Which investor does not size up the strength of the workforce of a prospective company into which they intend to put their funds? Perhaps a rookie! Experienced investors know that the strength of the workforce is a true measure of the strength of a company. Beyond attracting investors, robust workforce is also a tool to woo exceptional talents into an organisation, while it goes without saying that a high employee turnover is off-putting.

So, the journey to building a formidable workforce starts right here....

Recruitment
Two major components are important here; the interview team and the metrics of choice. You need to assemble a robust interview team, whose members should have different, but relevant (to the need of the organisation), background. A diverse of opinions from the interviewers, which might be a function of the differing background, is a twist to be welcomed and harnessed. Because as a counter check, it improves the effectiveness of the hiring process. The metrics of choice should reflect a balance between EQ (Emotional-Intelligence Quotient) and IQ (Intelligence Quotient). In a people-based business, where customer is all that matters, high EQ seems to be the more desirable. But if you run a knowledge-based business, where your major product is your technical knowledge, a balance between EQ and IQ becomes very important.

Manage your PURE
PURE is an informal acronym for Previously Unidentified Recruitment Error. In spite of all fastidiousness, you could still end up with some error in judgement, in the recruitment. The remedy is to redeploy, retrain, or retrench. The choice of which depends on a number of factors. However, you should bear in mind that some incompetence are beyond salvage and will never give you a good ROI (Return on Investment). You need to decide and act fast on this.

Competitive Advantage
Your first customers are your employees; they need to believe in you and the company. So, you should learn to woo them just like you would your customers. A nice work environment is a start; it gives you the physical presence and evidence to establish yourself as credible in the mind of the employees. But you also need to ask the question, ‘What will your employees miss when they no longer work with your organisation?’ It must be benefits that they can never get anywhere else. That is your competitive advantage and you must continually improve on it. This advantage is an incentive to connect better with your employees and could put to gear the potential discretionary efforts of employees, thereby improving productivity.

Performance Management
This should be a given. And mind you, instincts are not enough. You should employ a metric that is adaptable to your business process. If you rely on instincts, you could incur some false positives (employees who do not work hard but get rewarded) and false negatives (employees who work hard but do not get rewarded), as a result of your affiliations, or lack of it, with such employees. ‘But figures don’t lie,’ is so cliché and true. However, affiliations are important and should be encouraged. They help compensate for intangibles overlooked by the chosen metric.

What techniques do you employ in building your own formidable team? Find us on Twitter @excellaid to share your opinion.

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