Developing talent from within

Five key factors for developing talent from within

There’s a lot of talk about unicorn employees – those rare and valuable team members who have a great attitude, are passionate about their work, are an asset to any team, and continually deliver high quality. But at JPC, we’ve found they’re maybe not all that rare after all.

We talk a lot about how much we value our people, and a part of that is helping them to realise their potential and grow into their development with us. This is the commitment we make to our people. If you’re willing to invest your time and energy with JPC, then JPC will invest in you.

Here are our five key factors for developing entire teams of unicorns:

Start with getting the right people on the bus. We can teach people how to clean windows and floors, but we can’t teach people how to turn up to work full of positivity and the drive to succeed. Attitude it the most important thing we look for in potential employees.

That’s why our PRIDE values are so important to us. We look for people who are passionate about their work, responsible in the way they work, innovative in their thinking, driven to success and empowered to take ownership of their job role.

Get that right and everything else falls into place.Invest in your people as they are your greatest asset. Once you have the right people, people who embody your company values and care about their own development, you want to keep them around, the best strategy to keep them around is to invest in them and their career.

Find where their skills shine and develop them. Mentor them, give them opportunities to lead and mentor others. When they’re ready to move up the ladder, find the right position and help them to move into it.

Develop bespoke programs as opposed to generic off the shelf ones. Every company is different. You have different values, different goals and different journeys. It’s these things that make your company unique, and you should use them to your advantage.

Instead of taking off the shelf employee engagement or development programmes, use the wealth of experience and the passions that already exist in your organisation to craft a programme that reflects who you are.

Being authentic with your staff will not only keep them engaged, it’ll help them flourish and find their own authentic voice too. Take pleasure in seeing your people develop and enhance their lives. If we’ve learned anything over the decades that we’ve been in this business, its that you can’t fake caring about your staff.

You can put in all the engagement programmes you like, but if you don’t genuinely and authentically care about their development, about improving their lives, they’ll work it out, and they won’t stick around.

The majority of people don’t want to be just another number. Celebrate success with your people. It’s so important to celebrate success and reward the hard work that your team members put in. Not just because it helps it them to feel appreciated, and encourages them to carry on reaching for their full potential, but because their success it your success too.

If your people are doing well, then you are too. They’ll be happier, they’ll stay longer, and they’ll do an even better job. The key to it all is authenticity. It may sound obvious, but it really is that simple: if you believe in your people, they’ll believe in themselves too, and as their self believe grows, so will their ability.

They’ll push themselves, and they’ll achieve. And you’ll find yourself with an entire team full of unicorns.