Inspire Career Confidence

The Access HR Team | 1 Mar 2007 12:34 AM

An employee who has any concern about their future at a company is unlikely to perform effectively or be appropriately focused on their job. These jitters can be spread to other members of the workforce and lead to poor morale and a drop-off in performance, having an adverse effect on your company. Instilling career confidence is crucial to any organization that wants to attract and retain quality staff in an increasingly competitive recruitment marketplace.

The Five Steps To Inspiring Career Confidence:

Assess Your Methods

Examine the internal processes and procedures in areas such as recruitment, appraisal and development. These need to be fair, involving the correct people in the decision making process and any claims made about how you operate need to be able to backed up with factual information.

Build Confidence

Strengthening the relationship between management and employees helps build confidence among the workforce. One approach is to listen to what your employees want and act on what you hear. If employees feel that their opinions are being heard by their employer a future is more visible within the organization.

Be Open and Honest

Spreading information on a need-to-know basis risks breeding both rumour and insecurity, and losing the workforce’s trust. For example if your company is going through a restructuring program, communicate this openly and honestly with your employees. Once you have unveiled the changes, keep the communication channels open and try to respond to any questions within 24hours – don’t falsify the issue or try to dodge any questions.

Take a Holistic View

Any measures that you put in place must instill career confidence and take into account the broad spectrum of the workforce. These measures should be as relevant for part time and flexible workers and employees who have chosen to remain as they are for new recruits and those who want to develop their careers.

Source: HR Resource Magazine - August 2006