People are at the heart of a franchise business, and there is a continual emphasis on building good relationships with franchisees. But what about the employees in a franchise chain?
A poll has found that 51 percent of surveyed employees across the Australian workforce believe their manager doesn’t care about career development.
Yet lack of career development has been cited as the number one reason for resignations.
In the poll of 2043 Australians, 22 percent said their manager champions their career development. The remaining 27 percent said managers weren’t uncaring but they needed to be pushed.
Nick Deligiannis, managing director of Hays in Australia & New Zealand, said “This is a wasted opportunity for employers, who know that offering career development is an important retention tool.
“We know a lack of career development is a top reason why people look for a new job, so why don’t bosses champion it and sit down with their staff to map out a career development plan?
“Career development doesn’t necessarily mean a promotion – although it certainly can. And not everyone actually wants a promotion. That’s why it’s so important to sit down one-on-one with people to find out what their career development goals are,” he said.
9 ways to develop your staff
1. Map out a career path and include the objectives and skills that must be achieved or developed in order to achieve each promotion.
2. Find stretch opportunities. Look for tasks or projects slightly beyond an employee’s current skill or knowledge level in order to ‘stretch’ and improve capabilities through hands-on learning and experience. Match the skills and capabilities of each task to those identified in the career map.
3. Create projects for employees to develop expertise in a certain area. Those who want to develop their people management skills can start by managing a project team. It’s a good idea to start with smaller short-term projects then work up from there.
4. Delegate training. This is another opportunity to develop skills that will be useful when it comes time to manage a team.
5. One-on-one coaching can be directed to many different scenarios, from developing new skills to correcting performance in a particular area.
6. Encourage mentoring. This is an informal approach to learning a range of information, from best practice and damage control to understanding why reports are written in a particular way or who to contact for certain information. Technical knowledge can also be passed on this way.
7. Provide formal training. There are times when skills may need to be developed that do not already exist within an organisation. Perhaps formal training is required?
8. Jobs should be shared internally with all staff to give employees the opportunity to apply for upcoming roles.
9. Track progress. There should be a process in place to track and review development regularly (not only in annual reviews) to ensure you are investing your time in actions that make a real difference.
