Investing in your employees learning and development and allowing them to flourish, will enhance your workforce’s engagement, productivity and team loyalty. Sylvia Baldock gives 10 important tips on how to nurture your talented team for the best results.

1. People have natural skills and talents and will excel in particular roles and tasks whilst sometimes struggling in other areas. It’s therefore really important to understand the inherent skills of each employee and to ensure they are spending the majority of their time utilising those skills. When they are playing to their strengths, they can immediately see where they are making a difference and area therefore much more motivate and effective.

2. Provide regular training to enhance their natural skills and keep them at the top of their game rather than always training people in their area of weakness. Encourage them to value and utilise the complementary skills of their colleagues to manage the tasks they are less effective in.

3. Employees want to feel valued within the company. Make sure you give praise where praise is due and publicise their success to the rest of the team. This will build employee loyalty and reduce the likelihood of them talking to your competitors about job opportunities.

4. If someone is particularly talented in a certain area, ask them to come up with some proposals for expansion and new business ideas and give them an opportunity to utilise their talent and reap the benefits.

5. Have quarterly personal meetings and an annual review with all your staff to identify their strengths and weaknesses and set personal targets. Use the time to also seek their opinion and feedback on the business to ensure workplace satisfaction.

6. Always be willing to listen to and take on board suggestions and be willing to accept change. Something you think is working really well may not be working for your entire workforce and it may be that they are more in touch with the operational side of the business and can therefore come up with some innovative ideas.

7. Identify your employees’ personal goals. Are they looking for promotion or are they happy to carry on with their current job title. By identifying their intentions from the outset, you can work with them to develop their career path and keep engagement high.

8. Your personal presence is extremely important, particularly as you are a role model and people will follow your lead. Therefore, set a high standard in terms of your appearance and the way you communicate on a social and work level in everything from small talk to running meetings and giving decisive instructions.

9. Having a regular update email or staff information board which is visible to everyone keeps people in the loop about the business and the industry field. This can provide a topic of conversation as well as the feeling of company unity.

10. Be as flexible as possible with regards to your team’s personal needs. If someone needs to occasionally work from home, go to a doctor’s appointment or leave early, don’t frown and complain. Make them feel you trust them implicitly to get the job done and that you understand they have outside needs too. They will feel valued and cared for.

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Sylvia Baldock is a Personal Presence and Team Dynamics specialist, Talent Dynamics Consultant and trainer, author, public speaker and a business/personal coach. Well qualified to comment on businesses, Sylvia also runs several networking groups, is a member of the Professional Speaking Association and the Federation of Small Businesses, is a Growth Accelerator approved training provider, and is a sought after speaker who works closely with the NHS.

www.sylviabaldock.com