Employee Development & Retention - in a Virtual Workspace

The past year has forced employees around the world to adjust to a new way of working. The virtual working world presents many challenges to employees who are transitioning from a traditional working environment. Perhaps the most challenging obstacle to face is how to implement procedures that drive talent development and employee support.

2020 surveys show that businesses managers are concerned that talent risk (the risk involved in attracting and retaining the talent necessary to compete) is the greatest threat to their companies’ ability to succeed in recent workplace developments.

Why has talent risk become so prominent?

With a large segment of the world’s workforce shifting towards a virtual workspace, employment opportunities for the individual have expanded beyond their geographical location more so than ever before. Employees now have more opportunities to work from the comfort of their own homes, for companies that are hundreds of miles away.

Whilst so much opportunity is great for the individual employee, this means that employers have a lot more competition when it comes to attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent.

It is important for employers to invest in employees in a way that promotes both retention and development – however this is no small feat, especially during a pandemic. To attract top talent and retain your best employees during this transition to a remote workforce, employers must be proactive and thoughtful in the steps that they take.

We already know that virtual workplaces can often be far more impersonal than a traditional office; but how does this affect employees? Many remote workers are often unappreciated or forgotten – like cogs in a machine. It is up to leaders and managers to ensure that concerted efforts are made to keep employee engagement levels up and identify ways to show employees that they are valued and appreciated regardless of where they are working from.

This isn’t as simple as it sounds, and managers often find themselves unsure as to how to show appreciation and generate feelings of value and worth virtually. Here are the key steps to helping your employees feel supported, and in turn driving top talent acquisition and talent development:

• Invest in an effective assessment tool

Investing in the right assessment tools can help teams gain insights into productivity, strengths, weaknesses and employee development and engagement. It is helpful to identify your employees’ strengths, weaknesses, risks, and passions so that you can better understand you staff force. Knowing where your employees stand currently will help you greatly in identifying how you can best support them in their career and personal growth moving forward.

Growing and motivating employees is guaranteed to yield a positive result on the growth of the team or company as a whole.

• Understand the individual’s strengths and weaknesses

Once you have successfully assessed your employees, you can explore the details of everyone’s strengths, weaknesses, communication styles, risk factors, drivers, and reward needs. Being able to understand your teams’ assessment results will help you identify opportunities to assist employees as they seek to add value to the organization.

For example, if results indicate that a team member scored high on creativity but low on detail orientation, you can use this information to assign tasks to this team member that you know will play to his/her strengths. In this case, you might find that this team member is best orientated for tasks that require big-picture thinking and brainstorming, while the execution and detailed-orientated portion of the project may be delegated to another team member whose strengths lay elsewhere.

When you know and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, you can tailor job responsibilities to the best-suited person. This results in the employees’ self-confidence and job satisfaction to increase, creating a happier and more satisfied team.

Employees whose job roles and responsibilities play to their strengths and offer opportunities to maximize their skills are often more engaged in the workplace.

• Tailor opportunities to the individual

Every employee wants to be reassured that their work environment is one that will support their own professional growth. Understanding your team’s assessment results will also help you identify areas for talent development and understand how to tailor talent development opportunities to employees’ personal and professional goals.

Employees are most engaged and feel most valued when they feel that development opportunities meet their individual needs and take into consideration their strengths and aspirations for their professional future.

Development opportunities can also be used as a means of strengthening identified weaknesses that may hinder an employee’s growth and potential. For example, if assessment results indicated that an employee was an extreme perfectionist, this may present difficulties for this employee in his/her goals of becoming a leader. Perfectionists tend to be too detailed, inflexible, and averse to change – particularly under stressful situations. A valuable form of development for this employee would be to tailor development activities that help them let go of their tendencies to micromanage.

• Show some support

The past year has proven to be a challenge, both mentally and emotionally. It is important to remember that, along with the struggle to adjust to a new way of working, your employees have been dealing with physical, mental, and emotional challenges, too.

Every employee development strategy should be created with compassion toward the employee. Remember, creating loyal and highly skilled employees requires a sense of security. Your employees want to know that you have their best interests in mind. Whilst making macro-decisions based on company success is a given, great leaders also pay close attention to the micro-level decisions that directly impacting their team.

Are you ready to lead a dedicated and engaged virtual workforce?

Assessment data can serve as essential tools in building trust with your employees. When you understand each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their goals and aspirations, you can offer more personalized, effective support as your team navigates through new workspaces, opportunities, and projects. It is this personalized support created engaged employees, and in turn makes all the difference when it comes to attracting and retaining talented employees.

For assistance in identifying strengths and weaknesses of potential employees before they join your team, speak to your recruitment partner for advice on potential hires.

Supreme Staffing Group – Superior People, Superior Service

https://www.SupremeStaffingGroup.com

Contact one of our recruitment experts today!