Two key terms related to bench strength are continuity and adaptation. Bench strength equips your team with the necessary tools for adapting to surprise turnover or illness and maintaining continuity in your business. A strong bench also allows companies the peace of mind to take bigger leaps, because the company is confident that their bench will be able to adapt and continue progressing forward.
So if you want to fertilize your bench strength’s reliability and adaptability, there are 5 tips to follow:
Hire right.
Cultivating a reliable team starts with the hiring process. There are only so many seats on the bench—make sure each one is filled with a star player. An efficient way to make these hiring decisions is with the use of employee assessments. Talexes offers a suite of assessments for employees at every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Look for cultural fit.
A company can train and retrain skills all day long, but you cannot train cultural fit—that comes with the individual. Even with all the skills and expertise the job requires, a candidate will not be fully successful if they lack the cultural fit that the position requires.
Be transparent.
The more information the employees have, the better their chances of making smart decisions for the organization. Information needs to flow freely so that, when the time comes, an individual will be able to step up with the confidence that they know what they need to in order to be successful in that role.
Focus on adaptability.
It is a common habit to try to shield ourselves and our team from failure. However, it pays to simulate chaos by creating conditions with high rates of failure. This prepares your team for adapting to situations that actually do have the potential to go wrong.
Encourage distributed decision-making.
By encouraging more people to share in the decision making process, you are preparing employees for being capable of making difficult decisions on their own in the future. Also, employees are more likely to take ownership for the success or failure of a decision if they helped make it, rather than them feeling as if it was forced upon them.
Optimizing your bench strength is a critical component of preparing your organization for long term success. To make sure your bench has the right players on it, try Talexes’ TalassureM to assess your current team players, or TalassureQ to choose new compatible players for your team.
