Retain Top Talent

This article pretty much sums up my entire workshop on retention and engagement - "Employee satisfaction hinges on the quality of management".

In most organizations, the managers who are leading the bulk of your employees have no clue what they are doing! They're good people, they've just never been trained, coached, had their hand held, taught, sent to class, and measured around best practices of leading teams.

This is not a new revelation - almost every major business author in the last 2 decades has talked about the importance of managing and leading. Gallup came out with an excellent book on the subject titled "It's the Manager".

Let's think through this logically. If 70-75% of the reason an employee is engaged is based on their manager - meaning they give a 100 percent effort, and love being part of your organization - then should we not help managers know how to engage (defining success, open and transparent communication, developing people, giving great feedback, motivating their team, helping employees understand how they matter, and showing tremendous appreciation and gratitude for what they do).

Most managers have no clue how to execute on these critical engagement activities with their teams. Is it time for some remedial training of your core mangement team?

This is an interesting idea that has been kicked around for a few years - but doesn't seem to have gained much traction. I love it! Can you apply gamification to learning and development to drive better outcomes and results? Might be worth experimenting with some of the ideas mentioned in this article.

The article seems to make this information revolutionary based on their study, but Gallup has been publishing and researching this information for over the past decade. Not defining clear expectations, not having a great culture of appreciation and recognition, and a lack of learning and development are the fundamental reasons 50% or more of your employees are seeking greener pastures right now. Fixing it is easy. My head scratching moment is why employers are not launching initiatives and changes to fix these negative workplace factors.

I have not yet seen any decent studies of the issue related to employees quitting over a lack of support on inflation for US companies. The data from this UK study cannot be too far off where we are in the US.

What I don't understand is how could the movement toward a recession suddenly cause a well-known and sophisticated company to start considering effective performance management? How could these "non-performers" have been allowed to remain on the Island without being voted off?

Does this really reinforce the old adage that a rising tide lifts all boats - we ignore the fundamental elements of effective management in good times. We allow average and mediocre people to remain on the team because their weak effort or lack of performance is covered by the rising tide?

The article reinforces a lot of what I've been preaching over the last few years in my workshops on Managing Remotely and You're the Person We Want to KEEP!

Points raised include setting clear expectations of work rules, when to use various communication platforms, and expectations, deep listening structure and framework, building strong team connections and relationships (a hallmark of high performing teams), and leveraging technology platforms for improving how your employees work together (we're all technology companies now).

Where do you stand on the spectrum of implementing these initiatives?

Are you at risk of losing good people because you're not paying attention to these fundamental issues which lead to higher employee engagement?

This author took more  of a technical perspective on motivation. First, I don't believe you can motivate employees - that comes from core behavior deep inside through parents, and other role models. However, you can create an environment that demotivates your most motivated employees - the pareto group - where you get 80 percent of your results from 20 percent of your workforce.

I'll go with the definition of an engaged employee from Gallup that defines it as employees who show discretionary effort. These are the ones who are self-motivated, proactive, show initiative, don't wait to be told what to do, don't need to be voluntold. They lean in, leap across the line, make suggestions, help their teammates, and get their work done on time.

The question is how do you create an environment where people want to be engaged are are then willing to show discretionary efforT?

The Forbes articles mentions a number of other elements to consider in addition to employee engagement to drive productivity. A couple of big ones are leveraging technology and culture.

My work with thousands of companies over the past 20 years, particularly within the Vistage community, is that most companies cannot articulate their culture. They might have a values statement or a mission statement, but there is no written, commonly-agreed upon culture.  In most cases, the culture is the personality of the CEO or founder.

Many of my clients have been asking questions about compensation - which has been arcing up over the last 12 months as the job market heats up.

Some great examples and specific illustrations for employee recognition and rewards - number two issue behind not defining success in clear precise terms.

When you don't have a "robust" non-monetary reward and recognition system - using available apps and technology - then many of your employees turn off, disengage, and start looking for greener pastures elsewhere.

Are you falling victim to the great resignation becuase you have a weak or mediocre recognition program?

I get asked a lot in my workshops on hiring and on employee engagement - what should we be doing with on-boarding (especially when hiring a virtual/remote team member?) 

Here are some ideas to consider as part of your on-boarding plan.

Two of the top reasons people are leaving is lack of growth - training, development, coaching, new experiences, adding more impact and value -- and a lack of appreciation, gratitude, and recognition for hard work and knocking it out of the park. Why should I work hard if no one cares or recognizes it. Instead, I'll just give the rock bottom minimum effort I think my boss requires to allow me to continue to receive a payroll check.

Beyond mission and value statements, many of my clients struggle to describe accurately their culture - what it is like to work in their unique environment. Here is one of the few articles I've come across that begins to offer a framework and words to describe your culture. The goal should be to have a one page document that accurately describes how employee work and interact with each other and customers.

This idea of why transformation/change fails so often is my current topic of interest. I'm not sure I would agree with the article that it's 75% due to the wrong culture. My perspective after heavy research is that 80% of initiatives, digital change, system implementation, acquisitions, and new market/product strategies fail miserably due to poor execution - by not considering the various elements of what leads to flawless execution. 

Some of these include having the wrong people leading the change, a lack of understanding about change management/adoption from the people doing it in the trenches, poor use of technology in managing the change, weak systems for tracking-feedback-corrections, poorly funded, and a lack of clear expectations in a KPI/metric-based approach.

Here's the piece that caught my attention regarding employee engagement and development strategies:

"Start with the development of your managers, which I liken to throwing a rock into a pond. There is a ripple effect that extends through their department and, ultimately, the company. Stronger managers lead to more effective communication, more productive team outputs and increased employee engagement."

In my retention workship titled "You're the Person We Want to KEEP!", this is one of my top recommendations. Most managers have no clue what they are doing with their teams because they have never been trained in best practices for hiring, coaching, development, engagement, and motivation. Gallup shows that 70 percent of an employee's engagement (their willingness to show effort and work hard) is based on the manager. When the manager doesn't know what to do - employees turnoff, start looking for a new job, and being giving you the rock bottom level of effort and productivity they think you'll tolerate to leave them on the payroll system.

It's a no-brainer to start developing your managers and executives in basic/fundamental best practices of leading teams.

This is a good fundamental definition of effective performance management. Most companies - particularly those in the emerging growth-small business-entrepreneurial size have weak to completely ineffective performance management systems and processes.

The result is a below average level of productivity. It's a crying shame that these companies don't achieve the full capability of their workforce as compared to companies that have more effective performance management.

This is an interesting trend developing. The pandemic accelerated the move to remote/hybrid work. Now it seems very few employees (unless their job demands it like truck drivers and production line workers) want to come into the office full time.

I'm working on 8 executive search projects for department head level executives - and almost all the candidates want some hybrid work arrangement to consider leaving their current role.

Are you still stuck in a 1970s model of management where you don't trust people to work hard if you can't see them all the time?

I ooncur - employee engagement is not hard to build. There are thousands of studies, best practices, case studies, examples, illustrations, and consultants galore to help you. The research shows a competitive advantage with a higher than average engaged workforce - lower turnover, easier to recruit, higher profit, improved customer loyalty and retention.

So if you can get all those wonderful things we all crave in organizations - why don't we implement initiatives to achieve it? That's my big head-scratching moment - where are most company executives sticking their head in the sand when it comes to improve employee engagement?

I don't find this to be earth shattering news - we've all known that too many meetings, too many approval layers, too much bureaucracy, red tape and slow decision making is frustrating to employees. It stiffles creativity, innovation, and suchs the energy out of employees. I like the confirming research on a quantifiable level. The big question is how much authority and freedom do we grant employees without oversight.

This leads to questions regarding peformance management, coaching, clear expectations, regular check-ins - and a process that is much more dynamic than the 1970s model still used by most companies.

Every business is a technology or digital business - are you leveraging being "social" to your full advantage in engaging, retaining, and building a great culture?

One of the core elements of finding great employees we discuss in my workshop titled "You're NOT the Person I Hired", is the use of employee referrals. Here's a take on why most companies don't see the number of referrals they should be generating.

It's well known and well documented that impact players (pareto level employees) drive 80 percent of your results. They get done what 3-4 of their peers get done. Sometimes, the leverage can be a factor of 10X.

The big questions are how do find these people, how do we retain them, how do we identify them, and once identified, what's our specific plan to turn them loose so they can contribute 4-10X their peer group?

How hard are you willing to work at the acquisition and retetion of this group of impact or high performers?

I'm struggling to understand why more organizations don't have a better performance management culture - is it too much work, is it too hard to define success, or do we think it just will not matter?

One of the key points that I make in my workshop on Employee Engagement, Productivity, and Retention is that 90 percent of the issues we face in employee engagement, performance, satisfaction, and effort is what we did or didn't do in the interview process.