Your workforce is arguably your most valuable asset. It’s been argued that your employees are even more important than customers, as they are what keep the gears of your company running. This is especially true when your business has reached a point where it’s relatively successful and ripe for growth.
Losing customers is unfortunate, yes, but you can learn from your mistakes and move on. You can even win back previously dissatisfied customers with good enough customer service. But a poor workforce is far more difficult to move on from, and can potentially destroy a company. Why?
The Risks of a Poor Workforce
If your business has reached the point where it has plenty of work, it’s also reached a critical point with regards to the workplace environment. Two major issues can crop up when it comes to employees. Both of these can have dire consequences for your company.
An Unhappy Workforce
First, your employees may be dissatisfied. This impacts their work, as they are less interested in providing the best service. Even worse, they might just leave. An employee leaving every now and then isn’t the end of the world. People change careers for all kinds of reasons, it’s a natural part of life.
However, if your employees leave because they’re unhappy with their jobs and are trying to escape a toxic workplace, you have a problem. Not only will you be constantly losing good people, but it will become harder and harder to replace your employees as your business develops a poor reputation for employee retention.
While all this disruption goes on, productivity suffers even more. Once you’ve reached a point where you can’t hire skilled workers, then you will be unable to serve your customers. You can’t do everything yourself.
An Unskilled Workforce
You might be the best boss in the world with the happiest workforce imaginable, but your employees do need to be qualified for the work that you’ve hired them to do. Otherwise, your product or service will be of poor quality, which customers will notice.
Not only will you lose money (and reputation) through hemorrhaging customers, but you will also lose money in the workplace. Unqualified and poorly managed employees won’t be able to work efficiently, losing more time and resources than they need to. Yes, you can train workers up, but you should be balanced with this approach.
An unskilled workforce can arise in a few ways. It could be related to a previously toxic work environment, and you don’t have any good hiring options left. It could be because you don’t offer competitive salaries and aim for cheaper employees, who are rarely as skilled. Or, it could simply be down to a poor hiring strategy.
Hiring Strategies and Solutions
Hiring the right people is a huge component of developing an effective workforce. But you might need help to find them. Rather than hiring people on a purely as-needed basis, you should develop a hiring strategy that will help you to find the right candidates for both the short and long-term development of your company. Horsefly Analytics uses a discipline known as “talent analytics” to help you to develop an effective strategy.
