Retain Top Talent

The part of expressing caring, interest, sensitivity, support, and empathy goes down the tubes when we feel isolated, lonely, and separated from our boss, organization, and co-workers.

As I've been reminding everyone in our Managing Remotely in a Crisis Workshop:

"Instead of jumping right to agenda item no 1 (or as soon as Harold finally located his unmute button) we should take 5 min. to ask how people are. Or take a virtual lunch or coffee break without any other purpose, than sharing how we are feeling on, what feels like day 913 of working in the same pants"

How much of this dialogue is happening in your organization - or is it only about the numbers and the metrics in conversations?

What a great story that reflects praise, gratitude, appreciation, and recognition. A letter to the parents. Duh! Why haven't I thought of that as a tactic around motivation? How many of you have written a note to an employee's parents?

Yesterday I published an article on the importance of creating a purpose-driven organization. On the heels of that article, this one pops up on Forbes about giving your employees a "cause" for being part of your organization.

The SEALs get it, Starbucks gets it. Do your Employees understand the purpose and cause behind your organization?  IF NOT, are you at risk of losing good people when they hear this message from your competitors as the job market shifts from advertising to poaching.

I've been talking about this idea for years - great leaders show their appreciation, gratitude, and caring toward their teams and employees.

Not having gratitude and appreciation as part of your core values can be one of the reasons your best performers will be poached in the next year or two.

Fixing a culture where there is a lack of gratitude and appreciation is very simple - why don't more CEOs and Executives take action toward building it into the fabric of their organizations?

We can all agree with the article headline that there is a direct correlation between employee happiness and business success.

How do you focus in this area, particularly when surveys, such as the Gallup engagement survey, show that engagement, happiness, and satisfaction is less than 30%?

I liked the way the author of this article broke down 4 key areas to focus on to improve employee happiness: trust, health, recognition, and culture.

What initiatives are you currently implementing to focus on these 4 key areas?

Is anyone conducting employee satisfaction or happiness research, surveys, studies in their organization? What tools are using and how effective are these in improving employee happiness? Check out this tool I stumbled across called Gusto - would love to hear your feedback on what looks like a SaaS approach to employee surveys

I wanted to slap myself in the forehead after reading this article. Of course, the mission statement is critical to success. It's one of core elements of culture, focusing employees, and gaining alignment around employee motivation and the purpose of your organization.

How strong is your mission statement? Is it a difference maker in hiring and retention?

Out with the outdated sadistic approach to annual performance reviews. This article talks about how progressive companies are rethinking their approach to performance management and ensuring flawless execution among their employees.

I liked this article about igniting passion in your workforce. I am not sure I would use the word passion - I might replace it with focused, energized, engaged, self-motivated. When these elements occur, employees tend to show high levels of personal initiative and proactivity.

When missing, people tune out, lean outward, find other ways to become self-actualized than at work, and generally act bored and disinterested (not engaged).

One of my constant efforts as a high school girls basketball coach and management consultant around hiring/retention is to continually be taking the pulse, and developing actuion plans to keep the passion high.

What do you do frequently with your team beyond reviewing daily to-do activities?

Although the article is focused on the restaurant industry, they are a lot of good lessons for all segments. I really liked the author's ability to separate employee happiness from employee engagement. Just because they are happy at work, doesn't mean they are engaged.

Interesting article reinforcing the idea that people want to have an impact with meaningful work. How do you show your employees that they matter and that they are making progress?

What a great idea for retention and employee engagement. You've probably noticed that I've been writing a lot about employee engagement, recognition, appreciation, happiness, and retention.

The job market is rapidly shifting from how do I find people to how do I keep my best ones from being poached.

A big part of engagement and retention is showing appreciation, gratitude, empathy, caring, and recognition.

What could be more simple than uploading your company logo to hallmark, using some standard cards and sentiments on the inside, and then writing a short note of appreciation?

You'll change your culture dramatically overnight for a just a few dollars. I use these hallmark cards on a regular basis with employees, consultants, non-profit volunteers, and customers.

What's holding you back from a few minutes to create custom appreciation cards - either online or formal printed cards? It's almost a no-brainer to invest 30-60 minutes to try this tactic.

My experience of consulting with hundreds of companies on an annual basis for the past 30 years is that very few companies have an effective and robust non-monetary reward/recognition program covering such topics as praise, fun achievement awards, learning and development.

Although it's not possible to motivate employees, you can create an environment for self-motivation by showing your employees that you care and are appreciative when they knock it out of the park or act as a role-model in demonstrating one of your core values. Not having a robust program to show appreciation and gratitude means that your employees will not be motivated to do anything beyond the minimum expectation you tolerate to allow them to keep their jobs. How depressing!

Shelia Kamuda has a nice blog and great little video series about employee engagement, satisfaction, culture, and workplace behaviors. I recommend reading and watching the content she shares.

A large part of employee engagement and satisfaction is work that matters - employees derive a high value from what they do. Do you look closely at these issues for all jobs - particularly those on the front line?

Very few companies do a great job recognizing and rewarding individual and team performance. I liked this article because it reinforces some very simple ideas about recognition.

If you're recognizing outstanding performance, why would your employees continue to go above and beyond the call of duty for you?

I've been exploring how gamification might work in areas like referrals, but had not yet considered it around employee engagement and recognition.

I'm curious if anyone has started to use gamification on the retention side vs. hiring side?