How to grow your business by developing your employees
Training and development may often seem like an expensive and time-consuming process, but it’s a key investment in growing your business. Look at it this way, you probably felt confident being your own boss because you had the knowledge and skills to start a business. You likely went through some type of professional development process to achieve such a level of expertise. If it can help you start your own business, imagine what it could do for your employees and their work. So, if you’d like to know more about how to grow your business by developing your employees, read on!
One-to-one coaching
When you sign on to coaching your employees individually, you not only make them feel valued but also support them in performing to the best of their abilities. This involves building a strong professional bond with your employees such that they feel open to learning and seeking guidance from you. They’ll then look to you to understand how to make clear decisions and manage challenges. And if you can regularly coach them on these processes, you can empower them to take on new and more challenging tasks in the future.
Check-ins and feedback sessions
In addition to day-to-day coaching, try to schedule periodic check-ins and feedback sessions with your employees.
“A check-in is a brief meeting with your staff where you try to get a sense of how they are doing and how best you can support them.”
These check-ins will allow you to give them advice on improving their outcomes and also gauge how they feel concerning work. As a boss, you should know the issues your staff face so you can help resolve them, improving their productivity in the process.
Use feedback sessions not only to tell your employees what needs to be improved and how to go about it but also to motivate them. If they feel motivated, you’ll find that they are more likely or willing to develop themselves through your guidance or training sessions.
Upskilling employees per the changes in the market
The market is always changing, from people’s preferences to new competing businesses to products and services. And your business will need to adapt accordingly to keep growing. One effective way to adapt to these market changes is to upskill your employees through training. If you’re a store owner, for example, it can be as simple as ensuring that your employees’ knowledge is up to date with regard to a new range of products you have just started selling at your store.
For these trainings, you may opt to go with an external trainer or even do it yourself. The focus of such training can vary depending on the business needs (dependent on the market) of your company as in the example above. As the market changes, and with it your business needs, your employees might need to take on roles or carry out tasks that are different from the ones they had been doing until then. It’s in these instances that training could help them perform better in or at those roles or tasks.
Your employees are the backbone of your business. Therefore, by investing in developing and strengthening their knowledge and skills, you’re essentially boosting your business’s capacity to grow.
If this blog post has got you feeling inspired to invest in the development of your employees, then you may want to try the following courses. Train yourself to train them!