4 Strategies to Level Up Your Business

This is a guest post from Jori Hamilton (see her bio below) – thanks Jori!

Business owners justifiably tend to focus on external drivers for their business – things like marketing, sales, customer service. But there are also key INTERNAL areas that need attention as well. Your business performs well, but there is always room for improvement. With the right internal strategies in place, your company can thrive today, tomorrow, and long into the future.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all internal business strategy that delivers long-term results. Rather, your company must develop, execute, and evaluate myriad strategies across its operations. In doing so, you can raise the bar for your company. You can also position your business as an industry leader.

Now, let’s look at four strategies that can help your business level up.

1. Talent Recruitment

How you identify and attract talent can have far-flung effects on your company. The top businesses — regardless of size or sector — have a plan to recruit talent. Each of these companies executes its talent recruitment plan with precision and care. It also reviews talent recruitment data and generates insights from it. That way, the business can identify its talent recruitment strengths and weaknesses and discover ways to transform any weaknesses into strengths.

Develop a talent recruitment strategy for roles across your business. Be proactive as you implement your strategy and seek out talent from around the world. Track your progress as you execute your strategy. And address any talent recruitment roadblocks you identify before they escalate.

Furthermore, establish clear requirements for business roles. For instance, if you want to hire a job candidate who holds an MBA, it pays to know the differences between executive and standard varieties. In this scenario, you can craft a job posting that highlights if a candidate requires an executive MBA, which is geared toward workers who already have management experience. As a result, you can ensure candidates understand what type of MBA is necessary for a particular job. From here, you can narrow your search for candidates and identify applicants who are well-equipped to perform the duties associated with this role.

2. Onboarding

Hiring is just the beginning, it’s just as important to focus on onboarding those great new hires. The onboarding process can play a key role in your company’s ability to add quality professionals. If your onboarding process is straightforward and seamless, you can help new employees thrive as soon as they accept a role with your business. Comparatively, if your onboarding process is disorganized and complicated, a new hire may quickly regret their decision to join your company.

Prioritize your onboarding strategy and use all of the tools at your disposal to add exceptional job candidates to your team. Oftentimes, it helps to build an onboarding strategy that encompasses the following stages:

1. Pre-Onboarding: Requires new hires to complete paperwork leading up to their first day at your company.
2. First Day: Involves an orientation and getting a new hire up to speed on your company’s culture and day-to-day processes and activities.  
3. Role-Specific Training: Consists of training intended for a new hire to hit the ground running in their role with your business.
4. Transition: Includes offering tips, support, and guidance to ensure all of a new hire’s onboarding needs are met.

Along with the aforementioned stages, it helps to leverage an onboarding strategy that includes your existing personnel. You can schedule times for a new hire to meet with your current personnel and learn from them. The new hire can use these opportunities to share their concerns and questions with your employees and gain insights into what it is like to work at your company. From here, the new hire can feel more comfortable than ever before with their coworkers.

3. Employee Wellness

The best businesses want their employees to feel and perform their best. Therefore, they often provide their employees with healthcare benefits and encourage these workers to take advantage of them. On the other hand, employee wellness sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of daily work activities. In the worst-case scenario, workers ignore their overall health, resulting in exhaustion and burnout.

You need an employee wellness strategy that shows your employees you value their physical and mental wellbeing. To develop this strategy, learn from your workers. You can conduct employee questionnaires and surveys and host brainstorming sessions. Then, you can determine the best course of action to implement an employee wellness program that meets the needs of your workforce.

In addition to crafting a wellness program, teach your employees about the importance of developing and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Provide your employees with resources to show them how to take care of themselves both at work and outside of it. Moreover, encourage your workers to come forward if they feel their work is becoming too much to handle.

Offer additional support to your remote workers as well. Working remotely can put a major strain on an employee’s mental health. But, you can help your remote workers minimize stress and stay calm, cool, and collected. As a result, you can ensure that these employees can feel and perform at peak levels, from any location, at any time. Here’s a helpful resource to give you some ideas on helping with Mental Health challenges from Everyday Health. And here’s another one on dealing with Stress at Work.

4. Worker Satisfaction

Business owners wants employees to take pride in their work. However, it can be tough to tell if your workers are comfortable with your business. And if you are not careful, employees may leave your business frequently. This can damage your company’s brand reputation. It can hinder your ability to recruit and retain talent going forward, too.

Learn the ins and outs of worker satisfaction. Think about your workers and what makes them happy. You can then provide them with benefits that motivate and inspire them to give their all. For instance, you can offer flexible work schedules, student loan pay-downs, and other benefits your industry rivals may struggle to match. You can even offer food delivery discounts and other perks to satisfy your remote workers.

Be persistent as you evaluate your worker satisfaction strategy. Competition for talent remains fierce, and you need to do everything you can to stay ahead of your rivals. If you conduct worker satisfaction assessments, you can find out how your employees feel about your business and the benefits it offers. You can then use employee feedback and insights to verify your worker satisfaction strategy delivers the optimal results.

Level Up Your Business

There is no need to wait any longer to level up your business. Thanks to the aforementioned business strategies, your company can take the next step forward. These strategies can help your company fine-tune its operations and discover ways to improve every day. Start using these strategies today, and you can position your company for immediate and long-lasting success.

Jori Hamilton is an experienced writer residing in the Northwestern U.S. She covers a wide range of subjects but takes a particular interest in covering topics related to business productivity, marketing strategies, and HR solutions. To learn more about Jori, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach