Helping your Stars Win

Employees who have gaps in their knowledge and skills aren’t able to do the job as well as managers need them to. Managers want their employees to provide value and impact as soon as possible. The key is helping them get up-to-speed more quickly. Here are some key ways managers can help their employees succeed.

1. Provide Mentoring
You want your employee to have mentorship from the manager or other leaders inside the firm. These mentors can provide specific information and guidance to help employees do their jobs better and improve their overall performance and productivity

2. Find Training Opportunities
Training is important to employee development because it helps them improve skills and gain deeper knowledge in the areas that might be lacking. When selecting a training program, consider the areas that need the most development and choose what will best help achieve the desired end result.

3. Create On-the-job development
Sit down with your manager and discuss what can be done to learn and grow. Find projects, activities, group involvement and responsibilities that can be added to the current position to help with growth and development.

4. Identifying the skills that need development
Once the skills have been identified, you’ll want to get the employee’s buy-in and commitment to improve. An obvious place for this to happen is during the employee’s quarterly or annual performance review. This is also an opportunity to set specific goals. Also, this sets the stage for monitoring and documenting their improvement (at their next review).

5. Provide honest feedback
A high degree of feedback will directly improve the effectiveness of an employee. The constant feedback will help make incremental changes in behavior and skill level.

6. Provide clear expectations and steps for success
An employee needs to know the expectations of their manager and what is important for them to be working on to improve their overall skill level and abilities.

7. Celebrate their successes
This will not only encourage further development, it will help to inspire others in the work group to develop their skills.