Quality: how you can improve it in your workforce

The notion of quality is, when you think about it, an incredibly variable idea. Everyone has a different idea about what it really means. If you’re a sniffing toff who speaks like there are a handful of coins in your mouth, then quality will mean the finest constituent elements that money can buy, and probably forged by artisans in Norway or something. But if you’re in a less affluent financial bracket, good quality means simply the best items you can afford. And in business, the peak of what you can afford is sometimes the best you can do. Offering luxury options is, after all, only a realistic prospect if your bank balance can handle it. This isn’t only a problem when it comes to customer service. It can impact every aspect of your company operations, not least the training and progression of promising employees. Without training, your more ambitious (and probably most talented) members of staff will grow restless and start sniffing around for new opportunities. In order to have more quality in your business, you can read the article Benefits of Quality Control.

Job hoppers and quality stoppers

In these financially straitened times, you might assume that your employees are simply happy to even have a job. But according to the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF), which interviewed 1,000 professionals across the UK, more than one in five people are looking to job hop within the next 12 months. Maintaining your most promising employees, then, requires a leap into high quality training and a visible path of progression that will sate the appetites of the movers and shakers in your company. Sound like a difficult and costly process? That’s because it can be – unless you shop around.

Education equals happiness

Naturally, sending your employees to university for a few years is an economically disastrous idea, despite the high-quality of education they can expect. What you need is something along the lines of an online business management degree that will allow for on the job training that your employees can perform while at their desks. Investments like this, which are far less expensive than their university counterparts, will create a bond of trust between yourself and your staff, showing them how much they’re valued in your company and that you’ve got every intention of improving the quality of your workforce.

Keep them satisfied

Improving the happiness and, in turn, quality of your staff doesn’t always have to involve shelling out for training programmes. Sometimes you only need to promise them a free bacon butty on a Friday morning. But a knowledgeable workforce is a satisfied one, especially if there’s a high chance of them being hired elsewhere. So don’t let your employees job-hop away from you and ruin the quality of your business. Train them up and watch them thrive.

Download the LSBF Career Change full report