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How to Improve Your Bottom Line

 bottomline

Is your organization bottom line driven? I’d be very surprised if it was not.  But what does that mean and how is it accomplished? When your company’s CEO or CFO refers to increasing a focus on the bottom line, he or she means that your company needs to grow its net earnings or reduce its costs. It’s as simple as that.

But in reality, it’s not so simple to accomplish those objectives. Or is it?

Gallup recently published exciting research that explains how a strengths-based training initiative can impact critical bottom line factors like profits and turnover.

Finding #1: A study of 1,874 individual employees, most of them in sales functions, found that productivity improved by 7.8% after a strengths intervention.

Finding #2: In another study of 65,672 employees, turnover rates were 14.9% lower among employees who received feedback on their strengths.

However, it’s imperative to understand what a “strengths intervention” entails and how your organization can give employees “feedback on their strengths” to fully appreciate the simplicity and feasibility of this type of corporate intervention.

In 1989, Don Clifton PhD created the StrengthsFinder assessment to help individuals understand what they do well – at work and at home. Since that time, over 10 million people have taken the assessment. However, many more haven’t had the opportunity to learn their strengths and fewer still have had the chance to receive coaching. Individual coaching is critical to the process because a one-on-one coaching opportunity clarifies any questions the individual might have about his or her unique strengths. Without a one-hour coaching session, most individuals quickly forget their strengths.

How to Start?

My organization, FRESH Concepts, Inc., regularly recommends a three-part strengths training initiative for organizations that are looking to improve internal processes and gain efficiencies.

We advice our clients to:

1. have staff take the StrengthsFinder assessment.

2. schedule one-on-one strengths coaching for each staff member. (Completing steps 1 and 2 accomplishes the “strengths feedback” recommendation.)

3. set up team-based summary meetings to facilitate team members’ understanding individual and team strengths. (Completing steps 1, 2, and 3 results in a strengths intervention.)

These three steps are the minimum required of an organization that wants to create a strengths-based culture.

Is your organization hoping to increase profits and reduce turnover by the end of 2014? Impacting the bottom line is important to the future of your organization. Why wait?

To read the entire Gallup article go to:

http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/146351/strengthening-company-performance.aspx

 

 

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