Why people should want to work for your company and what benefits you offer employees are important questions your businesses must address if you are to recruit and retain hard-working employees.
One way of answering these questions is by conducting a SWOT analysis – an in-depth look into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of existing processes within your business.
Ultimately, this can determine if you are employing the right people to help you remain competitive throughout your industry.
Strengths
The start of the SWOT process should focus on the strengths of your workforce, identifying your key drivers and positions within the organisation.
These are likely to have the most influence on your performance – such roles can include management and executive positions. Following this, you can start to evaluate the strengths of the workforce by asking certain questions.
Who are the strongest members within your team and what skills do they excel at? Do you have the best possible people within major roles, such as administration and finance?
Weaknesses
After identifying the strengths of your employees, you can begin to analyse some of the main weaknesses that are potentially affecting the performance of your employees.
The easiest way to do this would be to examine who are the weakest performers and why – is it possible they could be better suited to a different branch within the company or is there something you could do to improve their working conditions?
A high turnover of staff can indicate you are somehow failing your staff; gather feedback on what went wrong and how you can improve for the future – this can be very disruptive and consistent training schedules are costly.
Opportunities
For this part, you’ll want to focus on how to make sure you acquire skilled workers and then retain these individuals. Before embarking on your hiring process, you’ll need to identify what opportunities will relate to achieving these goals.
Consider how you’ll market new roles and where would attract the most qualified talent – who can you contact? Is it possible to network via social media platforms? Is there potential for current employees to refer potential candidates?
Next, and more importantly, is considering how you can put forward opportunities for current employees to increase retention and engagement.
Employees expect to be treated respectfully and progression is something that should be openly and continuously discussed during one-to-one sessions.
Try to create a culture that invites employees to participate in social projects both inside and outside of work hours. Spend time and money investing in training and career development, which will in turn improve productivity.
Implementing these changes can be costly for small businesses, especially for those that are using all of their reserves to fund growth. In light of this, a quick business loan could offer a faster alternative for new strategies to be put in place that can enhance employee engagement.
Threats
The final element of the SWOT process is to review any potential threats associated with your employees’ performance. The most obvious threat would be your competitors hiring your most talented workers, so it is vital you ensure you find solutions to retain these employees.
Identify who your main competitors are and what they offer their workers in terms of compensation packages, sick leave and paid time off – the demand for employees is now very high and workers will move to where they are treated best.
Offering incentives and commission when your employees go above and beyond will significantly improve their performance in the long run.
Once you’ve finished your SWOT analysis, you should have a clear idea of how to attain a competitive edge in the industry by building an efficient workforce. Whilst it may take time, development is crucial for businesses when faced with changes and threats on a daily basis.
