Invest in your existing staff.
Many CEOs say “our people are our most important asset;” the truth is there is a major disconnect between what they say and what they actually do. If CEOs are serious about the value of their employee’s, they should be spending most of their time and important resources educating, developing and advancing their people. Very few CEOs actually do that.
The job market is tight; high quality talent is limited. So, senior leaders must spend more money and quality time on nurturing and encourag-ing the talent in their departments. The “we value our people” mind set should be top-down driven. It’s critical that every department head genuinely believes their people are special and supports elevating [arguably] the company’s most important asset. The winning strategy is to improve what you have.
The big question for CEOs is how much time is spent on improving and developing the company’s current asset? “I have yet to see chief executives get deeply involved in personnel issues,” said Tiffany Thompson, President of DaMar Staffing. “There are plenty of other important things they [CEOs] are required to do with their time.”
Developing a sustainable pool of high quality employees should be a high priority for CEOs. Very few firms are actually investing sufficient resources to evolve their existing staff; that item usually falls to the bottom of the list.
The biggest challenge for most corporate chiefs is time and resource allocation. This is the most significant thing leaders need to work on. Every company should ask its CEO and department heads to do a time and resource audit, to evaluate how much energy they spend on improving staff? The results are usually surprising.
Leaders need the time to focus their advice and support on internal career development. It’s important to work with your staff, within normal course of business, to improve their performance and define their corporate goals. The key is to manage people in a way that fits their personality types. Build a dynamic workplace, where the investment you make in your people will blossom into business success for many years to come.
The most successful businesses nurture talent from the inside and great leaders don’t recruit super stars, they grow their own.