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Six Ways To Help Your Employees To Develop

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Help Employees to Develop|Six Ways To Help Your Employees To DevelopWhen was the last time you looked into the activities that foster happiness for your employees? One of the most important things that you can do for your employees is make sure that they are happy with the way you are running things and managing them. Those in management shouldn’t be in management at all if they are unable to look after their staff, and that’s on you to do that.

The way you run your business is important but it’s so much more important to make sure that the people who work within it are able to feel confident and calm in their roles. From using techniques to improve your performance management skills to ensuring that the people working for you are growing in their careers, you need to do all that you can to help your employees to develop well. So, how can you do it? Below, we’ve got six ways to ensure that you can do just that!

  1. Put your money where your mouth is. If you want to do more for your employees, you need to think about funding performance growth. Personal development funds will help you to ensure that you can help each individual person working for you to grow into their role. You could push that money to training, education and classes, but you can also push it into pottery classes and gym memberships, too!
  2. Always be flexible. Your business is important, and your employees are important for your business to continue working. If you want your employees to be happy, flexibility will really help you with that. Be the employer who says yes to flexibility and working from home. Trust that your employees can get their job done and that you are behind them 100% of the time. The more flexible you are, the happier your staff will be and the more loyal they are as a result.
  3. Add more incentives. Do you have staff members straddling giant student loans? You could add tuition reimbursement as an incentive to the salary program that you offer, and you’ll be able to see that your employees will be bringing new knowledge and skills to the workforce because they will be happy to be reimbursed.
  4. Offer training. Offering the right opportunities to educate your employees will make a big difference to their future. Performance management is much easier when you are helping your employees with a step up from time to time. Staying up to date on the best possible training is vital for their wellbeing, and it’s going to advance their careers at the same time.
  5. Give people choices. If you offer your employees their own participation in their learning and growth with your company, you can do better for them. Taking different learning styles into consideration is vital, and you can provide many different options while you allow your staff to work at their own pace.
  6. Ask what they need. One of the best things that you can do to help your employees to develop is to ask them what you can give them to make their working life easier.

Organizational Accountability Warning Flag 4 – Taking Care of Employees

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability Warning Flag ArticleAt first glance, warning against taking care of one’s employees appears contradictory to what most would believe is an important function of every manager. Context is important here. Too often, managers ‘take care of their employees’ during the performance review process.

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How Top-Tier Consulting Became Available to Small and Midsize Business Leaders

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Need expert advice but don’t think you can afford high quality consultants to support your initiative?
 

StrategyDriven is launching a Personal Business Advisor Program; uniquely providing affordable cutting edge tools and expert advice that until now was typically available to only large company executives and senior managers.

StrategyDriven was founded on the principle of making top-tier consulting services affordably available to the leaders of small and midsized businesses and the mid-level managers and professionals of larger companies. Over time, we learned it wasn’t enough to simply deliver a traditional consulting program economically. Our clients wanted focused advice at very specific times during their projects and possibly a few analytical tools to use along the way – nothing more, nothing less. A radical departure from the traditional consulting model that would further lower costs.

And why not? Today, business coaches commonly advise their clients via phone or video conference and legal advice and forms are available from LegalZoom. All delivered affordably. So why can’t top-tier consulting advice be available virtually and turnkey processes, best practices, and analytical tools online? They can. And now they are.

StrategyDriven’s Personal Business Advisor program provides the experts and tools needed when and where they are needed with no long-term consulting contract. Our employment of true experts, use of modern technologies and streamlined business operations ensures clients receive exceptional advisory services at an affordable price regardless of their budget. Here’s how we do it:

  • Select the Advisor – Chemistry is everything. Client success depends not only on finding the advisor possessing the experience, education, and training needed, but in connecting with someone they can relate to and trust. That’s why we offer a free initial consultation. It’s an opportunity for the client to get to know their advisor and assess how he/she can help them succeed.
  • Identify the Support Needed… No More, No Less – Why pay for a small army of consultants when all that is needed is periodic, focused advice? Our plans ensure clients have access to the experts needed in the amount wanted with no requirement to include costly staff personnel. Want a just few hours per month or full time? No problem. The client decides.
  • Select the Tools Wanted – Don’t want a lot of bells and whistles? Really don’t want to pay for the development of your consultant’s thoughtware? Purchase only the tools wanted, fully developed and maintained on our dime.
  • Determine How We Should Engage – We’re flexible and technology savvy. We employ modern communications technologies; interacting via video and teleconference whenever possible thereby eliminating the need for expensive travel and client office space. (But we will always be there when we are needed!)
  • Choose the Engagement Duration Without Being Locked-in – Business circumstances change. Clients don’t want to be locked into long-term consulting contracts. StrategyDriven’s plans renew on a monthly basis. Clients can cancel at any time.

StrategyDriven Advisors possess decades of experience helping leaders of small to Fortune 500 companies define and implement the complex, mission-critical projects needed to improve operational effectiveness and reduce costs. Isn’t it about time these people were working for you?

Click here for more information and to schedule your free consultation.

Get Better Results by Looking at Your Team Differently

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Why do you pay your team members? If you asked them, they might answer “You pay us to work.” If you ask an office-based worker what ‘work’ means to them, you’ll get a list of typical workday activities. They read and write emails. They write reports. They go to meetings and attend conference calls. Those activities that sound appropriate enough, but they don’t give a complete picture of what ‘work’ means to you.

There are two different definitions of ‘work’ in the dictionary. Your team members likely subscribe to the one that defines ‘work’ as “mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; employment.” Given you’re responsible for your team achieving its goals, you probably lean toward the other one which defines “work” as “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

The two definitions are similar in that they revolve around physical or mental activity but they differ significantly on the purpose of the work. The implication here is you must hold your team members accountable for the results they achieve – not the activities they perform. That accountability contributes to the collective results your team delivers. Activities your team members think of as “work” are the inputs that go into getting the real outcome you desire – results that lead you to achieve your goals.

You need to evaluate the amount of output you get from a team member (the results of their work) and compare that to the amount of time and energy you have to invest in them to get it. We call that second piece ‘leadership capital.’ The result of those comparisons is the Leadership Matrix (or ‘the box’ for short). Within that matrix, we define behavioral archetypes from Slackers to Rising Stars and everything in between. The real insight lies in practical advice on how to lead those folks to improve their performance. To assess that performance, you need a deep understanding of the output generated by your team members. Those are the outcomes to assess when placing team members on the Leadership Matrix.

Mike Figliuolo - Leadership Matrix

Assessing the Output of Your Team Members

The output question leaders need to focus on is “are my team members producing the results I need given all the investments – pay, equipment, supplies, my time and energy – I’m making in them?” Assess each team member’s output – results that contribute to your team goals. To conduct this assessment, you’ll evaluate five elements of team member output:

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About the Author

Mike FigliuoloMike Figliuolo is the co-author of Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results and the author of One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership. He’s the managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC – a leadership development training firm. An Honor Graduate from West Point, he served in the U.S. Army as a combat arms officer. Before founding his own company, he was an assistant professor at Duke University, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an executive at Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He regularly writes about leadership on the thoughtLEADERS Blog.

Data Clean-up

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice ArticleImplementation of performance metrics or the alteration of an existing metrics represents change. These changes often expose previously unseen data; producing unexpected information and bringing to light both performance inefficiencies and errors in captured data. Consequently, performance reflected by the new or updated metrics may be erroneous; necessitating further investigation and possible corrective action.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.