Recognise and develop the people in your organisation.
Increasing capability in the workplace should be uplifting—that’s why we call it capability uplift!
When an organisation can recognise talent, nurture it, and uplift its people to progress in their roles and responsibilities, they are winning. From management responsibilities to health and safety roles to human resource responsibilities, there are usually plenty of opportunities to develop internal talent.
The Emendas leadership team is a prime example of the power of capability uplift. Co-director Emma was a successful student with bursary aspirations, but an enrolment error by her secondary school resulted in limited subject access. This along with teenage bullying and the death of a friend by suicide led her to decide her school days had come to an end; she dropped out at 16. Other co-director Ben completed high school but DNFed his tertiary education to move to Dunedin for the birth of his first child. Throughout their professional careers, people took chances on them and recognised potential. Now, they like to equip and guide businesses to give their own workers opportunities and improve their culture through capability uplift.
Capability uplift benefits an organisation in multiple ways
There are many reasons to focus on upskilling, developing, and advancing the people you already have within your organisation. We’ve put together a few of the bigger ones:
- You’re minimising the costs incurred by training people new to the organisation and reducing turnover by keeping people happy and challenged. Your labour budget goes further.
- You’re retaining and utilising a whole lot of unique culture IP and organisational knowledge. Particularly for H&S and compliance-related management positions, knowing things like how and why work is done is such an important aspect and one that’s much more difficult to teach than the often generic H&S tasks that overlay the work.
- On a personal level, you are offering opportunities to talented people and potentially creating a catalyst moment in their career.
- A focus on capability uplift is sustainable, allowing for growth using what you have with minimal waste of resources.
Although capability uplift does involve upskilling and developing specific individuals, it’s really about the business as a whole. Think of it as an overarching framework within which individual competencies sit. When it’s done right, performance of the entire business is optimised.
Without capability uplift, people and skills are underutilised—this means you’re likely leaving time, money, and opportunity on the table. If you’re not training up and developing the people you have, you may also need to pay more for ongoing consulting, or specialist employees. As we’ve mentioned, for many leadership roles particularly in health and safety, organisational knowledge is a huge chunk of what’s helpful and necessary. Don’t double up on the effort and experience it takes to gain this.
Keep capability uplift in sight with these simple tips
Understanding the importance of internal capability uplift is the first step. Now you have to put it into practice! While specific details will look different in every organisation, the following are some ways that you can create a mindset of constant internal development.
- Know your goals! Having a clear idea of what you need and what work needs to be done in your organisation means you can keep an eye out for people that will fit in well and understand what development is required. Our Scorecard Assessment is a great place to start when it comes to gaining understanding.
- Always be aware of your “good roosters”—that is, people who are reliable, capable, and driven to succeed. These type of people are often seeking opportunity and challenge. So provide it! If you don’t, they will seek it elsewhere. An experienced and valued worker forced to come off the tools due to injury, for example, is a perfect chance to flex your capability uplift muscles. Take advantage of their practical and organisational knowledge.
- Don’t focus too narrowly on a role you’re trying to fill and the specific knowledge or skills required. Consider overall attributes, capacity for learning, and what in their skill set is transferable. Soft skills are just as important as hard skills, and the intricacies and legislation of something like compliance, health and safety, and other management roles can be taught.
- Use a team profiling and performance tool to gain insight into the capabilities and soft skills your people possess. These tools are frequently used in matching workers to roles, so having a profile on file for your employees and your organisational roles (yes - the role itself!) makes it much easier to make decisions about how to promote and develop.
- Remember that not all movement has to be “up”. Lateral movement can also keep your people interested, engaged, and learning new things—so allow people the opportunity to try something new if not something more senior.
TL;DR: It’s important to develop the people you have
Look, this wasn’t a particularly long piece to read. But if you need a summary, it would be this: capability uplift means developing, equipping, and upskilling the people already in your organisation to move up or across into new roles and challenges. Management of compliance or health and safety systems is a great opportunity for this, and using internal appointments for these roles allows you to take advantage of extremely valuable organisational knowledge.
To create a focus on capability uplift, you can:
- Know your goals so you can see how people will fit into them.
- Keep an ear to the ground and identify capable, reliable people seeking opportunities to grow.
- Consider soft skills when making hiring decisions—you may have people with all that’s needed except some specific knowledge which can be taught fairly easily.
- Use a team profiling tool to gain more insight into the capabilities and potential of your people.
- Think about how you can offer people lateral movement as well as upwards, to develop their skills, experience as well as keeping them interested and engaged.
Get help from the right people
With our vast experience in compliance and health and safety governance for a range of businesses, plus our own passion for seeing people given a chance to succeed, we are the partner you need when it comes to implementing a strategy for capability uplift in your organisation.
We also provide high-level policy and governance guidance. But with the right internal resources, your investment in these services can be minimal. It’s always our mission to set clients up for self-guided success, and capability uplift is an integral part of this. Spend less but more efficiently on consultancy—get in touch and let’s talk about how!