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Bad management and bad workforce are two key reasons why seven out of ten businesses fail within the first ten years.
Companies run because of employees. Employees help companies achieve their goals if companies help employees achieve employees’ goals.
An effective workforce includes employees who are willing to go the extra mile by thinking fast, smart, and working hard. Smart work also includes hard work. Companies should not forget that.
Most companies have high performers in every team. But is it possible to make every employee a high performer, or is that far too an unrealistic goal to achieve? What can employers do to maintain a quality workforce that has what it takes to weather any storm?
It starts with the hiring process
To get someone quick, employers are willing to select a close fit but not necessarily the best fit. Companies often are of the delusion that any employee is trainable. So, they spend 5% hiring and 95% trying to train the candidate they hired.
The question is not whether a particular employee is trainable. The question is whether an employee is ready to be trained. That’s where understanding the skillsets of candidates and assessing their potential to learn additional skills come into the picture.
Having a clear understanding of the role and what a person employed in that role is expected to deliver helps companies deliver better and reduce costs because managing a poor performer takes up 70% of your operational costs than managing a good performer.
It’s all about diversity
Diversity is a fascinating word with job seekers and employers alike. Gallup defines diversity as “the full spectrum of human demographic differences“. Of course, the configuration of diversity could have different contexts in different countries. Because diversity in India is about having a healthy mix of male and female employees. Whereas, in the US, diversity could mean people from various ethnicities.
In the US, between 1980 and 2020, the white working population has declined from 83% to 63%. 67% of the Gen Z and the millennial generations consider diversity a strong motivating factor to consider a job offer.
While on the one hand, diversity is about hiring people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds; on the other hand, diversity is about preventing discrimination and bias for the employed individuals.
Perform for their review
Just as only 20 percent of customers generate 80 percent of business for a company, companies will only spend 20 percent of their resources to nurture existing talent versus spending 80 percent of their resources looking for new talent.
Growth is in feedback. 43% of high performers are employees who receive feedback at least once a week.
The problem with performance reviews is that it’s a problem when it’s not conducted, and it’s a problem when it’s conducted. A YouGov survey (conducted over 800,000 workers) showed that only 26% of the workers found performance reviews useful and 39% of the employees termed performance reviews as ‘time-consuming’ and ‘pointless’.
With 95% of companies hiring the wrong people every year, retaining existing talent is crucial. 89% of employees in North America want their employers to engage in employee growth and learning.
As 86% of employees call out ineffective communication and lack of feedback as factors for poor performance, performance review’s importance cannot be stressed enough.
Attracting and developing a quality workforce starts with these three parameters. What’s also essential along with ensuring a holistic hiring process, inclusive atmosphere, and performance review, are assigning goals, rewarding loyalty, and timely training — so your existing workforce can bridge gaps and be equipped to take charge of the skills needed for tomorrow.
As an AI-driven talent intelligence platform, Draup allows employees to map micro and macro gaps by identifying plausible short-term and long-term career trajectories enabling companies to equip their workforce planning with skills, tools, and certifications required for next-gen roles.
