Retain Top Talent

Only 30% of employees feel that the rewards their employer offers are adequate and dissatisfaction with the way they are administered. Are we fooling ourselves - most employers think they are offering plenty of rewards and would probably peg themselves at least an 8 on a 10 point scale.

Why the difference between employee and employer perceptions?

Interesting research article from Sloan on the implications of hybrid work - both the positive and negative elements. Do you allow your employees a hybrid work environment? How hard do you work to overcome the culture obstacles?

The story here doesn't folllow cause and effect. Too easy to pin blame on the company. We don't know any of the background issues of why the existing staff was not promoted. However, I would fault the company for a lack of honesty, trust, and openness in communicating the role expectations and the exact reasons an internal promotion was not made.

Almost all my clients first look to internal promotions before hiring from the outside. Sometimes, the internal candidates are not strong enough. I always recommend being very clear with everyone about expectations and interview process. All candidates, regardless of source (recruiter, internal, ads, off the street) should be put through the same exact steps, questions, and process to compare apples to apples.

I couldn't stop laughing when reading this short article on workplace myths - what false assumptions do you hold for your workforce or team?

In the 5 workshops I did this week on our Vistage program titled "You're NOT the Person I Hired" for Terry Buske and Robin Stanaland in Houston - I shared the Gallup categorization of 3 groups of employees - one of which is that roughly 50 percent of your workforce is disengaged - at first no one could believe that most of their employees couldn't be happy and satisfied.

Myth Number 1 - engagement and satisfaction is not magical. You have to launch a series of tactics that allow your employees to become engaged and self-motivated. #PowerofVistage

One of the sad trughts about working life is that many organizations have negative vibes or toxic elements. As an executive recruiter, I hear these stories every day. 

How do your employees view your culture - negative or positive? What initiatives are you working on to make the culture more positive?

So many of my small business and entrepreneurial clients want to portray their organization as a family-oriented culture. Here's an opposing viewpoint on the idea of a family-oriented culture. Where do you draw the line - what type of culture are you trying to create?

I made some comments in my last few posts on the idea of building a dream team. Executive hiring has been well documented in research studies to show it fails over 50% of the team. The number ONE reason - not defining the outcomes, deliverables, expectations, results, metrics, and KPI improvement desired.

The result is that half or more of the candidates you hire fail to achieve your desired results. I'm probably understating this issue by a dramatic margin.

How many of the department heads and executives you've hired failed to live up to or exceed your expectations?

One of the most appealing elements of a company for many senior staff and managers is how much of a learning culture exists. Very few companies can claim and describe in specific examples their learning culture. Yet, boredom, stagnation, and the lack of learning is one of the major reasons employees are willing to leave their current job for greener pastures.

Are you losing good people because you don't have a learning culture?

Here's another great idea on employee engagement. Conduct career coaching for your employees to help them realize their dreams - boost productivity, lower turnover, and improve retention. What's the number one issue holding you back? Is it not having someone who could do a needs assessment and develop a plan - hire a fractional or part-time HR executive to help you get it set up. Don't let the lack of capability inside your organization be the constraint.

One of the big trends in employee engagement is around work-life balance and work hours flexibility. Another good article here on companies experimenting with moving to a 4-day workweek. Is this on your agenda to examine and consider as another tool to boost employee productivity and retention?

I just had this conversation with a client yesterday who was struggling with employee retention of highly technical senior consultants. One of the issues was a weak training, growth, development plan for each consultant.

As a recruiter with over 30 years of experience, and 30 years of speaking to Vistage/TEC groups on hiring and employee engagement, I've found that one of the top 3 reasons people are open to leaving their jobs is a lack of learning and professional growth - I'm not talking about promotions - I'm addressing the issue of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Your employees want to get better, master their work, become more competent, and have a greater impact.

When you don't provide the opportuties for this to occur for your employees, they become disengaged, unhappy, and dissatisfied. They start giving you the rock bottom level of effort they think you'll tolerate and they start looking for a new job.

When are we going to show our employees we're willing to invest in them? #PowerofVistage

One of my greatest frustrations with many companies is the lack of using technology to enhance the employee experience, engagement, build culture, create a vibrant appreciation environment, and boost communication. Who wouldn't want this?

Here's the quote that really got me thinking about this issue:

"Many organizations fear that using technology in the workplace will only cause employees to waste time on social media and games when they should be working. However, it is not so. Technology is a blessing for the modern-day workplace."

I heard a Vistage Speaker during Covid that said all Vistage companies are now technology companies - regardless of their product/service. Unfortunately, I find few entrepreneurial businesses jumping on this bandwagon. So much to be gained through the simple use of technology in the workplace. #PowerofVistage

Are you in a recovery mode of trying to gain back your drop in employee engagement. Here's a scary statistic "Almost half (44%) of respondents reported having no learning and development opportunities available to them by their employer during the pandemic."

Another example of the direct link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction - how can we not accept the need to start launching initiatives to raise employee engagement?

Organizations who embrace a coaching culture among their leadership see better outcomes and results. The problem is that most managers are terrible coaches - they've never been trained, coached themselves, guided, mentored, or taught best practices in coaching.

Yet this is fundamental to the issue that over 70 percent of employee engagement (read: productivity and effort) is tied to their manager.

When are you going to start teaching your management team how to coach?

Some interesting and thought provoking ideas around sales team turnover and retention. Are you at risk of losing 1/3 of your sales team in the coming year - perhaps some of your best performers since those are the ones who tend to go first.

This is a good example that you can't apply generic sterotypes to different age groups. Top performers exist at every level. The question is whether you want to work hard enough to attract them?

Is your on-boarding effective. One of the statements in this article that caught my eye was "28% of new employees were unsure of their responsibilities and goals." Gallup shows this metric as 50% or more of all employees don't know what's expected of them. This sounds trite and simplistic but it is the most fundamental element of employer and employee success.

How well does your on-boarding program reinforce the expectations, outcomes, deliverables, metrics, and KPIs for the role?

One to ones are the most valuabe tool in enhancing employee performance, engagement and trust. Nothing remotely comes close to this managerial/executive activity. It's at the heart of the Vistage CEO program.

Here's an interesting article from HBR for candidates trying to assess in the interview process whether you chew people up and burn them out - or is their a fair balance of workload, and challenges?

Here's a WAKE UP call: Why do so many companies resist going hybrid, or regret it after moving in that direction. A recent study shows that "85% of leaders believe the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.

This lack of trust in that your employees are not working hard, goofing off, not putting in their full effort, and giving you less than adequate productivity is silly.

The problem is not the employee - the problem is the employer who refuses to set specific quantifiable outcomes, deliverables, expectations, results, KPIs and metrics around performance.

When employees don't know what you expect, instead of giving full productive effort, they instead provide the minimum necessary to not get fired.

This survey result is very sad in that only 14% of employees feel their goals will help them to achieve great things - how depressing, uninspiring, and de-motivating.

As you are probably aware, we focus on defining goals, outcomes, deliverables and expecations in a time-based quantifiable format as the core of our workshops in the Vistage/TEC commuity with our Hiring Program "You're NOT the Person I Hired" and our engagement program "You're the Person We Want to KEEP".

Not only is the process of defining success and helping your employees realize their dreams important for hiring, on-boarding, and performance management - it's the number ONE issue that allows employees to self-motivate.

By not cascading goals and outcomes through-out your organization - are you inadvertently de-motivating your employees? #POWERofVistage

Here's a real stunner - its' one of the top five reasons for job change when I speak to women executives. Not sure the research is valid from a technical point of view - looking at Glassdoor comments - however, the authors may have poked the bear on this one and opened up an issue most companies would rather hide.

Here's the statement that grabbed me: "toxic corporate culture is the number one cause of employee resignations, and it’s ten times more likely to contribute to turnover than inadequate compensation."

It's hard to believe this still exists in most companies today. I guess it's hard to change the underlying culture of companies without the CEO taking direct action to make that change. Almost everyone of my direct and extended female family members have experienced some level of toxic work behavior toward women in every job they've held.

Are some of your best people - particularly women - leaving due to a toxic culture in your company? Have you tried to measure this independently?

In both of my workshops for Vistage/TEC with small businesses and entrepreneurial companies around hiring and employee engagement, I try to focus the conversation on performance not on gender or other irrelevant factors to success. #PowerofVistage

I am a huge proponent of using metrics and KPIs to determine success. If you've seen either our popular Vistage/TEC program "You're NOT the Person I Hired" or "You're the Person We Want to KEEP" - you'll that a core element of both programs is the issue of defining successful outcomes. The traditional job description is a worthless and useless tool for measuring and predicting success.

One of the key human capital metrics is eNPS. Here is an article that explores this metric in granular detail and provides some insight into the elements that comprise the metric. Why don't more HR executives use this as a measure of success for their initiatives?

One of things I press hard on in my Vistage Workshop titled "You're the Person We Want to Keep!" is that the number two element of employee engagement is having a vibrant and rigorous employee appreciation culture, initiatives, and programs. Lacking this effort makes your employees question whether they want to work in your organization. Are you doing enough to show your appreciation?