EnerBank Blog

Maintaining a strong, loyal workforce is critical to just about every business, and it’s easy to find reams of information about how to do it best. Since employees are among the highest of all expenses for a company, having to recruit continuously and train employees can run into the thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars every year. How can companies avoid those expenditures and create a company where employees want to stay and grow?

In a recently published article on HR.com, EnerBank’s SVP of operations Blaine Bagley offered counsel to managers on how to best recruit and retain employees. It comes down to some tried-and-true concepts.

First, it’s important to realize that we all have strengths and weakness. It’s sometimes easier to focus on weaknesses rather than on strengths—don’t fall into that trap.

Here are his four top suggestions for building and maintaining a strong workforce:

1. Be honest with your employees. If you are not honest with your people, neither you nor your employees will get what you want out of the job. Provide them with real, concrete feedback with specific examples of what they did well and how they can improve. They’ll know you are on their side, and that it’s in your mutual interests to have them succeed.
2. Tap into their aspirations. Find out what each employee wants to accomplish and how they see themselves in the future. Don’t be afraid if they have high ambitions. Encourage those ambitions to help them improve.
3. Hold your employees accountable.In managing operations for EnerBank, I have two fundamental rules that I expect our employees to follow: 1) show up on time and 2) be reliable. These actions seem simple, but those who follow these two behaviors are likely to be successful employees. It might be hard to believe, but it’s true.
4. Remember that great relationships evolve. It takes time for employees to feel comfortable in their jobs, and it also takes time for you to learn how to manage them. Everyone is different. Allow for disagreement. You want someone who will challenge your decisions and thinking from time to time. That’s ok.

Not every hiring decision works out the way you’d hope, though—and that’s okay, too. Sometimes the employee might not be in the right position, or their job may not be structured correctly. It’s worth the time to analyze the situation so that you truly understand what the problem is and what needs to be done to fix it.

To see Blaine’s full article, click here.