A recruitment crunch is still persisting, there’s pressure on costs thanks to inflation and dampened demand due to economic uncertainty… It seems like a pretty hostile landscape for many business owners.
If you have a diminished budget to throw at problems and are possibly struggling to fill roles, what wouldn’t you give for some fresh ideas?
One underused method for solving immediate resourcing issues, as well as developing a more satisfied workforce, is to tap your current team for hidden talents.
So, this week we are asking: How well do you really know your employees?
What is the opportunity?
You could discover that your marketing void is partly filled by someone working on the shop floor who has a passion for blogging. Or your part-time bookkeeper is great at customer care because they volunteer at a charity every weekend. Maybe your trainee is a whizz with spreadsheets and could easily streamline your orders, if only you asked!
The beauty of taking the time to find this kind of thing out is not only fixing a current issue. You are also offering a path of progression and a culture of achievement amongst your staff that will keep them engaged with you for years to come: therefore potentially solving future recruitment and retention problems.
Tips for uncovering hidden talents
While you may be acutely aware of some shortfalls within your business, it is good to do some kind of audit of what else may be missing. So not only accounting for that vacancy that you haven’t been able to fill, but also other activities that are not getting done – the ones that are important but not necessarily urgent.
This will add some breadth to your thinking when you come to talking to your employees about their hidden talents – what we are looking at next.
As with so much in business (and life) good communication is important. Simply showing interest in employees’ lives may be all that you need, striking informal conversation to find out more about them – their hobbies and interests and also former job roles if you are not already familiar with those.
If you want to go further, you could commission some personality testing like psychometric personality testing or values-based exercises to find out what makes your team tick and what else they may be naturally suited to.
Nature or nurture?
Of course, it is not all about what they can do now but what they have the potential and desire to do. If you discover a willingness for personal development then it is essential that you facilitate this if you want to retain your staff and get the best out of them.
A survey in 2021 by a recruiting site found that 80% of professionals do not think that their employer provides enough growth opportunities. This is a huge chance for forward-thinking business owners like you to attract and keep talent through nurturing their professional growth.
This could be through in-house training, sending them out on courses or just secondment to a different team for some of their working week to learn on the job.
Want to find out more?
At the very least, building rapport with your employees and better understanding their strengths and interests will lead to an enhanced company culture. And if a hidden talent matches a pressing need, that is one problem ticked off your to-do list.
We can help you develop learning and development programmes or facilitate personality profiling. So contact your local HR Dept office to get started. Or we can just begin with a more informal chat about your needs to understand more about your business.
