To succeed in business, you should give due attention to both your workload and the development of your staff. Balancing these two necessities can be difficult. However, there are a few tips that will help you accomplish both and reap their benefits. Here’s how you can balance your IT workload and develop your staff.
Budget Your Time
The first thing you need to do when your workload with staff development is to budget your time. Just as you meet each quarter to go over your financial budget, you should also go over your time. You can budget your time by reviewing any IT projects coming up and estimating how much time and manpower they will take. Once you’ve identified excess time, use that to schedule other necessary goals such as staff development.
It’s important to understand that your time budget may not always be concrete. Just as problems come up financially, a specific project may take more time than you expected. That’s okay. Stay flexible and work in your staff development where you can. The time budget simply helps keep development at the forefront of your mind and a priority on the schedule.
Schedule Development
Naturally following the previous point, schedule your staff development. Just as you schedule projects and assignments, you should put staff development on your calendar. If you just wait until everyone is standing around with free time, you’ll probably never get started. Make staff development a required and frequent part of your company.
You can do this by looking ahead to what possible conferences to which you could send your staff. Research any key speakers who may be scheduled to be in your area and consider having them in to teach a seminar are your business. Assign your employees homework (in the office) or online courses to complete in between projects or on slow days.
Scheduling staff development and making it a frequent and normal part of your company helps your team constantly grow. After some time, it will become a part of your work culture and your employees may even get excited about “development days”.
Multi-Task
Perhaps the most productive way to develop your IT staff is to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Look for ways to develop your team while accomplishing projects and assignments.
One way companies do this is by allowing employees to work with management to identify problem areas within their departments and create workable solutions. This develops the team’s ability to work through problems while simultaneously eliminating real problems within the company. In essence, it grows employees while improving the company.
Each company is different, but use your employees to address problems. They are your most valuable asset. Give them opportunities to learn and develop their abilities within your company. This helps them better represent your company when they deal with problems for clients.
Developing your staff is crucial to the success of your company. Employees want to learn and grow, especially younger generations. 87% of millennials say that development is important to them in their job. This is because they understand that development is the key to furthering their careers. Developing your team could just be the key to your company’s longevity.
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At TechBridge, our goal is to bridge the gap between business and employee, matching qualified workers with the companies who need them. If you have any further questions or you’re interested in our staffing and recruiting process, contact us today!
