5 Ways You Can Help Employees Improve Their Problem-Solving Skills

Entrepreneurs realize the need for their employees to be good problem solvers, so that they are able to put an end to all issues within the workplace before these issues turn into anything big. The future is around us, and it is only logical for business leaders to play catch, and match their offerings with the need of the hour.

The future enterprise would require organizations and employees to take quick decisions on the go, as any lacking can come and haunt them down the line. Knowing the needs of the future, entrepreneurs need to be prepared right now.

GS Diamonds collected some of the methods you can follow to help your employees improve their problem-solving skills within the workplace. By taking the following steps, you can encourage your team members to give their 100 percent at work, and solve all work-related problems in a timely and efficient manner.

Hire People Who Don’t Mind Challenging Themselves

The interview process is extremely pivotal in the overall journey towards making your employees better problem solvers. The interview is where you get to screen your employees before they officially become part of your organization. Hence, it is during the interview stage that you naturally discuss tough questions, and assess your future recruits for the problem-solving skills they have.

Naturally, it is hard for you to find out the drive and motivation that an individual has within a 30 minute interview, but you can let the interview be a stepping stone in this decision. Make sure to ask the following questions from all your prospective employees during the hiring process:

• Do you plan on continuing your education during the foreseeable future?
• Do you plan on working with work? Or have you ever worked alongside your work?
• Do you have any examples of a business risk you took, but it didn’t work out in your favor?
• What is the right way to deal with business failure in your opinion?
• Have you ever thought about ideas to improve the work rate and flow at your previous organizations? Explain any, if possible.
• Do you like working in tandem with some of the other departments in the organization?

Have Employees with Diverse Backgrounds

Having employees with a diverse or broad background will obviously help you improve your problem-solving skills as an organization. By adding diverse people to your organization, you’re hiring people with different skill sets, mentalities, experiences, and upbringings. When you combine all of these people together, what you get is a cumulative thought process that is geared towards helping you achieve efficiency within the workplace.

The diversity you go for could be in the experience of the employees, in the courses they have studied, or in the ethnic or religious background that they come from. As a result of this inclusivity and diversity, you would have a lot of different minds working towards improving the problem-solving skills within your organization. Many tech organizations are now also adding business and accounting graduates into the mix, because these graduates bring a unique way of thinking that a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematic) graduate does not offer.

So, have diversity within the workplace and celebrate that diversity in the form of enhanced and superior problem-solving skills.

Let Employees Continue Their Education

Since employees are a resource for you, you would want them to be committed and focused towards what they are doing within your organization. No employer would willingly want their employees to have a lot on their plate, besides work. However, we believe that education is where a compromise can be made. Your employees, when they come fresh off the market, are trained in innovation. They know how to handle tasks and have superior cognitive abilities. They also happen to know quite a lot about the latest trends in the market, and how they can implement them for you.

However, if they are kept away from education during the future, these employees will have a hard time coming to terms with the change. They will not be able to keep track with the latest innovations, and would barely be able to think of new and innovative solutions to problems that keep arising at the workplace.

Hence, organizations need to make sure that their employees are allowed to continue their education, even while working with them. Not only will this measure make them appreciate the organization, but it will also eventually allow them to keep their mind fresh with ideas they can implement to solve problems within their current workplace.

Give Challenging Projects

The comfort zone is where your employees slide into, if they aren’t being given challenging projects and tasks. Your employees need to be reminded of the challenge that exists on a continuous basis. Give your employees a challenging task that makes them push their limits, every once in a while. Once they have been trained to handle challenging tasks, and know what it takes to be at the best of their game, they will deliver more consistent and reliable results. Additionally, they will also be trained in problem-solving skills, through the complexity of the work they are doing.

Encourage Them to Try New Solutions

Monotony can be comfortable, but it is not what you want at the workplace. Encourage, and in fact motivate, your employees to try innovative solutions for similar problems. Don’t take the same solutions for every problem, but try to innovate and think of new solutions to problems. The ability to innovate will come in handy, when they run out of tried and tested methods that they had limited themselves to.