Balance sheets. Revenue. Sales. Visible data can almost always quantify a company’s ‘success’, and those seen to directly deliver that ‘success’ are usually valued the most in an organisation. But a company shouldn’t just reward the headline-makers. While the goal-scorer might provide that crucial final touch, who’s providing the critical assist? And who’s assisting the assist? Who are the people in your company that are helping make the wins happen? The difference-makers, whose key interventions aren’t quite so visible. How do you find them? How do you recognise and cultivate them? Your employee retention and engagement might just depend on it.

Talent might win a game, but it’s teamwork that wins championships. If you’re not paying attention to the people supporting the defence and setting up the goals, you’ll find that the talent doesn’t always hold up on its own. If the value of your ‘assists’ isn’t immediately discernible to themselves or the organisation, it’s unlikely that they’ll stay, and even when they do, they won’t be motivated to assist in the long-term.

This is why holistic visibility over your organisation is essential. It’s not only about recognising the underrated employee who’s assisting others; it’s about the people who are assisting the assists, it’s about the communicators, the collaborators, the connectors; it’s about the people who have the potential to assist others. Where are the ‘assists’ in your organisation? Do you currently have the resources to find them? And when you see them, how do you help and encourage them to assist others?

See the whole team, not just the talent.

Talent might win a game, but it’s teamwork that wins championships. If you’re not paying attention to the people supporting the defence and setting up the goals, you’ll find that the talent doesn’t always hold up on its own. If the value of your ‘assists’ isn’t immediately discernible to themselves or the organisation, it’s unlikely that they’ll stay, and even when they do, they won’t be motivated to assist in the long-term.

This is why holistic visibility over your organisation is essential. It’s not only about recognising the underrated employee who’s assisting others; it’s about the people who are assisting the assists, it’s about the communicators, the collaborators, the connectors; it’s about the people who have the potential to assist others. Where are the ‘assists’ in your organisation? Do you currently have the resources to find them? And when you see them, how do you help and encourage them to assist others?

Help your people assist each other.

Visibility and transparency within your organisation isn’t just a question of embracing new data; it’s a cultural mindset. Creating a workplace culture that cultivates connections and encourages collaboration, innovation and knowledge sharing requires everyone’s involvement. The most significant barrier to this is the notion of hierarchy. Multiple levels are inevitable in any organisation, but hierarchal structures reinforce the idea that important connections should only be sought from people on your immediate career-level. But everyone within your organisation has the capacity to learn something from someone else and assist the wins.

Recognising the value of a simple connection is key to understanding the importance of the ‘assists’ within an organisation. Changing the cultural narrative in your company is about demystifying titles and seeing employees as people with an endless array of skills to contribute and share. Once we embrace the idea that a vital contribution to a company’s success can exist in many different forms, the data displaying these contributions becomes both informative and instructive. When your company’s connections become visible, you can optimise your workplace culture to be full of ‘assists’ and winning goals, celebrated by the whole team.

Make your ‘assists’ visible.

Grasp provides a breakdown of your organisation in real-time. This new level of transparency offers a broad glimpse of every single connection in your company and a deep insight into precisely who is assisting who, and how that assistance is being given. Grasp’s data also highlights something that statistics and the naked eye can’t always see: the potential of your employees and the type of help they might need. Recognising the ‘assists’ in your company is about learning how they’re able to extract the potential from their colleagues and implementing this on a wider scale. Was it a simple video-call? A face-to-face meeting? How did this communication start? What was the result? Grasp joins all of the dots for you while putting the spotlight on these crucial connections so you can actively encourage them.

Your company is full of talented individuals in every department, at every level. When only the ‘goal scorers’ are celebrated, you risk dividing the workplace and creating more silos. Promoting an inclusive, talent-retaining culture means valuing the entire workforce for all of their contributions and the diverse skills they all have to offer.

Don’t let your ‘assists’ slip away.

To value anyone’s contributions, you must first understand who is doing what. While silos are a danger to any collaborative culture; silent, unrecognised contributions are the enemy of a unified workforce. The ‘assists’ are the unheralded heroes of your organisation. Before we rush to reward the individual who pushed that crucial deal over the line, let’s celebrate the unsung individuals who put the initial foundations in place. Let’s think long-term and start recognising their value in real-time now, not when they’re long gone.