Commercial skills are an essential attribute for employees within almost every business, but particularly for those in the financial sector, or those wishing to progress through the ranks.
One thing’s for sure, in today's less certain environment, strong commercial awareness can be the difference between success and failure. Workplace training can be structured to ensure that an entire workforce possesses the relevant commercial awareness skills to be able to carry out their roles effectively. Commercial awareness helps employees to gain a better understanding of:
The competition surrounding your business
Are your employees able to identify the ways in which competition can affect your organisation? Are they able to work around difficulties raised by said competition and alter their approach accordingly, offering innovative suggestions with the benefit of the business in mind? If the answer is no, equipping your employees with commercial acumen could help to identify potential obstacles put up by your competitors.
Financial awareness
Do you employees really understand the current and future financial implications their decisions have on your business? More importantly, do they understand the key drivers of financial performance?
Communication
It may be cliche, but when it comes to commercial skills, communication is key. Whether this is part of a client facing role, or behind the scenes, communicating potential problems efficiently and effectively is part and parcel of commercial skills training.
Identify strengths in others
The employees destined for the top understand they can’t run the show alone. Identifying and utilising the strengths in others not only improves efficiency but also identifies the need for other tailored financial training programmes.
Prioritising
Prioritising is an essential element of commercial skills training, but in order to begin to prioritise, employees require transparency when it comes to the organisation's mission and aims.
Marrying up priorities between your staff and business goes a long way, and similarly, it is your responsibility, as an employer to prioritise the development and training of commercial skills in order to prepare your employees to continue to navigate your business through uncertainty.