As a business owner, it’s essential to have the right people power behind the brand that will execute your vision. We’re at a unique time here in Australia with the war on talent at its most competitive – businesses and organisations are seeking skilled employees with significant gaps to fill, but they don’t always attract the talent they need. Investing in your employees can seem like a “nice to do but not a need”, but this may mean you lose out on fantastic talent.

Beyond this, we are seeing high attrition rates, with employees coming in and out like a revolving door – but what does this mean for the average business owner? If you could describe your ideal employee, it’s likely you’d have the words “hardworking” “loyal” “adaptable” and “multi-skilled” as part of your adjective list, but if every business is looking to hire the same type of person, how do you maintain a competitive edge?

Let’s take a look at the 3 ways you can draw the right talent to your business, ensuring you reach your business goals and develop a team that can continue to drive your brand forward.

Investing in your employees

An old saying goes like this, “If you invest in training your employees, they might leave and move on to a new employer – but if you don’t train them, they’ll stay.” In other words, the times of being concerned about over-skilling your employees are long gone, and professional development should become a mainstay of every business, no matter what size. Especially when you may work with contractors, an ex-employee who is on great terms with you may be a great asset to work with you in the future and, importantly, will further your brand reputation in the market as an employer of choice.

While larger organisations can afford extensive training and development programs, this doesn’t mean your small or medium-sized business needs to hold off the opportunity to invest in your people. This process can and should begin at the point of hiring, asking what kinds of development goals or learning opportunities an individual may be looking for and seeing how you can accommodate this. Of course, this shouldn’t get in the way of your day-to-day operations, but employees today, especially millennials and the generations below, are looking to work for bosses that see them as more than just a “workers”.

Investing in staff doesn’t have to be online training programs or conferences, it might be taking an interest in the passions and aspirations of your team beyond their current role, asking where they’d like to work within the business long-term and seeing how you can facilitate this.

Meaningful work

Employees are also seeking to work for companies where they feel they can make a difference, where their opinions and ideas are heard and where they can make an impact in a meaningful way. Again, not every business will be mature enough to become a BCorp, for example, or have extensive philanthropic efforts in place, but you can offer ways for your team to support one another in a “leader as coach” method or offer paid time off for your staff to volunteer at an organisation of their choice. It doesn’t have to be extensive, costly or time-consuming, but allowing and investing in your employees to feel they are contributing to a bigger picture of “the greater good” can go a long way in employee loyalty and a sense of community in the workplace.

For some employees, meaningful work may also offer them the chance to be the designer of their own career, with stretch-assignment opportunities and a chance to learn about different business areas that interest them. This all helps to create a sense of everyone on the team thinking and operating as a business owner, which helps keep an open dialogue and a sense of responsibility for the long-term well-being and prosperity of the business.

Flexibility

Whether you like it or not, the 5-day-in-office structure with employees bound to their desks has dissolved since Covid. Instead of seeing this as a negative, look at this as a chance to bring employees together for important meetings and brainstorming, and working from home as a time for focused work “in the flow”.

Now, for retail careers or service-based businesses, you won’t have the opportunity to let staff work from home (it just can’t happen!), but flexibility might mean allowing flexible leave, generous paid sick leave or other chances for employees to make their schedule work for them. The truth is, giving employees a sense of control over how they work doesn’t lead to being taken advantage of; in fact, the opposite is true – you’ll find more reliable and considerate staff working with you because of it, and it’s just another way of investing in your employees.

Implementing these steps and investing in your employees will enable your business to grow the team that it requires to be at its best and make a compelling case for those seeking a new workplace to join you – as a business leader, this is what it takes to remain competitive.