How to Ensure Your Business Achieves Results and Experiences Growth This Year

There’s no doubt that many businesses across the globe are investing in their future growth and development. But what key areas do businesses need to focus on to achieve the results that will truly add value?

The new year is a prime time for leaders to focus on new goals and objectives for the business, enhance processes and communicate plans to the wider business.

Whether it’s investing in people, products or the places in which they operate, businesses are eager to enhance their overall business offering to increase their market share, succeed within their industry and increase their headcount.

Our team of global talent experts and executive recruiters operate across a wide range of specialist industry sectors on an international scale. We have built strong, long-standing relationships with our clients from small startups to huge global corporations across a wide range of industries from medical to mining, renewable energy to construction, automation to consumer and technology.

To thrive as a business and see success and results in all areas, it’s important to consider the following:

Invest in employee development and address skills gaps

One sure fire way to support employee engagement and staff retention within a business is to show clear career paths for employees across all business functions. Not only this, can you demonstrate how this can happen and how, as a business you will facilitate this development? 

Investing in employee development is essential to ensure your teams have the best skills, knowledge, and resources available to carry out their role in the most effective way. Ultimately, with the right level of training and development, your employees will be in the best position to contribute to business goals and objectives effectively, driving the business forward. Whether it’s in-house training on an ongoing basis or access to outsourced training or recognised qualifications, this is an important consideration for businesses to factor into their resource planning.

Investing in employee development can also support employee retention and engagement, with a LinkedIn survey reporting 94% of employees say they are more likely to stay at a company for longer if they invest in their learning and development. 

Growth and hiring strategies to succeed in 2024

While there will always remain situations where reactive hiring plans present themselves through unexpected peaks in activity/demand or resignations, it’s important for organisations to have an effective hiring strategy in place. 

Forecasting headcount growth in line with other business objectives allows those responsible to plan and pipeline potential new hires. At CSG Talent, we work closely with our clients to ensure they have a robust talent strategy that allows them to attract the right people to drive their business forward and achieve objectives. Our talent strategy services help to inform, refine and develop our clients talent and hiring strategies to support business growth overall.

We work with our clients to advise on the best hiring approach and all elements of the recruitment process, including the interview stage. David MacDonald is a Principal Consultant in Federal Technology at CSG Talent. David has recently been working with the Chief Growth Officer for a Federal Business who was time poor and struggled to arrange interviews at pace. He consulted with the client and explained the impact this was having on the candidate experience, and in the current market this would result in losing top talent if the speed of the process didn’t improve. The client has now refined their approach with more structure and they have three senior leaders involved in the recruitment process, managing interviews and feedback stages. As a result, the process has become much more efficient and within three weeks from candidate submission, interviews have been conducted and offers have been made.

Strengthen and position your employer brand

A company’s brand is more than just logos and visual representations, it’s about consistency of marketing, content, employer branding and all output perceived by an audience. A strong brand is essential for business growth, development, and expansion. 

According to research carried out be Hosseini et al (2022), a positive employer brand results in better performance, better retention, and increased employee engagement. 

Having a strong, clear, and attractive brand will be effective in engaging your existing employees and potential employees, which will support talent attraction and retention. It will also support business relationships and potential investors and partners required to achieve further growth.

Joel Coogan, Senior Business Manager – Mining Recruitment at CSG Talent: “At CSG Talent, our consultants regularly provide insights and guidance on talent branding to help attract the highest calibre of candidates to our clients’ business in, what is currently, an extremely competitive market. One way that we support that is through the creation of bespoke candidate engagement packs and briefing documents to showcase the brand, culture, and overall scope of working with our clients in one easy to engage with and professional looking document. This additional service supports greatly improved engagement, attraction, and trust from candidates. It helps us to provide stronger shortlists of suitable people for the talent projects we are managing by effectively positioning the employer brand of our clients.”

Embrace innovation and technology

Technology advancements and innovation have been driving change and development in business over the last decade and this is something that will get increasingly smarter and more innovative. To improve efficiencies, make processes greener and increase business activity, utilising digital technology is essential for businesses to embrace. 

Digital first strategies are becoming increasingly more adopted by businesses with 89% putting plans in place to adopt this approach – Gartner.

With new technology, comes the need for new skills in an organisation. Many businesses are having to evaluate the skillset needed in their organisation to drive new technology forward.

In 2023, AI and machine learning were highlighted as top priority skills in demand, with two in five businesses reporting it as the most sought-after skill across the UK job market – Forbes. Businesses will need to focus on upskilling existing employees to enhance their digital skills, or seek to hire talent with the desired skillsets to drive technology and innovation forward. 

Establish and relay company plans and vision

Establishing company plans and vision both in the short and long term are important to set realistic and achievable goals for business growth and success. Sharing these plans with the wider business will increase engagement and buy in to the overall goals of the business. 

If all business functions and employees have a clear understanding of the vision of the organisation, they will feel valued and be keen to contribute themselves to the overall goals of the business.

Enhance processes and overall experience 

How can you enhance your current internal and external processes? For each business there will be various processes to consider dependent on size, function, and market you operate. Some of the areas to consider are; onboarding and induction, performance management, business activities, customer experience and employee experience.

Having a positive, engaging and aligned customer and employee experience is essential to driving business activity, the perception of your brand and organisation. If a business demonstrates poor experiences, it will have a negative impact on your business success.

Invest in company culture

The culture you promote and facilitate will impact your employer brand, talent attraction and talent retention. For an organisation to embrace a results-driven culture, they will likely see increased productivity, increased staff retention, a positive work environment and an overall award-winning culture. (Forbes, 2019)

Organisations are focused on creating a culture that gives their employees the best work life balance, value-add benefits and a work environment that suits their own personal preferences and stage of family life cycle. Company culture is a huge part of business growth, results and talent strategy success.

Effective measurement and business analytics

Utilising data and analytics will allow you to effectively measure processes and outcomes in the business. Not only will data allow you to establish the business activity that is getting results and areas that are performing well, but it will also highlight areas that need work, or to be re-assessed. Knowing exactly what you want to measure and having effective measurement in place will enable your organisation the opportunity to further develop.

Our team of recruitment experts at CSG Talent not only support clients with their hiring and talent attraction strategies, but they also have strong experience providing guidance and sharing best approaches on talent strategies that specifically support business growth including talent mapping, talent insights and talent pipelining strategies. If you’re keen to explore effective ways to grow your business and attract the best talent in your market, speak to a member of our specialist team or view our service offerings in more detail below.

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