Every company wants committed, engaged employees who stay in their positions for a long time. Long-tenured employees build institutional knowledge, help mentor younger employees, provide consistency and reliable productivity, and lead to decreased turnover.
It’s no accident when a person stays with a company for years and years, but employees who are bored or don’t feel their skills are being fully utilized may start to look elsewhere.
Is your company doing all it can to help foster and develop talent from within? Could you be doing more?
Here are some suggestions:
1. Offer training and development courses and the time to complete them.
Let your employees know these opportunities are available and that they’re encouraged to explore them. Provide information, links, access, phone numbers, whatever might help them gain new skills and capabilities. Investing in their expertise will help your company do more without having to add new employees, plus your employees will appreciate the chance to learn and grow where they stand.
2. Develop an in-house mentoring program.
Mentors help their mentees learn, overcome obstacles, learn new tools. They can provide valuable insight and advice on how to manage their careers, in addition to balancing the demands of home and work without becoming overwhelmed by the stress of it all. Mentors can also help point out areas in which improvement is needed and how to make progress. It’s especially helpful if the mentor, or coach, used to have the same position as the person they’re working with because they’ll have a better understanding of the demands of the job.
3. Managers should act as role models.
Everyone starts somewhere. If your managers were promoted from within, that’s a great success story worth sharing. How did they do it? What steps did they take? How did they grow into their new position? This is valuable information that can be provided to employees and help motivate them to keep working toward a goal. It’s also inspirational: If this person can do it, so can I! Leading by example, is powerful.
4. Reinforce learning.
Kids everywhere have asked their high school teachers why they need to learn this skill or that fact because they’ll never need it in “real life.” Well, life doesn’t get more real than this. But it’s helpful to connect new skills and training to what employees do in their daily tasks and responsibilities. Be sure to point out how everything works together. Sharing the larger, big-picture view of your company and its goals and strategies helps everyone understand the forest for the trees and encourages them to “buy-in” to the ideas they’re learning.
Little rivers and creeks come together to form mighty streams. Individual employees can work together, over time, to help develop and build a strong, thriving company. All it takes is a little training and momentum.
Develop Your Employees
If you’d like to explore more ways to develop your employees and help strengthen your company, contact Debbie’s Staffing. We work with leaders in the industry to provide the training employees need to excel. Call us today and let’s get started.
