While most businesses are willing to invest in growth through the implementation of streamlined procedures, new marketing initiatives, or infrastructure improvements, many ignore their most precious resource for growth - their employees. A Japanese concept called Jinzai claims that people should be viewed as the single most important treasure of a company, not just another line item on a budget. Making an investment in your people, the most valuable investment of them all.

People, rather than buildings or equipment, are truly the most valuable assets of a company. This blog outlines why it is important to invest in employees as if they are the most precious gems. Let’s explore the immediate benefits that your company will experience through this investment, and how your star employees can become the catalyst of future company growth.

Optimizing Employee Performance

The first step toward optimizing employee performance is understanding the baseline. Behavioral assessments, like DISC, help to identify the natural and adapted styles of your employees. Motivational assessments help to uncover what motivates your team, and perhaps most importantly, an Emotional Intelligence assessment can reveal what is at the heart of decision making.

Once the organization has an in-depth understanding of the behaviors, motivations and emotional intelligence of its employees, it can begin to optimize individual performance by making sure each precious gem is in a role that fits his/her skills and motivations. It can also configure teams based on scientific behavioral data in order to improve organizational performance overall.

By identifying the differences between gems, celebrating the unique facets that make them shine brightest, and polishing them to make sure the whole treasure chest shines as brightly as it can, companies can increase topline revenue and bottomline ROI through employee performance optimization.

Why Invest in Your People?

Strategic alignment is the number one key reason to invest in your current workforce. With additional assessments like business acumen or stress quotient, companies can further understand skills and specific training needs, and invest in improving hard and soft skills.

The goal is to better align employees with corporate strategy by using scientific assessments to determine current alignment and understand whether potential is truly being tapped. You may have some truly amazing employees without knowing it, because you might be under-utilizing some skills, while over-utilizing others. Aligning personalities and skills strategically, and engaging double loop communication means improving employee engagement. The result? Productivity.

How Companies Benefit by Investing in Existing People

The bottom line is, when you value your gems, they shine brighter for you. When employees buy in to the company, and are emotionally connected with their job their engagement level goes up, and that adds directly to the bottom line. What you’re working toward here is a psychological contract. That means your employees are psychologically WITH you. There is a sense of belonging and pride that goes a long way in helping your company grow from the inside out.

Specific Areas of Growth:

• Eliminate waste in time, materials and salary
• Reduce costly turnover
• Optimize payroll costs with employee performance optimization (EPO)
• Gauge EPO (employee performance optimization)
• Grow topline revenue when every employee becomes a sales agent and referral business grows due to positive experiences with engaged employees
• Engaged, happy employees bring in other engaged happy employees
• Leadership is freed up for sustained innovation and more in-depth sales
• Free-flowing of creativity and innovation through the entire organization