The lean approach in startups comes with its own challenges. As a startup founder, you have to balance between growing the company, maximizing its output, and expanding your teams. You also have aspects such as overhead costs and sustainability to worry about. Do it right, however, and your lean startup can easily reach new heights.
For a startup to remain lean while growing, investments in people development are needed. You can’t expect to boost output and grow the company without growing the team members that support your operations. In fact, people development is quickly becoming an integral part of the principled approach.
So, how can you develop your team members and maintain balance in a lean startup environment? There are several tips and tricks you can follow.
Offer Flexibility
One of the first things you want to do as part of your people development program is to offer flexibility. Not every team member can keep up with the fast pace of the startup environment, but punishing those who cannot work at a faster pace isn’t necessarily the way to go.
Flexibility allows employees to work on improving their work pace in a more optimal way. Rather than forcing themselves to conform to the usual 9-to-5 work hours, for instance, you can allow team members to find their own peak hours and adapt to their own cycle.
The result is a team whose members can produce the highest output at a different time. This is a huge advantage since you will still benefit from an increase of output from the whole team. Another benefit of offering flexibility is the higher incentive team members have for utilizing their downtime.
Provide Books and Learning Resources
With the work cycles of employees adapted to their personal needs and characteristics, it is much easier to persuade employees to be more proactive in developing their skills and expertise. The times when they are the least effective can then be allocated for learning.
To capitalize on this shift further, make sure team members have the resources they need to learn new things. Every startup office needs to have a library filled with industry-relevant, management, and general books. You can even add fiction novels and comics to the collection.
The same is true with other learning resources. A comprehensive product knowledge bundle, for instance, can help the sales team master your company’s products faster. The result is a group of sales executives with increased product presentation and customer relationship management capabilities.
Incentivize Learning
Employees are your biggest assets, so investing more in their growth is a must. If you want employees to go back to school and pursue higher degrees (while expanding their skills) then you need to facilitate that learning process by providing support and incentives.
Thanks to top universities like Kettering University and their online programs, your team members can now pursue a master’s degree in fields like electrical and computer engineering from the office. Online courses are also more affordable and very flexible.
An MS in electrical and computer engineering will certainly be a great addition to your team member’s resume. Naturally, employees in different departments can choose to pursue a master’s degree in their respective fields for maximum impact.
Hold Internal Workshops
Sharing sessions and workshops are still among the most effective ways to transfer knowledge. There is something about being in a less formal environment that makes studying easier. The next time you need employees to understand something new quickly (i.e. a new safety policy), these are the formats to consider.
Internal workshops can have different structures depending on what you need. You can have a workshop for the entire company or specific workshops for certain teams. You can hire a trainer or instructor from outside the company or have skilled team members share their knowledge with others.
Workshops also need to follow a bigger story. It is up to the HR department to arrange workshops based on what the employees need. As employees complete one workshop after another, their skills will be taken to a whole new level.
A Learning-Focused Environment
It is also important to create an environment that supports learning. Unfortunately, this is one of the aspects many new companies neglect to address; after all, it is more fun to have a game room than a space where employees can host discussions or read books comfortably.
Creating a space for optimum learning is one of the most important people development programs. When employees have somewhere to go to whenever they need to absorb new information effectively, they are more likely to utilize that space and learn more.
The same is true with your corporate culture. A learning-focused environment needs to be one where asking questions, exploring new things, and picking up new skills and insights along the way are rewarded rather than scolded.
Have a Plan
Last but certainly not least, make sure you have a clear people development plan. When you implement the tips and tricks we discussed in this article, you need to implement them as parts of a bigger development plan.
Having a clear plan means you have clear objectives to achieve. Without clear objectives, it will be incredibly difficult to measure the success of your people development program. At the same time, objectives help you define KPIs and monitor the development program (and its activities) carefully.
Creating a plan itself is a beneficial exercise. As you explore the needs of the business and employees, you have an opportunity to align (or realign) these two critical elements. The result is an employee development program with the highest possible ROI and the support of employees and other stakeholders.
There is no definite rule to follow when it comes to people development. A set of programs that work for one lean startup doesn’t always work when implemented in another, no matter how similar the work environment may be.
That said, the tips and tricks we discussed in this article will help you make the right first steps towards developing your employees. The growth of your employees is proportionately related to the growth of your business, so make the investment and work towards increasing its ROI.
