Chances are your office is pretty slow right now, as coworkers wrap up their summer vacations and your vendors and clients have automated “I will be out of the office until…” messages on their e-mail. If you do business with European companies, it’s even harder to find anyone at their desk.
Not to spoil your summer idyls, but you know things are going to get really busy in just a few weeks as the workplace merges with the school year.
Back-to-school time doesn’t have to mean drudgery, especially if your organization approaches September with an eye on individual and team development. There’s a good case to be made for investing in employee development for employee satisfaction. Workers of all generations appreciate development initiatives that make their jobs more productive and fulfilling. In fact, understanding generational differences is part of many organizations’ training interventions.
Career development and job satisfaction are important to today’s employees. Workers often leave their current employer for opportunities to move up and make more money. Yet, 76% of employees say they’d prefer to grow at their current company.
—7 Things Great Leaders Do to Keep Employees Happy, Study Says by Marla Tabaka in Forbes
Where to start? Assessments and feedback.
Team development or any training engagement doesn’t have to be drawn out. You probably have some short-term objectives or looming changes that could go more smoothly with better group dynamics. Does everyone have the roles best suited for them? Is interpersonal communication as good as it can be? Is everyone engaged and participating positively?
Personality assessments help you or your consultants get a snapshot of where your people are on a developmental scale. They can quickly reveal motivational mis-matches. And they provide an objective reflection of individual behaviors that can be moderated or encouraged to optimize team performance.
Today’s assessments are mostly web-based and can be quickly deployed. Even 360 assessments involving multiple raters can be completed in a week or two for
entire group.
One-on-one feedback to present assessment findings–which is absolutely vital and integral to the assessment process–cannot be automated and it requires a trained and certified professionals. But once everyone gets their feedback, the group is far better prepared to learn as a team, whether its soft skills or technical skills for the specific job tasks.
Jamesson Solutions sells a variety of assessments and we can also advise on just about any personality profile you might want to consider.