Nibletz Staff
Achieving success in a startup company is difficult, especially in the early days when you need everything to align so you can pay your employees, get the website up and running, preparing the promotional materials and everything else that your business needs to thrive. Above all else, your employees need to be working to their strengths. Your employees are the backbone of your company, and you need them to be firing on all cylinders. If you don’t have engaged employees, mistakes are made, and you will pay the price. Finding the balance of developing them and keeping them engaged can be difficult, but here are a few suggestions.
Set Up Achievable Goals
To develop your employees at a reasonable pace is to set targets that are not too short in timescale, but not too long either. A lot of businesses give annual goals, but this doesn’t instigate any sense of urgency to complete the task, but instead, it is likelier to encourage a last minute rush to complete the task! By setting up a quarterly task to complete, the goals are easier to complete, and the results are easier to see. From the perspective of the employer, a quarterly goal is much more quantifiable, and you can see the progress easily.
Offer Individual Growth Opportunities
Everyone learns things differently, and for a lot of people, they would prefer to learn skills they can utilize in and out of the workplace. As the employer, you need to address what skills they would benefit from in the structure of the company. Sending everyone onto a skills course is not beneficial because it is not something that everyone would benefit from, which wastes company time, plus it is a cost you could do without! By addressing each staff member’s individual strengths and weaknesses, they can be guided towards a learning program that is much more tailored to their current ability but also to their long-term goals in the company. The University of Maryland offers an online mba program that can be completed in 21 months, and an online course is a useful way to help your staff develop. An online course doesn’t take them away from their work, and it can be done in their spare time.
Keep In Touch Regularly
A common approach to giving feedback is to do it once or twice a year. How can you expect anyone to improve if you only give them information on their progress once every 6 months? As well, the end-of-year or bi-annual performance review is likely to be something that each staff member would dread. It should be a useful session to address certain issues and discuss how best to approach them, it shouldn’t be an exercise in chastising the person! By keeping in touch on a regular basis, it gives staff members the opportunity to address smaller issues and build on them rather than trying to fix massive problems before the next annual review. Improving on smaller issues is much more attainable for everyone, and it is easier for you to manage.
