Company’s working culture is generally tended towards treating the extroverts right and helping them thrive effectively in a sea of economic change. Introverts are the most overlooked people at work.

Extroverts are those who love to interact with the team, and are more active during team meetings attending events and social gatherings. These extroverts actively volunteer in group corporate activities and are perceived to easily perform visible feelings, emotions and ideas about their colleagues and leaders.

It is undeniable that employers and HR managers are easily allured by the public speaking skills, confidence and attitudes of extroverts to meet the job roles and contribute to business growth.

Introverts, on the other hand, have specific differences from the extroverts  – they are perceived as shy, lack of ideas and standoffish. Some people even think they are selfish and have closed personality, recharge with time for themselves and have their own unique ways and approaches towards situations and work life.

Just because they are not good at publicly showcasing their ideas or showing up at happy hours after work, doesn’t mean they’re not valuable team players or future business leaders. Barack Obama, the president of United States is one of the popular introverts who is fighting the notions, that introverts can indeed be good business leaders owing to their practical approaches and unique ways.

Jennifer Kahnweiler, an executive coach and author, estimates 40% of today’s business executives are introverts. Therefore, HR managers and employers ought to pay attention to the silent personality types. Through proper training, right grooming and fair treatment at work, introverts could prove to be valuable assets for the company to add significant business value and returns.

Time and space for themselves

Susan Chain, the author of Quite: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking stated that solitude is the air for introverts to breathe. Instead of forcing the introverts to spontaneously share ideas in a meeting, employers could provide them with some alone time to come back with greater ideas that make a difference to business, society and the team.

HR managers and supervisors could provide special rooms for the introverts. Quiet office or cubicles are ideal workspaces for introverts, as too much of external influence can prove to be mentally draining on them to impact performance and productivity levels at work.

See: How To Keep Creativity Alive When You Are The Boss?

Accept the silence

Supervisors and colleagues should not expect the introverts to talk much about something, sometimes they would keep silent to think first before speaking up.

To force the introverts to be more proactive with talkathons is impossible. On the other hand, this quality of being silent can prove to be a boon for organisations as when introverts are allowed a chance to speak  they can reveal themselves as good communicators.

Bosses should not threaten the introvert workforce to give instant responses towards a cold issue as this can make them feel stressed out. Therefore, it is advisable for HR managers to consistently remind people in a team to be equally accepting of other personality types and treat the introverts with patience.

Personal chat

There is no excuse to discriminate the introvert employees as those who lack effective communication skills, for they do not open up and get talking at every opportune moment. They take time to seek clarity of ideas, thoughts and approaches before arriving at a solution to uproot the cause of problem.

HR managers and senior leaders could implement personal chat to discuss issues, supervise their work and ask for tasks’ revisions if needed, instead of passing sarcastic remarks and mocking at their introverted personality in front of other colleagues.

Discover their interest

To find out someone’s interest who is not talkative is quite hard, but still it can be done through some ways such as personal chat or closely monitoring their posts on social media platforms. Simply provide them with polite gestures such as t-shirt of their favourite football team or a motivating note about their performance, could help them prep up their interest levels and socialise more with peers and colleagues at work.

Working with silent people is far different from the extrovert at work, and managing the silent doers, monitoring their acts that reflect on their performance and productivity is a daunting exercise for most HR personnel. However, HR managers and employers could steal a chance to groom, nurture and encourage these silent talents with fair treatment, and right business strategy.

Read also: Best Team Building Activities HR Can Adopt