Your employees are the engine that keep your business running, absolutely essential to the day-to-day and long-term health and viability of your business. You may be aware of some management principles that focus on the whole team, fostering team spirit and solidarity, encouraging a positive culture and other such principles, but how well do you know your employees on an individual level? What motivates and drives them? What do they like (or dislike) about working at your business? While principles that focus on the group are important, knowing and understanding your employees on this deeper level is key to retaining talent and getting the most out of their skills. Here’s some things to consider asking your employees about in order to better understand their wants and needs:
Goals The guiding principle that permeates all of these prompts is developing your understanding of an employee’s goals and aspirations, both in terms of their career and in their personal lives. Take the time to ask them what their goals are and truly understand what they mean. People’s goals are often ephemeral and can be fulfilled in many ways, so think about ways in which their goals interact with yours for the business. Perhaps a marketing professional would like to develop their web content skills, and you would like to offer a new product or service. Task the employee with developing the web copy for this new service and offer them the necessary support that will allow for them to complete the task. This allows your employee to develop in a way that suits their aspirations and provides your business with a new resource. A win-win!
Training Seeing where your goals align is only the first step. Providing the necessary support to your employee can also mean providing training that will allow them to achieve these goals. Again, this should also fit in with your goals for the business, but making this material investment in their career development will make them much more likely to commit to your business long-term, developing alongside it.
Work arrangements For some employees, achieving a good work-life balance is one of their primary goals, and who can blame them. Finding a way to balance their continuing career development with their family obligations will go a long way. In the wake of COVID-19, more employees than ever have found they work better, or are more comfortable, working from home. Accommodating employees with this view will greatly expand the potential pool of candidates you can recruit from, as well as help maintain good relationships with employees you have. It’s been established that people can work from home without a major drop in productivity, so having bespoke working arrangements that suit each employee will go a long way to retaining talent. Minc can help you manage your people more effectively or provide support when you need it most. Find out about our people services here.