Retain Top Talent

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.

Recent report reinforces importance of employee engagement initiatives. Here's the quote:

"81% of business leaders strongly agree that highly engaged employees perform better and are more productive."

So my question is why are so few companies making such little effort around improving employee engagement and employee experience?

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.

None of this should be a surprise, particularly given Gallups research that shows 50-70 percent of your employees are not engaged. All the studies that have been done over the last decade or more show pretty consistent results of employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, and consequently low productivity.

As I am demonstrating to many Vistage Groups in my talk on Managing Remotely in a Criss - these issues get amplified with folks working outside of the office. Are you accepting low productivity or working on initiatives to let it SOAR?

Recognition is the second most important element of engaging employees to drive high productivity. Why then do most companies give it little focus or effort. In at least 75% of the companies I have engaged with in the 60 complimentary 90 minute workshops I've done for Vistage Groups there is no comprehensive program for non-monetary rewards and recognition.

The result is a shameful level of low productivity since the majority of your employees believe that you don't care if they work hard and put in extra effort.

I spent a lot of time today with one vistage group focusing on employee recognition. My research indicates that it's the next most important element in employee engagement/productivity - after defining clear expectations for everyone.

One of the topics I speak on in my complimentary presentation for Vistage Groups titled Managing Remotely in a Crisis is for managers to show empathy toward their team members.

Here's that key point being reinforced. The key is training managers how to be empathic - since for most managers it is not naturally occuring.

Here's the quote:

"Be trained on practicing empathy during this extreme situation. This can start as a weekly session and everyone can share their real-life stories where they displayed empathy with each other.

This allows your employees and supervisors to understand each other and this approach drives employee engagement and productivity in the whole team."

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.

Interesting article on the Fortune.com website related to a blended experience of working remotely and having people in the office. It''s going to be hard to put the "genie" back in the bottle after giving people a taste of working remotely. Are you preparing for the new abnormal environment of a blended work experience?

Interesting article bordering on an intellectual discussion of operating models/theory. Do you use an agile model to navigate in times of crisis or do you return (or not change/pivot) from your traditional model of decision making, innovation, ideation, change management, implementation and execution?

Most companies have their executive teams wrining their hands, holding their head in their hands, and wondering when the crisis will end so they can return to business as normal.

We're never going to return to business pre-Covid. Let's embrace that reality now. Given that we must change and pivot, what's the first step?

The author identifies such basic elements of personal growth, impact, and learning that allow you to retain top performers. How basic can you get? Simple Maslow Hierarchy of Needs elements. Yet, most organizations fail miserably to engage their best performers. Over time, literally like a brain drain, these folks leave for greener pastures.

Your best performers are your Pareto Group - where you get 80 percent of your results from the top 20 percent. This is the group we should be nurturing, hand-holding, encouragin, and challenging. Yet, in most companies the vast manjority of leaders feel that since these folks are the most independent, self-starters, and self-motivated - they don't need pats on the back and emotional support. WRONG!

When this group starts to trickle out the door, you're in real trouble. What specific plans/initiatives do you have in place to keep these folks from considering "is the grass greener somewhere else?"

In my workshops on raising engagement and productivity, I talk about the need for leaders to show empathy in their coaching by asking questions. Jay Steven Levin posts some good ones in his recent Forbes article.

I call this type of dialogue an LIB discussion - learning, impact, and becoming. The technical HR term for the discussion is a stay interview.

Regardless of what you call it - are you as a leaders asking these questions? Are you afraid to ask the questions? If you're not doing it as the boss - everyone else is trying to hook your top performers by engaging in this conversation: former associates, recruiters, and friends. Don't you want to in the drivers seat determining whether your top performers think the grass is greener somewhere else?

More statistics on the value of having a good employee engagement and recognition strategy and process.

"81% of employees say they’re motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation"

That by itself should be enough of an incentive to create a good program. Most companies recognition and engagement programs are either non-existent, left up to individual managers, or so superficial they border on useless.

Second most important element in driving productivity. We wonder as CEOs and senior execs why the productivity of the organization is so bad compared to where it should be.

When people don't feel engaged and appreciated, they give you the absolute rock bottom minimal level of effort that they think you'll tolerate without firing them. Shameful!

I heard a fellow speaker the other day make the comment that "all companies are now technology companies."

Unfortunately, about half the organizations I deal with are still stuck in a 1970s model of working. I am awe of the tools/apps available to improve communication, execution, performance, recognition, and so on. Not exploring these tools basically means you are allowing your competitors to become much more productive - and they will eventually bypass you on all dimensions of success.

This issue of recognition is the second most important element behind defining expectations (employees understanding what their immediate boss expects of them). The goal is to drive higher levels of employee engagement (translated into productivity). Most stuides show 50-70% of your workforce is not engaged - primarlily around not defining expectations and not providing enough recognition.

As I have been teaching in my Complimentary one hour Vistage Workshops on Managing Remotely in a Crisis - this is a horrible method to manage performance. It's micro-management and "big brother" looking over your shoulder. It basically says we don't trust you. It's the easy way of out defining real performance mangagement like outcomes, deliverables, expecations, metrics, and KPIs. STOP using monitoring software. It creates a culture of mistrust.

Are you surveying your employees to get their reaction to how you're managing them in a remote/hybrid work environment. Most employees are frustrated by their employers approach to management (coaching, learning and development, ease of getting work done, performance management, communication, and recogniton.

It's hard to fix problems and issues unless you understand the underlying concerns. Is now the right time to solicit this feedback from your workforce?

In my complimentary workshops for Vistage Groups on Managing Remotely in a Crisis we've been talking about the need for leveraging technology to improve communications. Many companies are still stuck ina 1970s model of old-school communication even with a hybrid model of some staff in the office and some remote. EVERYONE is now a technology company. Are you helping your employees to be successful or do they feel like mushrooms in the dark.

Some really good tips for communicating with employees in a Crisis by HBR. How do relieve some of the fear, anxiety, apprehension, separation loss, and sense of divorce from the culture? How do you help move folks out of Maslow's level of Safety and Security concerns - hard to be productive when I'm worried about whether I'll have a job.

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?

Some good ideas from Insperity on rewarding, recognizing, appreciating, and showing gratitude toward the employees working remotely. Although many of these ideas represent the foundation of good employee recognition programs, I am still amazed at how many organizations are not practicing these basic fundamentals.

Many of my clients are at a non-existent to minor use of employee recognition to drive motivation and productivity. Here is a great framework and some creative ideas to executive on employee recognition. Which of these ideas is most relevant for your organization?

The problem with studies showing that the trend with remote work is increasing and will continue to increase/speed along due to the COVID challenges.

The unfortunate news is that most companies are ill-prepared to managed remote workers. I'm covering 8 key points in my 90 minute Virtual Vistage Workshops on Managing Remotely in a Crisis. The lack of pivoting, innovation, best practices, and changing cultures due to remote workers is almost zero. Most organizations are applying the same tactics of managing they've been using in physical proximity over the last few decades. It DOES NOT WORK anymore.

Expectations of work performance are non-existent, employee engagement and productivity is weak. communication is horrific, and employees feel cast aside, lonely, out of sync with the team and culture.

Let's fix these fundamental problems of how to manage remotely before throwing more people into home office environments.

Some good reminders and insight into the role of the manager/leaders as coach. How to not fall victim to having problems (the monkeys) transferred onto your back. Plus, he quotes one of my favorite - Zig Ziglar.

Here's a radically different approach to thinking about the experience your employees have around engagement, recognition, and culture. You might want to consider an empathy map.