Investing in People

This week, I am returning to an area I have discussed in the past—risk. Our resident psychologist, Kimberly Thomas, suggested this week's topic. It is an exploration I hadn't thought of before and got me thinking about how we view risk.

This week, we are discussing the risk of not doing enough to care for our people. This risk is often overlooked because we tend to examine risk strictly from the standpoint of cost. We think in terms of reputational, financial, operational, or strategic risks.

What I am referring to is a Human Capital Risk, not just the risk of low morale. While not caring for our people can lead to low morale, the issue is the cost of performance loss.

Often, organizations don't consider low morale a risk. Those who do are usually only focused on the systemic issues in the organization and, while this needs addressing, there are other ways to look at it.?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are your people working at their peak performance?
• Do you know if you are getting the true potential from your workforce?
• Are there impediments to them working at their true potential?

There are many contributors to low morale, and while the organization either causes or influences many of those, there are others outside of that realm.

Human beings are complex entities and, in the post-COVID world, we have gained new insight into those complexities. A multitude of factors can lead to low performance, and these are often inside the individuals themselves:

• Lack of confidence
• Inhibitions
• Fear of the unknown
• Childcare
• Eldercare
• Issues at home

The average manager is not armed to deal with these. The manager can be empathetic, and even sympathetic, but helping their people solve them is likely beyond their ken.

Sometimes, companies rely on general external coaches to help, but they, too, may not be qualified and, based on the coaches' predilections, they might do more harm than good.

Enter the realm of professional performance coaching from an expert, which our roster at Forrest provides. We are fortunate also to have psychological expertise in Kimberly to help our clients. Her role is to support when we have identified the issues through our other coaches.

So, what can an organization do to help their people and thereby reduce the risk of low performance?

1. Identify the issues where performance does not match the potential of the individual
2. Identify the internal systemic problems that may be interfering with the individual's performance
3. Address those issues and solve the internal issues (this is, after all, the role of the managerial leader)
4. Identify if it is internal to the individual and get the necessary help from a professional

The benefits of tackling and expending energy and resources to do this are:

• Increased productivity
• Reduced turnover
• Greater loyalty
• Increased retention in the organization of good talent

In the end, you create a great place to work that boosts your organization's net promoter scores and becomes a magnet for good talent.

You enable your organization to flourish when you enable your people to flourish. After all, until robots run your business, your people are your most important resource. They make your business sing.?