In these uncertain times, you may find yourself in the midst of an HR budget freeze. But you still need to engage your staff, so that once the economy is back in growth mode, they'll stick with you. Use these no-cost/low-cost ideas for encouraging growth, in-lieu of a formal promotion.
We all know it. The lack of available career moves has become a common topic of conversation. We hear the word ‘redundancy' more often than ‘promotion' these days!
But are your employees contributing all they can to your organisation - or are they just keeping a seat warm? Are your employees just treading water, and waiting for the recession to move to the job they really want to be doing?
It is so important not to let the good ones slip away! Engaging employees, and finding creative and relatively low-cost options for keeping your most talented employees, is still as critical as ever. After all, it is your talent that will keep you going through even the toughest of times, because they work hard, smart and align themselves to the goals and interests of the organisation.
Keep them engaged and motivated - offer a promotion proxy:
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Personal engagement plans
High value employees who are promotion-focused need to be communicated with regularly by their manager. A 'Personal engagement plan' will help cement a plan for the high-value employee long into the future, will open up regular conversations to address changing employee needs and facilitate the manager being able to give the employee what they want - within reason, and without the guess work.
- Mentoring
A more experienced person works with your talented individual in order to develop them generally, or specifically, in an area. This will often open more doors for them and get them in front of a more senior crowd.
- Projects
The opportunity to work across a more varied group of people or areas of the business, where they take a senior responsibility for managing and communicating a project, ideally outside their usual role or level of responsibility.
- Second-in-charge status
Whether when the manager is on-leave or out of the office, or as an on-going recognition, this person is known as the second-in-charge and privy to a greater level of information and responsibility than others in a similar role. This does not necessarily require an elevated salary.
- Highly sought-after learning and development
The kinds of things that the rest of the team drool over. Don't limit this just to training - this could also be formal education or less-formal development.
- Secondments
Working across another team / division / geography for a specified period of time in order to gain more exposure and to further develop skills. This will increase the number of threads tying this person to your organisation.
- Coaching
A manager working with this person to develop a particular skill in-line with that person's goals and the organisational goals. This will help them be more of an independent thinker and give them the opportunity to contribute and communicate more.
With these ideas being largely no-cost/low-cost, why wouldn't you take the time to offer a promotion proxy to each of your most talented employees?