Retain Top Talent

"While leaders worry about the Great Resignation, there’s a concerning new trend emerging amongst burnt out employees – “Quiet Quitting” – in short, when an employee is physically present at work but have made the decision to do the bare minimum amount of work to stay employed and collect a paycheck."

The issue is not burnout -the issue is a lack of employee engagement - not defining expectations, weak reward/recognition programs, poor to non-existent learning and development, horrible managers who don't know how to coach - the list goes on.

As Gallup shows - 50-70 pecent of your workforce is disengaged - resulting in employees who give you the absolute minimum effort. This Quiet Quitting is a NOT a function of employee burnout - its a lack of strategic leadership about driving high performing teams to deliver great results.

Great two presentations at the end of last week with Dick Singer's Vistage Groups.  We had outstanding discussions about moving beyond posting generic job descriptions on generic job boards, using a definintion of success to drive where we find great employees and using it as a focal point in interviewing, and putting on a marketing hat to build a compelling messaging platformto attract the best.

A growing number of workers describe themselves as actively disengaged in their jobs. Some 81% of leaders surveyed said employee recognition isn’t a company priority, and roughly two-thirds said they have no budget dedicated to it. Just 23% of employees strongly agreed that they were satisfied with the amount of recognition they receive.

Next to not defining success/outcomes/expectations in clear precise language, the number two reason for employee disengagement (low productivity) is a culture that is not rooted in appreciated, gratitude, and thankfulness for the effort of your employees. Fixing it is quite easy.

The head-scratching moment for me is why companies prefer to endure low productivity, poor customer satisfaction, and below average financial returns - because they are unwilling to invest in creating initiatives around non-monetary employee recognition and rewards. So stupid not to implement of rigorous set of best practices.

Here's another good article on the subject of how important someone's manager is to their level of engagement and retention.

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"line managers aren’t promoted for their people skills. Most people find themselves managing a team because they were high-performers in their former roles – not because they had exceptional people skills. Chucking new managers into the deep end with limited resources and training can result in conflict, micro-management, unrealistic expectations and poor communication."

This is a little different take on what I'm usually sharing or publishing. My experience, as I've mentioned before, is that most managers and executives are not good at managing and leading people - they've never been trained in effective best practices. This is one of the great benefits of belonging to a executive/CEO roundtable like Vistage to learn these skills and abilities as you build your team.

One of the core skills of success as a manager/leader is listening and most of us do a terrible job of listening without judging the speaker. Perhaps, it's time to teach our managers and leaders how to be better listeners?

There are a number of good ideas here in this article. The one that resonated with me was the first - get to know your employees.

Your employees want to know you care about them as people - not just items on the payroll register. In my workshops to CEOs/Presidents, I ask how many know the names and ages of the children of their direct reports. Less than 50% can answer that question. It makes me sad that executives don't care about the people who work for them by not asking questions of what goes on outside of work. Do you really care? When your team doesn't thinkyou care, they are already seeking greener pastures elsewhere.

Another element of the employee experience or engagement to consider: do your employees feel like the belong? How would this get manifested in day-to-day interactions?

1. How teams work together and whether everyone on the team feels valued.

2. Do your employees feel like they matter - do you reinforce this by teaching your managers how to show people they matter to each other, to the boss, the organization, and your customers?

3. Do you force opportunities for relationship development and collaboration so that it's not left up to chance or random events?

Barry

Are you rethinking the traditional approach to requiring people to work standard hours because "if I can't see them, I don't trust them." Get out of this 1970s approach to managing people. Employees have different expectations today about work, especially the younger generations. If you want to hire and retain a great team, maybe it's time to rethink your traditional attendence policies.

I'm getting more and more questions from my clients regarding effective on-boarding programs. Most companies are still stuck in a 1970s framework of on-boarding. Here are some good ideas to think about as you design your on-boarding strategy. Remember - the key is to help people realize they've had made the best decision of their career by joining your organization.

I am a huge proponent of tracking metrics and KPIs to measure success around initiatives aimed at employee engagement, the employee experience, and retention. Here are some ideas on beginning the path of determining whether HR is effective in engagement, retention, and employee productivity.

Interesting article in Fortune about the capability of hybrid work flexibility to reduce turnover rates. A lot of my clients are struggling right now in trying to determine whether to bring everyone back or continue in a hybrid model.

Encouraging workplace friendships might seem to contradict what we've been taught historically  that we should keep work and outside work separate - sterile - a sharp dividing line.

The reality is that a hallmark of a high performing team is that all the team members know each other very well, they consider some of their teammates to be personal friends, they appreciate the differences and different motivations.

The big question is what's the employer's role in helping to build these relationships beyond "leaving it up to the employees?" Do you hold team building exercises, lunch and learns together, conversations around activities that are not work related, celebrating each other. Just working together is not enough to develop these relationships that are a critical component of employee engagement.

Good understanding of what drives employee motivation is at the heart of leadership and management. I like the description of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the connection to employee recognition. Most of my clients have minimal or almost non-existent employee non-monetary reward and recognition systems.

There is no more powerful tool to manage performance, develop boss-subordinate trust, and engage and motivate employees than an effective one-to-one.

Why do most managers and executives FAIL to use one-to-ones effectively?

A good reminder on the importance of learning and development. Next to not defining success for each role, and secondly not having a rigorous reward and recognition program, learning and development is the 3rd major element of why so many employees are disengaged (50-70 percent). The really sad news is that those disengaged employees are giving you the minimum level of productivity they belive you will  tolerate to allow them to continue to receive a paycheck.

In a world where the new normal is a hybrid work environment, why are we not embracing the multitude of digital tools to deliver training, knowledge, skill improvement, and coaching?

One of the reasons most companies don't pay much attention to upgrading, refining, and conducting process improvement against their hiring./recruiting process and their engagement/retention process is that they've not taken the time to understand the costs of errors and mistakes, and there are no metrics/KPIs being used to measure progress or set targets.

I've published numerous times on the key theme of this article - the managers who supervise the bulk of your employees are one of the primary keys in engagement and retention.

MOST managers/executives are terrible at leading people. They are outstanding individuals - however they have never been trained or coached in best practices of managing people. Is it time for some remedial training to help your management team? An especially important element since Gallup identifies managers as 70% of the reason employees either lean in and give you full productive effort or lean back and give you the minimum they think you'll tolerate to allow them to remain on the payroll system.

Good fundamental article on the foundation of employee engagement. The point that caught my interest at the beginning was "quality management is necessary for the relationship between an employee and employer to be at its best."

The core problem in most companies is that the vast majority of managers are horrible at managing, supervision, and leadership. They are wonderful individuals, but they've never been trained in best practices for measuring success, motivating team members, giving feedback, showing their team members that they care about them, and are capable of showing their gratitude.

Is it time to conduct some remedial training of your mangement team to begin to put quality management in place? Just because someone carries a manager, director, or VP title - doesn't correlate that they are a good manager.

Here is a decent article on employee morale and the importance for teams. Are your team leaders and managers well trained in how to drive high levels of morale and do you have a series of action steps, initiatives, programs to bring this generic concept down to the reality of day-to-day work in teams?

This is a reverse angle on interviewing - questions a potential candidate might ask of you. How would you respond to these questions? Everyone talks about their culture is family oriented and cares deeply about their people - is that really true? Could you offer specific examples to illustrate how your values get reflected day-to-day with employees?

One of the most important elements of employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention is continuous and regular feedback. KILL the traditional performance management process with it's once a year review cycle. Not only is it woefully inadequate, but it borders on a sadistic approach to feedback.

When of the struggles I hear from my clients is what is appreciation vs. recognition - how do know it when we see it? We don't want to reinforce just showing up to work - but going above and beyond. What would that look like at an observable level?

Everyone is talking about managing the employee experience - but what is that? How does it affect specific initiatives? Not managing it well puts you on the wrong end of the metrics around the "great resignation."

Whose responsiblity is it to foster or create  a framework for developing work related relationshps/friendships? It's not enough to just work together and hope it works.

A hallmark of high performing teams is that the team members really like working with each other. This is done through team-buildling exercises, outside events, sharing meals together, lunch and learns. Are you doing enough to allow people on your team to develop strong personal relationships?

Some good ideas around designing a non-monetary reward and recognition process. NOT having a great recognition and reward process is the number two reason (behind not defining success in clear and precise language of KPIs and Metrics) why employees disengage and start looking for a new job.