A Recent Article Published by APPA Facilities Manager Magazine, Spotlights Practical Strategies for Workplace Development
One of UG2’s founding principles is a commitment to developing the next generation of facility services talent, and we have tested and refined the best strategies to advance that goal over the past decade. Lauren Lanzillo, Vice President of culture and community for UG2, shares her insights on the topic for Facilities Manager. She outlined a comprehensive approach to confronting a challenge that is impacting our customers and peers across the industry, as skilled technicians approach retirement and employers struggle to recruit new talent into the trades.
We share some highlights from Lauren’s piece below and encourage you to read the full article—or get in touch with us—if you’d like to explore the topic in depth.
Lauren draws from her experience and encourages managers and leaders to:
Build strong personal relationships. UG2 emphasizes relationship-building—not only with our customers but across our company, too. As Lauren points out, managers must put in the work to develop authentic, mutually beneficial relationships with the people they supervise. It helps you better serve their interests, which helps them to grow professionally and, in turn, improves their commitment and capacity to deliver excellent customer service.
Work to better understand the whole person. Seeing the people you manage as people, not just employees, means continuously learning about what motivates and inspires them, striving to identify the work environment in which they’ll thrive, and investigating and noting their short and long-term career aspirations. As those employees feel increasingly understood and supported by you, they’ll be invested in performing better—and will very likely stay longer.
Initiate career conversations. UG2 invests a lot of time and professional development on improving communication. Ongoing discussions about career goals are key to understanding an employee’s wants and needs—and getting ahead of stress and burnout. Encouraging honesty and fostering trust are essential to making sure these conversations go beyond superficial exchanges.
Teach self-empowerment and encourage lifelong learning. People thrive when they can take the lead in their professional development. Prompt the employees you manage to voice their interests and advocate for themselves. Talent, strength and personality assessments can help them identify and leverage their strengths, envision a path to future success, and craft a plan toward achieving attainable objectives.
Create development plans—and see them through. Understanding employees’ goals, motivations, and habits allows managers to create informed plans for professional development. To make sure such plans are effective, you should tailor them to the employee’s goals as well as their skills gaps. You can include hard- and soft-skill training, suggest mentoring opportunities, and set milestones. Then follow through by connecting them with others and fostering an appetite for networking and connecting. This will help them build relationships and extend their professional reach.
In her conclusion, Lauren points out that in facility services, our employees are our greatest assets – and retaining them is growing ever more difficult. A recent Harris Poll has the data to back this up: One-third of hiring managers believe their organization will suffer more employee turnover this year than last year, and 73 percent say turnover places a heavy burden on existing employees.
Following these tips will go a long way toward closing the gap in employee satisfaction. Read more in Lauren’s full article in Facilities Manager, and—as always—we’d love to hear from you on this topic and others important to developing the next generation of talent.