I recently presented a session at the 2017 UK200Group Annual Conference on the importance of investing in your people. The session focussed on what employees desire from their role and career in 2017 and the different ways in which firms can invest in their people to keep them motivated and productive and ultimately make them want to stay! Traditional methods such as formal learning (professional qualifications and training) to develop skills and knowledge are clearly still very important but the session also included some other tools to help motivate and inspire your team such as investing in TAYF (Think About Your Future) programmes, coaching schemes and allowing your team time to pursue external pursuits which they are passionate about such as volunteering with The Prince’s Trust or becoming a Young Enterprise volunteer.

I ended the session with some statistics. Did you know that almost 50% of employees leave a position within two years and that it takes a new employee almost six months to reach optimum productivity? It’s vital that we integrate new starters into our firms straight away. Get people involved in projects and collaborations and make sure you keep them updated with what’s going on in the business and that you communicate future plans and the long term vision – and make sure they feel that they are part of that vision.  Costs (recruitment, training, integration time etc) to replace employees is at an all-time high so we can’t afford to be complacent.

 My slides from the session are available

 

http://www.uk200group.co.uk/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.aspx?lID=3981&fileName=WhyYouShouldInvestInYourPeople.ppt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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