How to ensure your employees reach their full potential

Making sure employees reach their full potential – how to do it is a challenge for all business owners. When a business fails to look after its staff, it’s the employees they want to keep that leave and are costly to replace.

As a business owner or manager, your organisation needs a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion policy). Employees will reach their full potential, and your business will reap the benefits when it hires well. Your company culture is moulded by your DEI stance and your actions to promote fairness and opportunity within your workforce. Consider where incremental changes can significantly impact the business to get the best from your employees.

Employee-centric Culture

Many companies are shifting towards an employee-centric culture and practices instead of focusing on tasks and output. People aren’t just a number or a cost centre; they are how you stay in business. We can no longer ignore the signs indicating we need to look at how we approach employees if we want them to reach their full potential.

If your employees reach their full potential, they are more productive. This means your business’s productivity improves, positively impacting your marketplace performance.

Having the right talent is only part of the challenge of growing your business and its people. The real test lies in unlocking their potential so they can grow and thrive at work in the long term.

Working with people daily means constantly observing them and how they interact with colleagues, clients, or vendors. You know who excels at what and who will require more support to grow further. There are as many ways to help employees reach their full potential as there are employees themselves. Keeping that in mind, here are some practices that have worked for us repeatedly to help our team succeed at work.

It’s not just about work.

One of the main things you need to remember is that your employees do not just exist inside the workplace; they have an entire life you probably know little about. This life can positively and negatively impact the potential they reach in work. We are not suggesting that you get personally involved in the life of every employee, but you can put lifestyle advice and support in place.

Emphasise the importance of a good diet.

There is a saying: you are what you eat. Promote eating healthier, and your business can act positively by providing healthy snacks.

Childcare or Remote working

Provide help with childcare where possible. Or allow remote working so your employees with preschool children can work while supervising their young ones.

Encourage exercise

You may want to consider setting up a deal with a local health club or bringing in someone to regularly provide exercise classes. Or get an activity app, and if you are an Apple fan, get the iPhone and Apple iWatch to track your movement and hand out rewards for your activity achievements.

The importance of sleep

People are unaware of how much sleep routines affect their health and work performance. Encourage better sleep patterns and use sleep apps if sleeping is challenging.

Finally, encourage open discussion about work/life balance in team meetings. Remember, a problem shared is a problem halved.

The more you support your employees in living their lives, the more likely they will reach their full potential while working for you.

Creating a feeling of involvement

Employees who do not feel involved with running the business are less likely to want to do their best. You can create a feeling of involvement in your business in several ways.

Communicate openly and effectively.

The people who work for you need to know what is happening in the business. This information needs to be communicated planned and efficiently so that you do not create an environment of rumour and misunderstandings.

Encourage integration

Creating silos of teams across your business is not a good idea. To reach their full potential, they need to be able to see the broader picture. This is why you should encourage shadowing and interaction between teams.

Set up a suggestion scheme.

Creating a successful suggestion scheme takes some effort, but it’s worthwhile. You get access to some excellent ideas and bring out the potential in your workforce.

All of these ideas can foster a sense of involvement in the workplace.

The importance of training and development

If you do not ensure that your employees are well-trained and have access to development opportunities, you will never enable them to reach their full potential. This is not just about teaching people to do their own jobs; although that is important, you must consider other options. You need to allocate a significant part of your budget to ensure sufficient training and development provision. Areas of training you may want to consider are:

• Management training.
• First aid training.
• Myers Briggs testing and awareness.
• College courses.
• Financial awareness training.

It’s a good idea to use personal development plans to tailor training and development to help each individual reach their full potential.

Building and maintaining a strong team ethos

There is plenty of truth in the saying that no man is an island. Most of us need people to help bring out the best in us. This is why creating solid teams in your business is so important. There are plenty of ways for you to do this.

• Encourage regular team meetings and “get-togethers” outside the workplace.
• Use online team-building ideas.
• Host away days to strengthen the wider team.

Final Thoughts

Helping individuals reach their full potential starts with the business DEI hiring policy.  When employees know they are part of a company culture that works for them, they will be happier and more productive.

Plus, when your employees are part of a strong team, they will work, collaborate and help their colleagues reach their full potential.

Doing so takes time and effort, but the benefits to your business make all of this worthwhile.  Are you keen to get started on your DEI implementation?  See this article, DEI strategies.