Your small business can’t grow unless your people do.

Ask any business owners what their goals are, and you’re likely to hear the word “growth” when they describe success. However, that growth doesn’t happen on its own. It takes a great deal of effort and support from the people of your business—your employees.

For your business to achieve growth, the people of your organization also have to grow, but it’s amazing to see how few companies invest time and effort into developing their employees.

By development, I’m not talking about the annual “check-it-off-the-list” performance appraisal. At best, that’s a rearview approach to worker performance, not a forward-looking solution that grows the skills of your employees—which in turn helps you grow your business.

Where Are You Going?

To develop employees, you have to have a good understanding of where you’re going. Oh, I know, you’re headed straight to the top, right? But what does that really mean? Have you figured out the various growth or revenue stages of your business and what your organization might look like in terms of staffing?

Let’s say you’re about to double revenue. Have you considered what positions will need to be filled to make sure that you can manage the extra work? Who in your organization then is being primed to fill the newly expanded roles? How can you get them the skills they need so that, when the time arrives, they are ready to go?

And how do you give your employees more responsibility if you don’t know what those responsibilities might be? Worse yet, how do you increase responsibility when your individual employees might not have the skill set to manage it? Too often, companies put great employees into management roles without giving them the tools to be effective. Even though they were great employees before the switch, they’ll probably fail miserably because they were placed in the role before they were ready.

All you’ve done is blow out a great emp- loyee— and likely ticked off everyone who had to report to them. That’s a classic lack of development, but development needs to take place at all levels of your organization, not just with employees moving into management.

Growth Doesn’t Happen by Accident

Just as you intentionally grow your business, you need to intentionally grow your employees. Organized and intentional discussions with them every three or four months are a really useful way to pinpoint areas of strength and weakness, both within your organization and the skills of your employees.

Are your employees able to keep up with rapidly changing demands and skills in your company’s areas of expertise? Are you providing ample training and working on the things they could improve on? Better yet, are you tailoring their work with you to maximize the skills they’re really good at?

Just as you’re filling the talent gaps in your business, you’re filling the talent gaps in your employees.

Unintended Consequences

And there’s a positive, unintended consequence to putting effort into development: retention. That’s one little word with a very big impact. It’s estimated that losing an employee costs about five times that person’s annual base salary.

Guess what? When you intentionally build skills and develop employees toward the goals of your business, they’re more likely to stay with you. I hear all the time that investment in training and development is like making an investment in their departure, but it isn’t true. Employees feel valued and want to stay when you work with them to develop their skills and experience. They want to be a contributor.

Giving employees a road map and candidly discussing the things they do well and the skills they need to further develop helps them better understand not only their role with you, but also the contributions they are making to the overall goals of the business. That’s what the workforce of today demands and expects—to be part of something bigger than they are.

Easy Is Never Going to Cut It

The annual review and compensation increase are pretty easy if you just do a basic performance appraisal—but if you truly want a world-class organization, easy is never going to cut it.

Taking the time to intentionally craft a meaningful performance and develop-ment feedback process—where both you and your employees have a voice, where a candid dialogue can take place and actions result—is one of the more positive things you can do for your employees and for your business.

Before you drag that stale, outdated, check-off-the-box performance appraisal form out for another year, why not think about creating a development framework that has more meaning for your business and employees? Your employees will thank you for it, and business growth will be inevitable.