Barring your most loyal customers, the most important people to your business are going to be your employees. These are the people that make every little process tick, and if you’re not investing in them, you’ll run yourself into some major difficulties.
It can be easy to neglect this in all the chaos of being a CEO, but it’s an essential thing to make time for nonetheless. Here are some of the biggest reasons why you should be investing in your staff…
You attract and retain great talent
Employee retention is a massive challenge for employers, no matter how successful they are. However, having a good employee development program in place will allow you to shrug off a lot of the burden.
When job hunters are weighing up different listings, a solid development program will be a very attractive feature, and one which could make the difference between the best talent choosing you over a competitor. It will also foster loyalty with your existing staff.
Knowing that your boss is training you up with new skills at their own expense will let the staff know that they’re valued, and make them feel a greater sense of appreciation for the company. Furthermore, ambitious, hardworking people tend to go for positions that offer opportunities for development.
You create promotable people
When you’re hiring managers and higher-ups, the best place to look is within the organisation. Who else is more familiar with your day-to-day processes, your customers and your company values? Not every employee is quite ready for these positions, but investing in their professional development can get them up to speed.
For example, by picking out someone who’s great with numbers and sending them for an MSc Accounting and Finance could make them ready for a more senior role, and dodge a lot of the induction work you’d have to deal with when hiring from outside of the business.
Drawing talent from within the organisation will also help you identify the strengths and weaknesses present in your current workforce, and give you new ideas for future employee development. Creating promotable people from your own camp, and guiding them through their development in the context of your business, is always better than the alternatives.
You’ll keep staff more engaged
Bored employees, no matter the professional environment, will always hurt the business. They’ll adopt negative attitudes, turn in sloppy work, and damage relationships both within the workforce and with the company’s customer base at large.
Giving your workers access to professional development is a hugely effective way to keep everyone engaged, and prevent the problems that stem from bored employees from setting in.
Interesting, varied training programs, along with a view to climb the corporate ladder, will remove the plodding, monotonous feeling that so many people experience when they sit down at their desks in the morning. You’ll retain more people, and assure workers at all levels are giving it their all.