With the amount of money that top corporations invest in their recruits and their employees, they absolutely need to be sure they are mentoring them as carefully as possible. The key is to make sure you can actually get a return from your top employees which involves equal parts of pushing them to get better and do more, but also making sure they are able to feel satisfied in their current role as well.

Let Them Make Mistakes

Even the best employees need to learn to make mistakes and fail from time to time according to Fortune. When you think about how the top individuals in any organization have risen to the top, it wasn’t because everything came naturally to them, but rather it was because they needed to go through some very difficult times, be pushed to their limits, and still come up with strategies on what would work best. The most important thing for employees at any level is to learn to solve problems when they occur, and as the old saying goes, “calm winds do not make smooth sailors.”

If you really want to find out how strong your employees are, you have to be able to test them from time to time. And, if you want to make sure they can be completely trusted, they have to be comfortable making mistakes and then correcting and learning from those mistakes.

Don’t Leave Them Alone

One of the worst things that any organizations can do is to take the time and effort to hire and train employees at any level, and then let them be. You can’t leave employees alone because they are either moving forward and getting better or else they are wasting time by staying stagnant. You always have to move forward, and a great portion of that progress comes from period evaluations and discussions.

One of the easiest ways for any organization, large or small, to deal with their internal communications at any time is to tap into the power of company townhall events by BlueJeans . Whether it is a one on one conversation, a top executive or manager speaking to a group of individuals at the same point in their careers, or even managers and supervisors talking to an entire department, there is more than enough of an opportunity to create well-rounded employees who are prepared to lead the company forward.

Play Devil’s Advocate

You also need to be sure that employees are kept in check. You want them to think about the consequences of their actions because someday they will be in a position to make their own decisions without anyone monitoring them. One skill they should be comfortable having and should be comfortable using at any given point in their day is the ability to think through their own choices so that they are stronger decision makers and they don’t fail.

Playing devil’s advocate will also force employees to not just think about what their potential idea can accomplish in terms of a solution, but it should also help to get them in the mindset of how their decisions could trickle down into other functions of the organization as well.

Give Them Praise

While it is absolutely important to give your employees praise, another major thing you need to do is to be strategic in how you praise them. Some employees will respond to different sorts of praise than others in different ways. And, while many employees could love to hear compliments, actions could speak louder than words. You could also give them praise to varying degrees without actually praising them just by trusting them with more responsibility and showing them they have earned their roles and respect.

Consider the strategies of praise as listed by CBS News, and you can see some of the very best ways to give employees praise that is truly a compliment but is also a way to continue their ability to learn and grow. Whether it is asking them for help so they can get some real experience, create leadership roles so they can continue to see how things fit together, and even see what is on their mind by asking for their ideas, letting your employees continue to grow with confidence will allow your employees to control their own growth.

Making sure you protect your investment by getting your employees to continue to learn is a tremendous opportunity, but it is also an imperative task to accomplish as well. That is why you should continue to get your employees to work on new things, become excited, and push themselves as far as they can as they continue to rise up the ranks of your company. As long as you continue to push them in new ways and not stick with the same old paper evaluations, then they will get to grow as soon as possible.