Retain Top Talent

I am always in search of technology applications that raise employee effort, motivation, learning, and performance. Are you in a constant search evaluating these tools for enhancing the capability of your workforce, whether you have 15 people or 1500?

I heard a speaker in my Vistage group make the claim that every company was now a technology company. If you truly want to unlock the potential of your workforce - old school methods are no longer effective. Without leveraging technology you'll be left in the dust.

I am in shock how many of my clients are still doing things old school - such as no technology in managing success factors, rewards and recognition, or skills/knowledge inventories layered with a learning platform. How about all the on-boarding that is still manual and paper driven? The tools are out there to boost the productivity of your workforce and they are very cheap when compared to the increased output.

This article showcases one example of a tool that is becoming more popular for training, learning, and development - particularly in a work at home or hybrid work structure.

What's your next move to embed technology to unlock your workforce productivity?

My takeaway from this article about improving employee engagement was that it starts with good management. Unfortunately, in many of the companies I've been invited to help with retention, engagement, hiring, and performance management strategies, the sad truth is that many of your managers have no clue what it means to be a good manager.

No one has ever given them sophisticated training on being a great manager, no one has ever mentored them to improve their game, and most managers lack the proactivity and initiative to go above and beyond to learn on their own.

The result is that a signficant portion of your workforce (50 percent) is disengaged and showing you minimal levels of productivity - just enough so they don't get fired. It's a shame that most organizations don't come close to realizing their potential since their management team is so weak in the skills of managing - most likely along the lines of being unconsciously incompetent.

Is it time to pivot and relook at the process of developing your managers through a new lens of boosting engagement and productivity. How could you afford not to train, develop, and coach?

One of the programs I do for Vistage Groups is on Employee Retention and Engagment (productivity). A key tool and simple tactic that emerges from this workshop is re-investment in people. One of my recommendations is that every employee should have a personal development plan - 1 or 2 things that could help them to become more effective and have a greater impact. Is this part of your cultural fabric?

It's especially important for your top performers - the pareto group  where you get 80% of your results. If you're not aggressively developing this group, you risk losing them to competitors.

What are some of the key elements in driving employee engagement, productivity, and effort - autonomy, decision making, authority, control over their work, not being micro-managed.

Good article coming at the issue of how do you empower your employees? This quote of a survey is frightening:

"those who felt disempowered were rated at the 24th percentile of engagement while those with a high level of empowerment came in at the 79th percentile."

Are you in the bottom quartertile of engagement (productivity) becuase your employees feel powerless to effect/impact their job?

Here's the quote that reinforces most of the attitudes about remote work. 

“If I can’t see them working, how do I know they’re actually working?”

This sums up the managerial attitude of the vast majority of my clients. It covers for the excuse of not investing time to define expectations, conduct on-going performance management through one-to-ones, and learning how to coach teams.

Rather than staying stuck in a 1070s command-control mode, when we start working on the things that raise employee engagement and lead to increased productivity, we actually don't have to see our subordinates doing work to trust they are being productive.

I know it's hard to let go of tribal management practices and the tactics that most managers were taught (direct line of sight). The question is when will you start experimenting with best practices to unleash the productivity in your employees that you are missing?

Good reminders about managing with a hybrid or remote workforce = key points of being intentional about cultural issues/change, feedback, and ensuring employees are connected to your purpose - that they matter.

I've been talking about these issues in my Vistage Workshop on Managing Remotely in a Crisis for 9 months - yet companies seem to be very slow to adopt some of these basic elements. Why? Are they too fuzzy, no one available to lead the charge, or the CEO doesn't buy into creating a great remote workforce culture?

We've known this to be an issue for quite some time. Studies are starting to show the effect of stress and anxiety on engagement and productivity. The big question is how your organization is responding to this new trend and potential crisis given the fact that we're going to be in a Covid-related environment probably well into 2022.

Good article from HBR on raising employee engagement and productivity through autonomy. How are you providing your remote workers during the pandemic with more autonomy to encourage productivity?

Some good action steps for improving employee engagement and higher levels of impact/productivity.

Here's the quote that got my attention:

"Gallup found that just one in three U.S. employees felt they’d received recognition for a job well done in the past week."

That's a horrible metric. What are you doing to build a strong recognition program into the fabric of your culture?

You'll never realize high productivity from your workforce until they feel you appreciate their effort through recognition.