Here are 10 ideas to help you improve the profitability of your business through your people.

1. Build a stimulating and vibrant working environment. A diverse workplace is a profitable workplace. Embrace the many different skills, backgrounds, experiences and attitudes of your staff and direct these to best effect
2. Focus on training and personal improvement. Make sure every member of you team is given the opportunity to reach their full potential by offering them the training and development they need, in technical and soft skills.
3. Reward and recognise. By recognising and incentivising staff that reach targets or produce a consistently high quality of work, you will encourage them to strive even harder.
4. Handle difficult situations quickly. Do not let disciplinary or incapability issues turn into problems. Deal with them in a responsive and positive way to reduce the chances of them happening again.
5. Have a good recruitment and induction process. Make sure that you always recruit the best person for the job and that they perform to the level you require from day one.
6. Keep up to date with legislation. This is a key aspect in treating your employees fairly and also a way to constantly building best practice into your people management procedures.
7. Communicate, communicate, communicate.   Keep your staff informed about how the business is doing. What can they do to help? How does their job fit into the bigger picture of the organisation? This will ensure your employees feel valued, engaged and focussed on the success of the company.
8. Carry out succession planning. Don’t just rely on the skills and experience of long-standing members of staff but put time and effort into training and mentoring programmes that develop the skills and abilities of younger members of the team. This way you ensure success for the long term and continuity of service for your customers.
9. Look closely at team dynamics. What teams are working well and how can this be replicated across the business? Look for gaps in team dynamics and skills sets that can affect morale development and work to actively improve them.
10. Be a good boss. Your behaviour sets the tone for how you expect others to behave. Invest time in working on your own management style and take a top-down approach to improving performance rather than relying on the skills of those around you.

We’ll talk more about how to be a great boss in this blog in a couple of week’s time.

In the meantime, what do you do to improve profitability of your business through your people? Leave a comment here to share your tips.