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Indeed’s Employer Guide helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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Every company has a set of values they follow and a mission they strive to achieve. Strong employees who embody those values and believe in the company’s mission are essential to helping your business succeed. To find and retain strong employees, your company has to offer growth and development opportunities that push employees to do their best work and make them feel valued. Understanding the seven ways to develop employee potential can help you accomplish these goals.

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1. Promote individuality

If you push each person to see things from the same point of view and use the same methods to achieve results, you may see success, but you also risk causing your employees to be unsatisfied with their jobs. This can lead to lower performances and no real growth for your company. Each employee brings a unique perspective and set of skills to the table, which can benefit a business.

By promoting individuality and paying attention to each employee’s strengths, you can assign them tasks that utilize those strengths. Employee engagement may also increase if your workers are doing tasks they enjoy and are good at, which can lead to increased productivity and new innovative strategies to help your business grow.

2. Keep an open door

Establishing an open door policy and being available can lead to a more productive work environment. Employees can’t reach their full potential if they’re hesitant to go to management for any reason. They may seek alternative sources for solutions, which could lead to misinformation and longer processes. It can also hurt job performance if they’re afraid their work may be judged harshly because they don’t know how you’ll react.

If employees feel comfortable coming to you with questions or for advice, they’ll see you as a resource and have a better understanding of company expectations. Reaching potential is a learning process. By providing employees with the space to grow into their potential and showing you’re there for support, you can help them build a greater sense of independence and satisfaction with their jobs.

3. Provide ongoing training

Companies are constantly evolving to keep up with market trends or adjust to new regulations. Any changes to procedures or products will affect how well an employee can do their job. Providing ongoing, on-the-job training ensures your employees stay informed about any company updates and builds the confidence they know how to do their jobs effectively.

The amount of training required will depend on the employee. Some people are quick to adapt to change, while others may need more guidance. Ensuring every employee has access to the resources they need keeps everyone on the same page. When employees are in tandem, productivity increases, which is always beneficial for business.

4. Reduce skill gaps

Ongoing training isn’t just beneficial to keeping employees up to date on company procedures but also for gaining the necessary skills to grow in their positions. If employees lack skills considered valuable in their field, they risk losing out on job opportunities to their peers and being unable to achieve their desired career goals. Having a skills gap between employees may even cause unnecessary competition in your company and result in more people being unsatisfied with their jobs.

You can help bridge this skills gap by outlining all the necessary and preferred skills for each position at your company. Employees then have a clear idea of what they need to work toward. Understanding what skills are valuable in the current market and identifying future market trends gives your employees better expectations of how they can evolve in their careers.

This helps employees stay competitive in your business’ talent pool and the market at large. Employees may then be motivated to take the initiative or work toward positions they may not have seen themselves in before, such as leadership roles.

5. Build strong teams

Some employees may work well individually, but this can add unnecessary stress or challenges to the job. Creating strong teams allows employees to build on top of each other’s strengths and learn from one another. This develops a peer-to-peer learning approach, which can have significant advantages for developing employee potential, such as:

  • People are less afraid to make mistakes when learning from their peers.
  • Businesses can better foster self-governance and decision-making in employees.
  • It boosts knowledge sharing and leads to expertise growth.

By pairing peer mentors with other colleagues, everyone involved benefits. Peer mentors gain valuable leadership and training skills, while the colleague they’re mentoring learns new skills to help them evolve in their position. This pairing also creates a team environment where employees feel comfortable working together and can support each other more effectively when completing tasks.

6. Give tasks outside job roles

Empower your employees by expanding their job roles and giving them new tasks. By cross-training your staff, you’re helping employees step out of their comfort zones and adapt to new functions or skills that can largely benefit their careers. New challenges and responsibilities can also boost employee engagement and push workers to continue trying new things or work toward promotions.

One way to help employees step outside their job roles is to eliminate barriers within your company. At many large companies, employees are kept locked up with only their direct colleagues and don’t get to interact with other departments. This can cause employees to feel as if their careers are stagnating, and if your company isn’t providing them with the growth they’re looking for, they may move on to another company that will.

7. Develop leadership

If you’re wondering how to develop employees for leadership positions, the key is employee engagement. Helping employees develop leadership skills can show themjob possibilities beyond their current position and encourage them to seek promotions. Putting learned skills into practice immediately after a training program is finished is one way of increasing employee engagement. They’ll have a better idea of what new skills look like in action, and it may encourage them to acquire more knowledge to expand their job opportunities.

Conducting regular performance reviews is another way to drive employee engagement. Performance reviews can be intimidating, which is why it’s crucial to explain the purpose of these reviews isn’t to make anyone feel bad. Instead, they should be treated as an opportunity to learn and grow. This time can be used to show employees areas you believe they can excel in and what steps they can take to get there.

Performance reviews also give employees the chance to speak with you one-on-one about desired positions or promotions. If an employee is seeking a leadership position, they can use this space to ask you for advice and track their progress over time. This instills a sense of autonomy and independence, which are strong leadership traits.

Develop employee potential and watch your business thrive

Boosting employee potential can lead to better job satisfaction, which can increase company dedication. Celebrate small achievements with your employees or emphasize how valuable their skills and contributions are to the business’s overall success. If they feel what they do in their positions matters and that you can help them achieve their career goals, they’re more likely to care about the company. By helping your employees reach their potential, you can reach your potential and grow the business you’ve always imagined.

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Indeed’s Employer Guide helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.