Guest Post by Arundhuti Roy
Employees are an asset to an organization and employee development is a part of the management system that leads to the strategic growth of your business.
Recently, I happened to come across an article from Harvard Business Review, where it was mentioned that many of the brightest employees are in a constant job hunt because they aren’t receiving the suitable career development support they desire. This signifies that business owners are not paying heed to this matter and this can further lead to an inability to retain good employees.
Employees do not leave because they are unsatisfied with job perks but because of what managers or team leaders are doing for them. Gen Y workers are working in search of development opportunities. They are more inclined towards shaping their future and trying to open up international opportunities. Gen Y wants to be associated with companies wherein their key skills and competencies are recognized and they have an active involvement in the decision-making process.
An ethical workplace should have three elements of success to achieve its goals: attitude, availability of correct resources, and aptitude. Ninety percent of the employees have the required aptitude for the job but that is of no use if their attitude isn’t correct. Their attitude can be formed and enlightened, if you as a manager take the right approach to foster a positive, problem-solving outlook. Employees need motivation to give their 100%. Words like, “Yes, you can do it,” don’t work! You need to highlight how important they are to your organization and provide support and training through challenges.
A manager’s role is to support the employees in every possible way for proper functioning of the business.
Outlined below are three ways by which you can ensure Gen Y development:
1 – Accountability
As entrepreneurs and leaders, it is important to highlight the importance of the work team members are doing. Teach them to manage. Management at an individual level can eliminate interpersonal conflict. If they learn to manage everything on their own, they’ll be trained to face difficult situations and constructively work it out, rather than avoiding them. But employees cannot achieve this level all by themselves. Managers have to pitch in. One way managers can pitch in is by setting performance targets. Performance targets enhance focus on what matters the most in the work they do and deliver a certain motivation.
2 – Engage your team
Employee engagement can enhance a company’s performance, innovation and productivity. According to a video by Engage, it has been noted that engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave than the disengaged ones. Organizations must be more employee-centric as this brings satisfaction and generates active participation in business processes. This can be done in two ways:
- Involvement: Asking employees for feedback/input on a particular product or problem will make them feel vital and, at the same time, bring in innovative ideas and solutions. Also, this enhances the thinking processes of team members and helps them to contribute positively in the decision-making process.
- Interaction: Interaction with high-level managers and other colleagues and peers helps them develop social connections and leads to better understanding of the work place. Enterprises can plan social events and family-outings among colleagues to bring a sense of belonging. It can also improve their team spirit leading to enhanced outputs and greater confidence.
Engagement as a whole can be used as a tool to shape team members and retain them in the organization.
3 – Raise awareness of customers
Knowing who your customers are and their requirements is a way for the organization to excel, centering everyone in what matters in delivering the best solutions possible. Discussing past customer cases or listening to customer calls can be a part of their training process. Employees need to develop their customer listening and understanding skills and this can happen if they have a clear knowledge of customer concerns and requirements. Also, widening a team member’s knowledge about customers can develop proactive service and deliver a happy customer experience.
Continued growth of a business depends upon embracing new generations (tweet this), reinforcing an ethical workplace, and implementing processes to support, engage, educate, and develop new team members. Enterprises who want to grow will spend the time to grow their team member ideas, skills, and capabilities, because “organizations never perform, people do!”
Guest Author
Arundhuti Roy has a BA (Hons) English from the University of Delhi and also her Master’s in Literature from Jamia Milia Islamia. Currently she is working as the content writer and marketer at MyOperator. Follow Arundhuti Roy on Twitter and Google+.
Arundhuti,
Great article – I’m in full agreement with all of your points. Companies are missing an opportunity to engage and retain top talent by not offering them better development opportunities. Training isn’t often considered a “perk”, when in fact 33% of Millennials cite it as the most important factor when considering prospective employers.
My company (Virtuali) recently dug into this a little deeper. We surveyed ~500 Millennials about their desires and preferences for professional development (check out the report here: DevelopTheNextGen.com). We also asked them to report on how their current company was delivering against those preferences (in short – not great).
Progressive companies that can adapt their professional development offerings are going to be well positioned to win the war on talent, particularly with the Millennial generation.
Best,
Andrew Upah
Chief Marketing Officer
govirtuali.com
Hey Andrew thanks for appreciating and the information. The whole idea behind this article was to educate my business friends how engaging your employees is the food for today’s businesses. You’ll have to develop your systems and processes within your organization in a way which encourages productivity from your employees and in our company we try to achieve this via our product MyOperator, a cloud telephony which is definitely a requirement of modern businesses. Personally speaking, it works.
Thank you so much! We follow the same method of involvement and engagement through a common panel. As a part of a business, we think the practice of this very method encourages accountability within employee and that is what is we try to achieve via our product, MyOperator
I love the idea of getting the employees focused on customers. Excellent way to promote involvement and engagement.