In today’s fast-changing business climate, growth-minded companies have identified widening gaps between business imperatives and their workforce skills as a critical problem to solve. These challenges – combined with Covid and The Great Resignation – have snowballed. They have forced even many forward-looking companies to change their business models, corporate policies and in many cases, even their go-to-market approach.
Highly skilled and versatile employees are a crucial part of all these areas. In this article, I’ll discuss several tips and best practices to leverage the strengths of your workforce to help move forward in a disruptive market.
Here are a few best practices based on my decades of experience as both a human resources director and Dean of The Wallace E. Boston Business School at American Public University System:
- Enable your employees to understand what they have to do as individuals to better promote themselves. The “industry of old” usually focused on this type of development from the angle of: “how can the organization help you?”. We still have people who believe opportunities for advancement and increase in compensation are the responsibility of the organization. The best thing a company can do is empower its employees to take more responsibility for their career development. Organizations should embrace partnering with employees to seek their destiny and travel the proper paths to be in the right job at the right time. Having this type of mentality can be a win-win situation.
- Commit to developing your employees across the entire organization. This commitment should extend beyond your highest-level performers, and managers should ask hard questions about how to most effectively tackle this type of situation. With the great reshuffle at hand, workers are having second thoughts on where they should be in their careers, and your company needs to refresh its approach to retention in order to better compete with those other alternatives that workers have. One approach that has been overlooked in the past is job enlargement. Employees should be encouraged to upskill, retool, etc. in their current position to see how their daily activities integrate into cutting edge skill sets. Provide them with the opportunity to use new skills in familiar activities before encouraging them to take the leap to a new position. As leaders, we should encourage our employees to be the best they can be in any position in the organization as well as outside of the organization. There may come a time when the best move is outward. We should cherish the time those employees made an impact on our organization as they developed.
- Take a hard look at implementing a mentorship program. I look at myself and say, “You’re the Dean now, what do you want to be next?” I don’t even know if it would still be in academia. What type of coach/mentor is appropriate for me to develop? Not only to develop myself, but to be an asset for the organization in the present. I strongly recommend that organizations become comfortable with mentoring the “whole” person versus only developing areas that would benefit the company. Employees need to be encouraged to take the leap to the next path in their journey.
The Bottom Line
There are no silver bullets that solve mission critical business problems, whatever space your company operates in. But taking these steps to heart can help improve retention, worker satisfaction and morale over the long-term. If done successfully, it will also help you develop a strong bench of leaders to help your company hurdle your next challenge.
Think of this model as a “Matrix.” As a society, we are all interconnected. Therefore, we are constantly challenged to ensure we have the right people in the right place at the right time. If not, we are doing a disservice not only to the organization, but to the employee, too. Are you ready to embrace this change?
Dr. Marie Gould Harper is the Dean of the Dr. Wallace E. Boston Business School at American Public University System.