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For the second part of the series, we dive in to another vital aspect of every organization – human resources – and unpack 3 keys ways to optimize your workforce through your employees.
1 – Improving your Communications
The power of communication is two-fold: first, connecting with people by establishing an avenue of feedback or dialogue, which then leads to the second, getting people on-board with your ideas and vision.
Improving your communication channels allows for awareness and connection not just between departments but also between employees and executives. This enables organizations to avoid making unnecessary or poor decisions and strategies given that have a good sense of the ground. Also, if employees are on the same page, working toward the same goal as their supervisors, this would aid in smoothing the edges of the workflows in organization.
On the flip side, poor communications can threaten to cripple an organization. There is a litany of reasons that contribute to poor communications: language barriers, physical barriers, or simply just poor communication skills. You would be surprised that even the spatial arrangement of your office makes a difference in encouraging or stifling dialogue between managers and subordinates. A manager whose office door is always open is more likely to seen as approachable by his team members as opposed to a manager whose door is always shut, or worse still, seemingly never in his office.
2 – Attracting and Managing Talent
There is little doubt that talents are a coveted resource in every organization. Some organizations have taken the step to re-define their entire workforce as talents. These organizations believe that in so doing, they build a nurturing and positive environment that motivates each employee as people who are all able to contribute effectively.
By changing the mindset of employees, it prevents any categorizing of employees to those who are the star players and those whose contributions would have “little” impact for the organizations. An optimized workforce should have an environment that no employee feels undervalued. In the long run, not only does this play a significant role on retention rate and attracting talent, but most importantly, ensuring that your workforce is constantly operating on an optimized level.
3 – Employee Training
A famous Chinese idiom “活到老, 学到老” which simply translates to learning never stops even till one’s old age. Today, organizations are not only expected to provide training of their own systems and products and services, but employees also increasingly seek for their organizations to send them for more equipping courses for them to better handle their work. Training your workforce to be ready for new challenges, new technology and trends ensures that your organization does not rely on age-old strategies or ways of doing work.
Suppose there is a new technology released in the market and all your competitors are already adopting it to their systems, yet the employees in your organization do not have the necessary skills or expertise to implement the technology. In the long run, the gap between organizations would only set to widen. Training your workforce to be ready for new challenges, new technology and trends ensures that your organization does not rely on dated strategies or ways of doing work.
Employees should always be constantly trained and ready to pick up new skills. It would be beneficial for the individual’s growth and also for the organization. It’s a win-win. So why the hesitation?
A toxic work environment to avoid
When it comes down to finding the best solutions for your organization (regardless of the issue), we can safely say that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, these 3 tools can form the bedrock of your solutions toward the attainable goal of optimization.
