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‘PEOPLE MAKE AN ORGANISATION’ – PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO PUTTING EMPLOYEES FIRST FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS.
The main driving force behind any organisation within any industry is its employees. For the past decade, different research works have sought to demonstrate that there is a direct relationship between an organisation’s financial success and how that organisation treats its people (Employees).
It has been established undoubtedly, that organisations that place premium on their employees benefit enormously from them, resulting in huge economic gains. An organisational culture that encourages employee engagement, employee participation, and employee involvement is a prerequisite for great financial gains.
Evidence show however, that organisations ignore this fact, focussing on other areas that truly hasn’t been productive, thus the U-turn (Having realised that putting ones people first is the way to go) and the high level of interest being placed on employee engagement strategies.
Putting employees first is not just about giving them voices, it’s about a comprehensive system that recognises their efforts, encourages them to participate in decision making, giving them more control by supporting enhanced performance through well laid out organisational structures.
Below, find my approaches for placing value on your employees and putting them first to ensure that your organisation also benefits economically from your people.
Effective Hiring
Hire the right individuals to start with. Good employees transform a weak organisation into a strong healthy and vibrant firm.
Talented people are very important but are very hard to find, an organisation must therefore make a conscious effort to recruit the right people to work for them. To attract the right fit of candidates an organisation must have a well designed recruitment process reflecting the crucial skills needed for their roles and how to get talented personnel.
An organisation must also be very clear about the skills required for specific roles, the selection process to be used, making sure that only the right candidates are attracted. An organisations recruitment process is a reflection of the validity of professionalism of the organisation, a true test of what value an organisation places on their employees, and both prospective and current employees use that as standard of measurement in their decision to commit and deliver to that organisation. An organisations recruitment process has a direct impact on the performance and success of their employees.
An organisation must adopt tools and techniques to create a unique and memorable recruitment process that captures the best talent. Get recruitment process right and eliminate the risk of hiring the wrong person for the job. Recruitment is not just about filling immediate vacancies but should be seen as an overall strategy for having the best employees.
A good recruitment process covers such areas as; the skills required for the role-(design a good job description), where candidates will be sourced (where to look for qualified candidates, good screening process to verify selected candidates and even compensation that is commensurate and can motivate.
Training and Development
Consider training and development as very crucial parts of your performance management system.
Well trained employees are very crucial to the survival of any organisation. When employees are well trained, productivity of the organisation increases, resulting in low employee turnover, and subsequently leading to financial gains. Well trained employees develop self worth and dignity which has a significant impact on their satisfaction level thus making them valuable additions to the firm. Knowledge about ones job is critical for success. Training is an essential element of high performance work systems, enabling employees to take charge in resolving their work problems, take calculated risks and initiatives and take responsibility for quality.
The performance of any organisation is highly dependent of the skills and motivation of a workforce that has knowledge and capability to perform the requisite tasks.
Training provides a competitive advantage for firms that understands its importance and makes good use of it.
Training helps to close the gap between optimum performance and actual performance through needs assessment and structured training programme to address deficiencies.
Employees must also be able to progress in their careers through development and be able to put their training to practice.
Communication
Effective communication within the organisation is an essential component of high performance organisation.
Sharing of information on such things as financial performance, strategy, and operational measures promotes confidence in employees and assures them that they are trusted and are actively contributing towards the decision making process.
Employees must have access to reliable information to enable them perform their duties. Information must not just be top-down but both ways.
Supervisors must be able to get feedback from their subordinates on important policies and their effects, and be willing to adopt practices that will encourage their subordinates to report back to them.
Employees must be very clear about what is expected of them. Their key responsibilities, duties and roles must be communicated to them in the right way, to enable them perform to their best. Instructions and organisational policies must be clear, precise and straight forward and an organisation must be consistent and transparent in their relations with employees.
Teamwork
Encourage teamwork within the organisation.
Teamwork is a way to bring out the power of collaboration among individuals in achieving specific goals. It is a truism that the era for top-down decision making has passed, replaced by a more collaborative approach in which people at all levels are expected to contribute to every aspect of their organisation.
Teamwork is a proven method for blending talents, skills and inherent creativity of diverse people. The overall essence is common commitment, making the team a powerful unit of collective performance.
An organisation should have shared goals, values to which every member is committed. Through this employees are able contribute their full intelligence, creativity and skills to continuously improve their organisation.
Teams achieve collaboration, motivate people into a unit that shares common goals and aspirations and creates an opportunity for harmonising energies. Employees can be encouraged to pool their ideas to come up with better and more creative solutions to problems.
Organisations must make an effort to encourage self managing teams to foster unity, allowing for synergy, effective interaction and co-operation which are recipes for high performance.
Through teamwork an organisation can build cohesion and work through common goals and group issues.
Compensation
Organisations must offer competitive packages of wages, benefits and incentives to become an employer of first choice.
Compensation management is underappreciated as a means of improving performance and managing talent. Compensation and its relations to efficiency cannot be over emphasised. Determining the right compensation for each person is critical to attracting and retaining a productive workforce. An organisation must find ways to increase efficiencies by offering wages that will motivate their employees to give off their best. Through compensation employees can function effectively and this will greatly enhance the bottom line.
An organisation must develop a compensation system that will actually improve and sustain key employee performances. Employees can be influenced to work more efficiently and effectively by linking pay directly to performance. That way, top performers are adequately rewarded and employees assume more responsibility for end results, and are able to get a clearer understanding of the overall business objectives.
Conclusion
As the evidence suggest, organisations that take their people serious achieve great strides, but somehow majority of our organisations ignore this important fact, resulting in high staff turnover and eventual collapse. How hard can it be? Put your people first and make sure that your talented workforce are loyal and are willing to go the extra mile for you.
Michael Kuma Avuglah is a Human Resources Management professional. He is the Chief Operations Officer of Ghana HR Solutions ( http://ghanahrsolutions.com/old ) a Ghanaian Human Resource Consultancy with services in recruitment and organisational training and development. Ghana HR prides itself of having the employment strategies, wide range of options and resources needed to recruit professional talent on demand.
At Ghana HR Solutions, we help your company find, train, develop and engage your people, with world-class human resource Solutions. We are known to work tirelessly with individuals, teams and organizations to increase performance and to realize true potential
By Michael Kuma Avuglah