How to Optimize your team to build a better Workplace

As the end of the year draws near, it’s an optimal time to reflect on the last 12 months and how your organization or business performed. Did you achieve the businesses goals? Are you poised for growth? Are your employees truly engaged? Is your culture in a healthy state?

If you answered “no” or “maybe” to any of these questions, you need talent optimization. Simply defined, talent optimization is an intentional and strategic talent methodology that compliments your business strategy in order to drive results.

People are, after all, your greatest assets.

You set a strategy for your sales and your business. But do you set a people strategy? If you don’t, you are missing out on the magic of engaged employees, dynamic teams, a thriving culture, and a healthy bottom line.

But how do you get there? The answer lies in data. You utilize the power of data to evaluate the effectiveness of other areas of your business. It stands to reason that data should also be used in the application of talent optimization.

There are four components of utilizing data in the talent optimization process.

• Diagnosing: As a leader, you can gain valuable insights when you collect data about your people’s level of engagement and analyze these data points to reveal the core of their challenges. These insights can then be leveraged to make changes that increase performance across the enterprise.
• Designing: You can’t build effective teams by throwing random people together. Even if they complement each other when it comes to their skill sets, it doesn’t mean they will perform as the optimal team. It also doesn’t mean they are aligned to your business’s strategy. People data can help you intentionally form teams that drive the best results.
• Hiring: Data is key to hiring the right people for your organization. Certain pieces of data will provide critical information about who you’re hiring to ensure they are the right fit for the right roles. And the insights gleamed will help you retain them.
• Inspire: And finally, people data will help you figure out the best strategy when it comes to improving overall team communication and empowering managers to better motivate and develop their employees.

How do you create Talent Optimization magic?

Once you decide to employ talent optimization, utilize a scientifically validated tool that checks all the boxes above and has the ability to scale easily across your organization. It’s not just on leadership or HR to utilize it – it must be embraced by the entire organization from the bottom up. When every single employee participates in closing the talent gap and has access to people data, they become more self-aware and establish a healthier – and engaged – workplace.  And then poof! That’s when the magic happens.

Failure to manage the talent gap results in turnover, employee disengagement, bad hires, and a toxic culture. When these things happen, the natural tendency may be to look to HR for insight. Harnessing the power of talent optimization arms, you as a leader with the ability to take matters into your own hands, giving you the necessary tools to hire the right people, develop a healthy culture, and manage teams more effectively in a scalable, repeatable way. And who doesn’t want that?

Lisa Kinsey is the co-founder and chief talent strategist for Kinsey Management, a Houston-based talent optimization firm and a Predictive Index Certified Partner.