore by a strategic task. The task should be given at least as much attention as the task of acquiring new customers. If you do not have the right employees, you will not get the right customers either.
Two questions are crucial for whether the skilled employee choose to continue his/hers career in your company:
Is the management visionary, and does it understand how to create enthusiasm around the vision?
Do my personal and professional development opportunities here live up to my expectations?
You need to develop your employees so well that they can leave you – and treat them so well that they do not.
Before deciding to approach an employee to correct him/her, or even to dismiss him/her, the manager should ask himself these four questions:
- Am I a role model? The employees should be proud of their manager.
- Do I insult my employees by not challenging them enough? Your employees are potential world champions.
- Am I capable of showing a personal interest in each of my employees? The employees expect this.
- Do I provide security for my employees? The employees need security to achieve top results.
In English we have another word for management: Leadership. A ship is something with direction, with destination, with teamwork, with movement and with correction of the course.
Analysis show that the skilled mid-level managers leave companies who do not have a clear direction, a clear and strong vision.
The skilled mid-level manager wants to know if he is using his time and competences at the right place and on the right mission. Does being here increase my value on the job market? Am I in motion here?
The vision of the company must be strong and meaning full. It must be possible for the employee to see how he/she can help the company in the direction stipulated in the vision.
Or with a military expression: The vison tells the soldiers why they must go to war!
Do you ever wonder if your most talented employees get enough challenges and opportunities with you? Are you aware that this is what they expect from you? Many companies write in job advertisements that here you can achieve personal and professional development. But in many companies, the use of HR resources is not based on knowledge of the individual manager’s and employee’s real potential. Because you do not know it. Analysis of the latent abilities in your staff will give you a development plan which will increase the outcome of the wages. Simple as that.
Development of a company’s employee resources should be done through visionary planning and action, which is based on serious analysis of status and potential. Both by the individual person and by the teams that have been established.
This achieves two essential things: Optimal utilisation of the HR investment, as well as personal and motivating development plans that the individual feels involved in. In this way, you can raise your employees‘ competences and loyalty to a level above the competitors.
Training in e.g. sales or leadership will increase the value of the employees, both for the company and for the employees. Therefor it is extremely good business to currently have training programmes running.
In many cases, it will be a good idea to involve an external trainer and coach in the analysis and development processes. Among other things, it will add new inspiration to the organisation.
Steve Jobs put it this way: “It does not make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Change behaviour and way of thinking and become your industry’s favourite workplace!
