Business Leadership 7: Ensure Access to Adequate Skills, Tools, & Resources

This continues our series on leadership roles and traits that will improve your business

Your employees will need access to adequate skills, tools, and resources to implement your vision. Failure to fulfill this role can prevent your vision from achieving reality. Failure to train your employees adequately eliminates their ability to perform. Scrimping on tools and resources too much strangles your progress. A major role of business leaders, which many forget, remains providing access to adequate skills, training, and resources.

Provide Adequate Skills

Deloitte wrote The Skills Gap in US Manufacturing

• 67% of respondents report a moderate to severe shortage of available, qualified workers
• 56% anticipating the shortage to grow worse in the next three to five years
• 5% of current jobs are unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates
• Their efforts to develop the skills of current employees are falling short

Businesses, today, focus on hiring the skills rather than developing them. A lot of business owners hesitate to invest in their employees to develop the skills. They worry that their employees will:

• Take too long to learn the skills
• Take the new skills to a better job
• Not perform adequately on the job
• Not provide an adequate return on investment

You need to turn that trend around to grow your business. Take the long-term view and use up-to-date methods to get the skills they need.

Provide Adequate Tools and Resources

Zero Million states “Employee costs constitute the greatest expense in any service business. Not giving your employees adequate tools to do the job is penny wise and pound foolish…Attention to detail and providing adequate tools to do the job will eliminate a key source of employee frustration and increase employee productivity and satisfaction.”

Tools include:

• Adequate computers, local area networks, and operating systems
• Legal agreements
• Training to do the job and to prepare for future responsibilities
• Copiers, faxes, speedy Internet, and office equipment
• Office furnishings, break rooms, microwaves, and refrigerators
• Processes, procedures, and back-up support
• Help to properly serve all clients in the office

Thursday we examine how leaders protect the organization from internal & external threats