A company’s most important resource is not its cash, its investments, or even its patents, but its human resources. And good HR management starts with building the right team — but finding the right people is just the beginning, you have to keep them. Read on to learn more about how to build a sustainable team for your business.

Finding the Right People for the Job

Building a team starts with recruiting. You can build a team of high performers if you use the interview process to find a candidate who is suited for current and future tasks. However, the ability to perform a task is not enough to make someone a good team member.

During the hiring process, you also need to assess how well the candidate will fit with you as a leader and even more with each other as future team members. It is important to emphasize that you are not looking for friends, but for common interests:

• Communication style
• Interpersonal skills
• Cognitive skills required for the expected tasks (e.g., analytical skills).

And if you are looking for a new employee to join an existing team, you should also consider the internal team culture created by other colleagues.

Building Team Cohesion

As a leader, you need to create the right conditions for the team to work together effectively. In addition to the technical tools, you also need to set the framework and rules.

Many leaders forget that a generic work process adopted from other companies may not work for their team. Your team will be efficient if you not only customize the framework, but also constantly solicit feedback from your employees. This way, you will always be able to recognize when a healthy order has been disrupted and manager intervention is needed.

Retaining The Workforce

One of the most important elements in building sustainable teams is employee retention. There are many companies that spend enormous amounts of money on hiring new employees, forgetting that they need to be retained after six months or a year to achieve their career goals.

Fortunately, as a manager, you have a wide range of tools at your disposal to retain your staff. Using them is especially important because one of the most common reasons employees quit is dissatisfaction with their manager.

Let us take a look at what you can do to promote employee retention:

• Establish a back-and-forth communication channel
• You need to coordinate not only the technical work of the team but also support the human side of your staff
• Regularly listen to the individual needs of your employees and help them perform their work in better conditions
• You need to know their individual plans, which are often not fully aligned with the interests of the company, but as a manager, you need to prioritize the former in order to retain them

If you make the above a priority, not only will your employees stay with you, but you can be sure that you will be leading a healthy and high-performing team.

You’d like to learn more about this topic? Check out the second season of our webinar series that focuses on the principles of leadership and management. If you have questions about building a sustainable team or would like to participate in our mentoring sessions, send us a message through the IOOGO website.