SIX FUNDAMENTALS PEOPLE STRATEGIES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Written by Luz Frazier
People and culture drive your company’s success, so it is critical to have human-centered strategies in place to ensure that your people and processes align and fully enable your company’s goals, brand, and values.
Here are six ways to ensure that your people strategy is a driving force behind your company’s success.
#1. CREATE A CULTURE OF PURPOSE TO DRIVE BUSINESS SUCCESS
In many ways, your career website, and other social media outlets, set the tone and perception of your business and culture. This is where prospective employees research your company and what helps them decide if it’s the type of place where they want to work.
Does your people strategy effectively convey the purpose of your company and its core values?
What distinguishes your company culture?
How do you highlight what your business and employees should strive for to succeed?
People want to understand what they are going to be a part of before they decide to pursue an employment opportunity.
Take time to describe what’s at the heart of your business. Communicate this to current and future employees, incorporating these culture tenets into everything you do — onboarding programs, company communications, training, etc.
#2. CREATE CLEAR PERFORMANCE-BASED JOB DESCRIPTIONS
With a clear articulation of your business culture, you can now incorporate this into each employee’s role.
Make it part of your people strategy to have clear job descriptions for all your roles that link each position to the greater goals of your organization. Write the descriptions in performance-related terms. Make it clear to your employees how they contribute to your business goals and how they are a part of a successful business.
When employees can clearly see where they fit in and how they are impacting the business, there is a greater commitment to perform at higher levels and to job satisfaction.
#3. MANAGE THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
Reflect your people strategy throughout the interview process. Plan your interviews and ensure that your questions help you assess not only the skills and capabilities you seek but also how a candidate would fit within your organization.
Is the candidate’s personality compatible with the organizational culture?
Do they believe in your company’s purpose and business goals?
Are they offering new insights and perspectives throughout the process?
Your HR strategy should ensure that each interview process has questions to help discern this. It’s about selecting the right talent for your company as well as creating a compelling candidate experience.
A positive candidate experience is essential for it amplifies your company’s brand to everyone you interact with throughout the process — you want candidates to talk to others about how engaging, informative, and put together your company is.
#4. IDENTIFY THE RIGHT TALENT; BE SELECTIVE
A strong people strategy makes it possible to attract the right talent. With job descriptions that clearly describe both the individual role and the company culture, it’s easier to attract those who support and believe in the same goals and values.
With candidates who already support your vision, you are a step ahead in achieving them. This is mission critical to your company’s success.
Onboarding people that are clear, from the start, about what’s expected of them through performance-based job descriptions and how to become successful within the organization’s cultural values will accelerate their ability to contribute to your company’s goals.
#5 INTRODUCE NEXT-LEVEL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Companies are experimenting with a wide variety of approaches to improve how they manage performance. According to a McKinsey Global Survey, half of the respondents said that performance management had not had a positive effect on employee or organizational performance. Two-thirds reported the implementation of at least one meaningful modification to their performance-management systems.
As a small or start-up company, you have a unique opportunity to integrate human capital practices that are fundamental to your business success. For example, no matter how small your business is, set business goals. Encourage employees to set goals and link their goals to those business goals and priorities. Facilitate frequent one-on-one discussions relative to performance and culture. Do this often so as to review not past performance but current performance and employee engagement.
Hold your people leaders accountable for coaching, mentoring, and developing their direct reports, and establish a compensation strategy that encourages the right performance and behavior outcomes and rewards differentiated performance.
HR plays an important role in embedding these practices in performance management by supporting the goal-setting process, decoupling the compensation and development discussion, investing in management’s capability building, and embedding technology and analytics to simplify the performance-management process.
#6. CREATE THE BEST EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE
A great employee experience will manifest into the best place to work, which positively impacts your bottom line. Successful companies work together with their people to create engaging, authentic, and motivating experiences that tap into purpose to strengthen individual, team, and company performance.
Organizations in which HR facilitates a positive employee experience are 1.3 times more likely to report organizational outperformance, McKinsey research has shown. This has become even more important throughout the pandemic as organizations work to build team morale and positive mindsets.
LeadHumano is a partner to HR and business leaders to help facilitate employee experiences that cultivate and strengthen trust, learning, and a true sense of belonging. Curious to learn more about how we can help?
