Fund personal development

If you’ve hired competent people and if you’ve created an environment for deep work, this’ll have a positive side effect. Flow begets flow. People will want to be in the Goldilocks zone all the time, solving challenges that are at the very edge of their capabilities. What’s in the Goldilocks zone today, will be too easy tomorrow. So smart people will want to keep learning and honing their craft.

On one hand, this means that you need to shape work, so it’s challenging. On the other, people need the flexibility to learn the skills that they feel most excited about. With learning, one-size-doesn’t-fit-all. Give your people a discretionary budget each year, so they can learn new skills. Between Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, EdX and other platforms - the world of online learning has never been richer. You can strike corporate partnerships or just let people expense a certain sum of money each year for personal development. 

Throw in benefits such as conference attendance to help people build their professional network. This doesn’t just benefit the employee. It also benefits the company. Remember how weak ties can help find novel solutions to problems? Professional networks are a kind of weak tie.