As recruiters, we’ve focused a lot of how you can attract, hire and induct talent in this current time, but what about your existing team?
How do you ensure you continue their development and that their learning curve isn’t ‘paused’ for the next (insert your best guess!) however long?
During this time there is probably more (free of charge!) development available to you and your teams than there ever has been. So many fantastic experts are offering their time and services for no cost – make the most of this!
At Vertical Advantage, we are offering interview/ CV advice and are also giving time to clients to help them resource plan and are offering all sorts of benchmarking and support (including how to hire WITHOUT using recruitment agencies).
There’s plenty of other companies and experts doing the same – don’t be shy to take them up on their offer – it’s worth making the most of their amazing expertise whilst you can – here is a site we highly recommend; https://register.gotowebinar.com
Other practical steps you can take to continue your progression and development;
1. Share information virtually
Set up Slack/Teams channels so it is easy for people to find information or read about other people’s experiences.
Often in a sales environment, people assimilate information from those around them – at least certainly in our office when someone sat nearby has a situation (or makes a mistake – we do make them!) we all learn from it.
As we are a close-knit team, we all go through this process together and there is a shared learning experience for all of us.
To ensure we keep this, we’ve proactively made a point of ‘shouting’ (virtually) about these scenarios to ensure other team members are aware of what is going on. This has been invaluable to keep us together as a team, but also to ensure we are sharing best practises and learning together.
2. Listen to external advice
Although it’s a unique external cause, we have seen markets dip a couple of times in our lifetimes and it’s a perfect time for people who have experienced this before to share what they have learned.
What did they have to adapt? What made the biggest impact? What resource did they need?
We’re lucky to have a NED (Non – Exec Director) who is doing a virtual session with the team to talk about what he feels we should be doing to make the most of this time.
3. Online courses
What online courses are available that would be relevant for you/ your team?
When recently talking with a PR candidate, they told me they were completing a crisis comms management course online over the weekend so they could upskill and keep up with the demands of their current role. This is a great way to learn, and these are often interactive and enjoyable sessions.
4. Review development plans and objectives
With people at home, it’s a great time to pull out development plans and objectives that have been set and review them.
Are they still SMART in the current climate?
If not, take time to talk to your team members about what needs to be adjusted in order for them to succeed and work with them to create new goals.
For more help on setting SMART objectives see https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm
We’re aiming to help our communities as much as we can.
Sure, we’ve got a business to run and generally speaking we make our money from placing candidates but that’s only going to be with businesses that really want/need to hire so there’s little sense in trying to force a square peg (or NAM!) into a round hole. (can we split this sentence?)
We’re providing market updates, content and commentary on a near-daily basis to those who are interested in receiving it.
So if you would like to keep up to date please take a look at our blog for more content.
