One of the highest priorities in my Strategic Business Plan was to make those employees who wished to be trained a marketable asset. In saying this, I also initiated a highly effective communication policy which encouraged both skilled and unskilled people to aspire to a multi-skill classification.
I have always said that people don’t come and stand at a machine getting dirty with no perceived future because they want to, it’s because they have to and perhaps haven’t had the opportunities of others. My goal was to offer them a future and purpose.
Accordingly, I placed a huge amount of confidence in my HR management department knowing that I couldn’t build a good and effective team at all levels of the business without a great Human Resource capability.
The HR team helped me encourage employees to not only work according to their potential but to also exceed these by undertaking the most appropriate training programmes.
It was also my philosophy, that no one person had the same training needs as others and with this in mind I would concentrate on eliminating any weaknesses which would complement their strengths.
For every existing employee and new employee we instituted simple but effective psychological appraisal testing which would identify the areas where training would rapidly raise them to be an extraordinary contributor to the business. It would also point up the direction they could go to realise their full potential.
I was extremely privileged to work alongside the best HR manager in Australia at the time which gave me a sense of confidence in the direction we were taking all employees.
Tell tale outcomes of our programmes were a labour turnover of virtually 0%, and an absentee rate of just 2.5%. The fact that employees considered the business as their own also saw the company go five (5) years without any lost time injuries. The company was also certified as ‘Best Practice’ under the Federal Governments inaugural Best Practice Programme.
All because we took the time to make every employee a marketable asset and placed such a high importance on our HR department.