5 signs you need to rethink your people strategy

Dan Wright | Director | Thryve 

Today, business owners and leaders face not only the challenge of the rapid pace of change, but also the ever-increasing demands to find, develop and retain good people. These demands have reached new levels in the last 4 years. And it doesn’t feel like these demands will ease off anytime soon.

In response to these challenges, every business leader needs to consider developing a two-sided strategy. One side focusing on the market and customers. The other focused on people i.e. your approach to attracting, growing and keeping good people to drive your growth.

There are five commons signs we see in businesses where their people strategy isn’t working and needs rethinking.

1. You don’t have a People Strategy

If you’ve let your team culture grow organically, you may have missed the opportunity to cultivate a culture with intention. It’s only when a challenge comes to call that you might notice your culture isn’t actually as robust or resilient as you thought.

What you can do:

•        Create a culture strategy that outlines what success looks like. Add flavour, nuance, and              use language to not just clarify your goals – but to paint the picture of how it will look and        feel.
•        Build a plan to get your culture to that level of success, and pressure test it with ‘what-if’            scenarios.
•        Create shared ownership within your leadership team.
•        Share the strategy with your organisation, keeping a lookout for potential advocates of              change.

2. You don’t regularly track employee engagement

A lot can happen in a year. If you’re not inviting your people to share their experience regularly, your finger is not on the living pulse of your organisation. You’ll be flying blind, with only assumption to guide the way.

What you can do:

An Employee Engagement Survey (EES) is a powerful way to track employee engagement year on year. Running an annual EES is a good rhythm to commit to – with a good chunk of time between to work on areas of concern. Enabling an anonymity function can help your people feel safe to voice their opinions honestly.

3. There’s no opportunity for your people to develop or grow within the business

When we’re busy leading or owning a business, it can be easy to forget what if felt like to come up through the ranks. If you’ve cultivated a great place of work, chances are your people are motivated to seek out new ways to grow their skills and their impact within the business.

But if there’s no room or opportunity to do so, it’s only a matter of time before they start to look outside the company for the growth they seek.  

What you can do:

If you can find out what your people want, and cross-pollinate it with what your business needs, your company and your people can grow together.

•         Create a dialogue with your people to learn what growth opportunities interest them (it             might be leadership, or skills development, or changing departments – you won’t know u         until you ask).
•         Assess what roles and the types of leaders your business needs as it grows. How can you           match your people (and their unique growth desires) with what the business needs?
•         Reflect on how you currently support professional growth as a company. Where can you           better nurture and support proactively – rather than reactively?
•         Co-create individual growth plans with your people. Creating these together will give your         employees a sense of ownership, autonomy, and opportunity.

4. You make team culture decisions based on poor-performers

If you’re basing decisions around your poorest performers – you’re reacting, not leading. In fact, you are letting the poor performers drive your focus and effort. There are good, well-established HR practices to manage such situations. From a leadership perspective, focus on what is working.

What you can do:

•        Help your leaders to shift their mindset (and your own) to move from focusing on what’s            not working (i.e. the few), to what is working (i.e. the many, who put their heart into the              work).
•        Commit to a new decision-making framework: build your skills for in-the-moment                    reflection to avoid acting in fear (i.e. fear of upsetting a poor-performer) to acting with                courage (i.e. to nourish the many good workers you have).

5. You’re lacking a culture of celebrating wins regularly (i.e. recognition and reward)

Culture comes down to consistency. How often do you celebrate wins? Do you recognise employees regularly? Is hard work incentivised – and do you provide regular rewards for it?

Culture also comes down to what feels like default – when people comment ‘It’s the ways things are done around here’.

What you can do:

•        Get your leaders onboard with the 1:4 feedback model - for every 1 piece of critical                    feedback, make room for 4 instances of positive feedback. This balance creates deeper              trust between leaders and reports and results in higher receptivity when critical feedback is        given.
•        Run a workshop with your people to ask how everyone likes to celebrate success. This will        spark some good ideas for company-wide celebration activities.
•        Leaders can ask direct reports on an individual level how they like to be recognised.
•        Build momentum and keep up the consistency: there might be a few grumbles early on              but stay agile and tweak as you go – commitment and consistency will win the grumblers          over eventually. 

Conclusion

At Thryve, we get the people and the customer side of strategy. What we do is co-create with business owners and leaders engaging processes to rethink and redesign your strategy for success.

Our work with business owners, leaders, and teams is all about achieving intentional, sustainable, and abundant growth.

If any of the above ideas spark your interest –feel free to reach out.  My name is Dan Wright, and I’m the founder of Thryve Connection.

Find out more about what we do, and the way we can support you in developing and actioning your people strategy at thryve.net.au