Grow smarter by recruiting and developing individuals who want to own your vision and live your brand.
Are you hiring to fill a hole, or are you considering what your clients need—how you can better connect with the people you serve? Hiring is ultimately like putting together a puzzle. You’re finding people who believe in your vision and want to own it. You’re looking for people who fit in with your culture and will enhance it—and who will bring their own color and individuality to the overall picture.
Bottom line is, people are your greatest investment. Your investment increases every single day, and your people need to feel that. They need to believe and know you support their growth, and then their talent will produce returns for the business.
So, how do you grow your people as you grow your organization? Have the patience to understand your employees and genuinely care about what matters to them. Find where they fit into your organization—where they’ll shine. When people are doing what they love, they’ll perform better, connect with clients easily, and help grow the business more.
What Growing Businesses Need
Take a good, hard look at your team. What support do they need? If you bring in staff that will help complete the big picture, you’ll be more successful than if you’re simply hiring to fill a position. Be thoughtful about providing the resources your team needs to be successful and hire for those qualities. Also consider what your clients need. How can you serve them better? If you’re producing more sales, are you supporting those new clients with the resources they expect? (Ex: If you hire only salespeople and no service staff, how fulfilled will customers be with what you’re delivering to them?) Ultimately, a new hire should fit into your team picture and make the customer experience better.
Embrace Individuality
We want the people who join our team to fit in and share our values—live our culture. But that does not mean we want everyone to think and be the same. Not at all! Individuality should be embraced, not stamped out. Be respectful of the individuals who join your team and take the time to understand what matters to them. Tie their passions to your business goals and they will perform. Find out what drives them. When they do a great job, how do they like to be rewarded? One team member might feel appreciated when given a gift card, while another is motivated by a handwritten note. Celebrate the individuality of your employees, and personalize incentives.
Keep Tuning In
People change—and they grow. As businesses, we need to constantly tune in and recognize that what motivated a person to perform yesterday might not work today. Also, we need to be focused on opportunities to grow team members’ skills and ways we can leverage their strengths. That can mean moving a person into a different department and role where they can be challenged and thrive. It can mean hiring someone who applied for a sales position and placing them, instead, into a support role because you recognize their aptitude for helping. The key is to check in often with employees and be prepared to shift, realign and re-engage if necessary.
At Deeley Insurance Group, we believe investing in the future happens in many different ways, and a big part of that is pouring resources and energy into hiring and developing people to support our growth. Let’s share more ideas. Reach out to me at 410-213-5539 or chall@deeleyinsurance.com.
