The other day we were at a potential client's office to spar about implementing Treams. We explained that Treams is a platform where employees can grow and perform at their best, to which one employee said, "I don't want to move up at all. I don't want to become a manager." And we also encounter this question more and more often with clients. However, there is so much more to growth than becoming a manager. Growth doesn't always have to mean moving vertically; we believe you can grow in multiple directions.
Many people are still trained with the idea that they have to grow up . Whereas it used to be quite normal that if you had the qualities, you became a manager or director after a certain amount of time, today that is really a thing of the past. Nowadays there is so much more growth than becoming a manager. For example, you can become a specialist in a particular field, become a consultant or improve your internal processes. But this requires a different approach from organizations, managers and the HR team. But how do you facilitate this and make your employees aware of it? You have to think differently about growth in order to offer people a development perspective. We explain it using an example:
To make it easy, let's take a shoe store as an example. This shoe store belongs to a large chain. Each store has an employee who is responsible for the appearance of the store. You can direct that person from the top down and tell them exactly how the windows should look or tell them how much sales they should make per month. But it can also be done differently.
Tip #1: See your employees much more as entrepreneurs.
After all, they know best what kind of crowd comes into their store, and so they know much better what the customer wants. So you can tell employees what a window display should look like, but you can also let them do it themselves. Give employees more responsibilities, which is one of the most important ways to get people to grow and develop. Think carefully about how you fill the roles. Of course, it has to be within the framework of your organization. Of course there are always rules that an organization has, think that the stores have to be clean or that the same colors are always used. But a lot is possible within those frameworks.
Tip 2: Learn from each other and focus on qualities
All shoe stores that fall under the same chain should naturally do the same things in some way. After all, it would be weird if store A does something completely different from store B. Look for the talents of your employees and have those employees train others. For example, some shop managers are very good at personal shopping, guiding customers one-on-one. Where you used to have an academy to train these people, you could have your best five shop managers in the Netherlands train other people in those skills. By doing so, you recognize and appreciate the five people who are very good at it. Besides, employees are more likely to take something from other shop managers than from trainers; after all, they do it every day, too. You don't have to hire trainers and you immediately build a mutual community so that employees know how to find each other. A win-win situation. Other shop managers are, for example, very good at recruitment and always know how to find the best people or they have a great way of conducting their interviews. They can then train others in this. In this way you offer employees a lot of perspective, even though it is not upwards. Involve employees, learn from each other and see who is good at what. This can be done in various ways, but it requires a different, new approach. How can you use your employees optimally?
Tip 3: Reward across the board
Besides putting the right people in the right place, giving recognition and engaging employees, pay is also an important element. In the past, for example, if you were a manager, you got a better salary, and that was often the reason people wanted to become managers. For example, you could also give the best professionals a better salary. Don't just reward the people who step up, make sure you reward your best people. Is there no room within the organization for salary increases? Then reward them in other ways. Go away for a day or reward them in the form of something sweet.
Qualities of people
In tip 2, we talked about focusing on qualities of your employees. But how do you find out what these qualities are? There are several ways to do that. As a manager, you obviously need to look around you, but to help you do this, you can get this insight, for example, by collecting 360-degree feedback. With this you can see what someone's talents are and you can see who performs what. Make sure you know the organization inside out, work much more like a network organization and make sure you look at your people differently. Don't just look at who could become manager later, but also: who is good at what and where can that person be all-important in this organization.
So, how can you give people a development perspective in a different way? See them as entrepreneurs and give them more responsibilities, let employees learn from each other, who is good at what and what can that person do for the organization, and reward across the board. When you focus on the good, the good gets better. Good luck!