Retain Top Talent

Here's an interesting article published by HBR that caused me to reflect and perhaps put myself in my "employee's shoes". I started thinking about their perspective of working from home and feeling isolated, separated from the company culture, loss of interaction and communication, a sudden drop off in feedback from my boss, a complete stop of any engagement/motivational strategies, and a level of fear of losing my job since no one is communicating what's happening with the company. It almost might feel like the management team has put their head in their hands with a "woe is me" attitude, praying that things might get better.

Layer that onto the stress of paycuts, furloughs, lack of direction, home schooling, and 2 spouses working from home.

Might our employees not become angry, upset, frustrated, feeling disconnected? What can we do about it?

The big buzzword in HR today is employee experience. Many companies are undertaking intiatives to improve the employee experience. Unfortunately, as the article point out roughly 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 of these initiatives will produce any sustainable outcome. Here's the quote:

A Mercer survey found that while delivering on EX (employee experience) is the top priority of HR, only 27% of executives believe this will deliver any returns to the business — a result which undermines much of the rationale for EX.

If the record on execution around this fundamental HR initiative is so poor - how can we ensure a higher level of success?

Many of my clients continue to downplay the investment in initiatives around employee engagement and the employee experience. The benefits of small investments in this area pay off huge dividends in a variety of direct profit areas as this article points out.

So, in the face of overwhelming benefits from investments in initiatives around employee engagement - why do we still continue to ignore or hestitate to move in that direction? Is it so far outside the traiditional HR comfort zone, that we're afraid to experiment?

Some of my clients worry that starting down the path of employee engagement will be expensive - giving out awards, hiring an HR professional, creating a budget. This recent Forbes article talks about how to do it on a shoestring budget. One of the shoestring tactics they mention is my favorite one to talk about in my workshops on employee engagement and retention - giving praise. Doesn't cost a dime - but most companies so poorly use it that it's bordering on a worthless tactic. You might consider training your management team how to be better at showing empathy, gratitude, appreciation, and being thankful for the work your employees do daily.

Fascinating TED talk presentation on the flip side of focusing on customer satisfaction by examining the impact of employee satisfaction and the gap in effort, productivity, and impact.

Here's different lens through which to view your employees - new term: the employee engagement lifecycle - also referred as the employee experience. Are we considering our employee's journey from the hiring process through to when they leave? What are the touchpoints, how to build their loyalty and committment, and show them they've made the best decision of their career to be part of our organization? That's a radically different approach than you show up for work and we pay you for being here. Are we ready to make that transition?

There are a few basic elements of creating a great employee experience - listening to staff, having deep and difficult conversations, being flexible, granting autonomy and not micro-managing. How well would you rate your company on these dimensions of employee experience?

I especially liked the paragraph in this article on getting creative around engaging, motivating, involving, stimulating, building team cohesion. The problem is that most companies can't even begin to explore these creative ideas because they haven't yet implemented the basic fundamentals of employee engagement like defining success for the role, having a great recognition process, and doing frequent discussions (one to ones) around subjects of learning, impact, and becoming - stay interviews.

Is your HR manager/director disconnected from what employees want/need in their jobs? Interesting counter-intuitive article suggesting that HR professionals are out of touch with the idea of employee experience/employee engagement.

Fairly sophisticated ideas from HBR on shaping employee experience. Allow me to boil this down to it's most basic elements - like the key concepts I talk about in my workshops on employee engagement.

1. There are some basic fundamental elements of employee engagement that have the most significant impact - such as defining expectations and having a systematic reward program.

2. You must solicit feedback from employees in the form of 1-to-1s (stay interviews), town halls, group meetings, and employee satisfaction surveys.

3. A better communciation plan must be put in place - ideally in partnership with your employees about company information, business vision, personal opportunities.

4. Managers have to be trained to do an effective job of managing their employee expectations, dreams, and vision - as it relates to the  capability of the organization to meet these needs.

Not investing time and effort in these four elements means your just a short stopping point for most hires when they realize the grass is greener somewhere else.