Have you noticed that it is often the low achievers within an organization that are given corrective action plans and more personal guidance from leadership, while high achieving employees are left with a lack of mentorship and attention?
High-achieving employees can be some of your best, most productive employees, however, without a formal process or program to recognize and develop these high-achievers, they become frustrated with the lack of advancement and become difficult to retain.
Take a moment to sit back and think about your own high-achieving employees. They are your independent, efficient, and reliable workers that embody your organization’s vision and values through their work ethic.
How well are you engaging, developing, and motivating them to reach their full potential? If you’re unsure about where you stand, or how to even do that, it’s not too late to get started. There are several things you can do to continuously develop your high achievers.
Maintain Open Communication & Feedback
This one may sound a bit obvious, but you’d be surprised how many organizations can get caught up in the whirlwind of day-to-day tasks that they forget to do something as simple as taking a second to check in and communicate with their team, and even more importantly, listen to them. High-achieving employees who feel like they don’t have a voice will quickly become disconnected and unengaged, making other opportunities more attractive, which is what you want to avoid at all costs.
Luckily, all of this can be solved with a proper one-on-one communication strategy and internal communication tools. It is imperative that you give high-achieving employees efficient one-on-one time to listen to questions, address comments or concerns, provide feedback, and go over any benchmarks. Setting up regular one-on-one check-ins can help keep this organized and keep you from going too long without communicating with your team.
One-on-one’s bring managers and employees together. They provide a space where both parties can share feedback, discuss performance objectives, and identify potential roadblocks. As managers, we want our people to feel that they can always be open and honest with us. You should actively listen to your team members and provide feedback and guidance as needed.
Invest in their Growth and Development
As you spend more one-on-one time with individual employees, you will slowly start to learn about areas in their personal and professional lives that make them happy and excited or even areas that they’d like to grow in, which is where you come in. It is key that you motivate employees with what matters most to them.
High-performing employees tend to lead their own learning, and they are looking for an organization that can match their energy and actively support their growth. When you show your high-performing employees that you are fully invested in their advancement and development, they will be more engaged and likely to stay onboard.
While your high-achievers may be dominating and surpassing benchmarks in their given roles, it is important that you still support them as they show interest in various ventures.
A regular one-on-one would allow every single person to share their goals, aspirations, concerns, and even their out-of-the-box ideas that they may have been too afraid to share in a public or team setting.
Set Meaningful Goals and Performance Objectives
We believe that every open role can and should have clearly defined performance objectives. The high performers on your team are most likely to be motived to achieve goals that are meaningful to the success of team, business or their professional career. As a manager, you can start by understanding what they hope to achieve both now and in the future. Learn more about how these aspirations align with the needs of your business and how you are able to provide opportunities for learning.
The most effective performance objectives are measurable or quantifiable. In other words, they have numbers tied to them, however, most roles will have at least some performance objectives that aren’t as black and white and easy to quantify. That’s all the more reason to ensure you’re tracking results! In those scenarios, we use what we call Scalable Performance Objectives.
Here’s how it works. Once you’ve determined the objective (such as “Complete projects on time”), you then measure results on a sliding scale from 0-200%. Why not 0-100%? An employee completing that objective 100% of the time would simply be doing what you hired them to do – their job! By utilizing a much wider range, you are able to recognize when employees are going above and beyond – a trait of a top performer.
