Developing a people strategy might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to accelerating your business growth. For many businesses ‘people' are the biggest asset and cost they manage, so the irony is a people strategy should be at the top of your list.
We asked business leaders of SMEs across the UK, to tell us what people challenges they felt were holding back their business growth, and below we share some of the top findings from what they had to say.
1. Recruitment and retention of employees - a whopping 56% agreed this was a major challenge. With many world events in recent years, the recruitment market has been hit with a skills labour shortage and a change in desire to work in some sectors such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare. Businesses are competing to secure the best talent and offering more to entice skills from other companies. The shift to hybrid or at home working is becoming an expectation from employees. Offer higher salaries or additional benefits to new recruits and your current team will want the same too. If you don't, they will look elsewhere and the cycle continues – you end up with an expensive leaking bucket, that never gets full.
Attracting and retaining the best talent and developing the right skills is a key strategic people focus to help achieve successful business growth.
2. Driving team engagement was high on the list, and one respondent felt they had seen "a shift in employee expectations over time" which had "been accelerated since the pandemic."
Employee engagement is a vital part of your overall business success so it's not surprising business leaders take this as a personal challenge. Understanding the key drivers of employee engagement can help to empower your team to be motivated and more proactive. According to a Gallup survey, highly engaged teams are 21% more productive. So, knowing how best to engage your team is a key success factor in helping accelerating business growth.
3. Developing a People Strategy was next, as business leaders felt they spent much of their time working IN the business being reactive to an increasing number of issues. This meant they didn't have the time to think about the bigger picture and focus on developing a roadmap for the future.
Dealing with the day-to-day people issues, is a common problem we hear from many of our clients. With our help, not only have we taken them away and created long-term solutions, but by doing so, we have given our clients important time back to focus ON their business. Developing the longer-term strategy and mapping out the people requirements needed to achieve your business growth plans, is a vital foundation to help focus on the right decisions that will achieve your business goals.
4. Leadership and management training was a hot topic too, stating in particular a need for ‘improving competency and confidence within their team'.
You may think of training as an expense but developing a skilled workforce and leadership team can make a business more profitable. A good training and development programme will identify training needs for employees to help them perform better within their roles. For most ambitious businesses, people need to learn new practical skills and refresh their commercial and people skills every year.
Doing this will lead to better performance across the business, increase staff engagement, and boost motivation. It gives your employees the opportunity to develop, grow, learn, and be stretched.
All of these four areas are key functions in a strategic people formula. Taking the time to develop them correctly is an important positive step that can help your business to successfully achieve its growth plans.
People Puzzles is passionate about helping businesses on their growth journey and we want to share some best advice and tips around these key challenges that business leaders raised in the survey.
Join our free webinar and discover how to Accelerate your Business Growth with a sound People Strategy.
Our panel of experienced People Directors will be joined by Nik Roberts, Founder and CEO of Oxford-based web and software development agency, Versantus.
Together they will cover, how a dynamic people strategy can accelerate your business growth; leadership team development and why this is key to driving your plans to succeed and how to attract and retain the best talent to deliver results.
It is a free live webinar on Friday 17th March starting at 9.30am.
Simply click the following link to register your place today.
Author: Stuart Calvert, Regional Director, West – People Puzzles