Retain Top Talent

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 liked the breakdown of different kinds of recognition - and opportunites to recognize your employees. The key is to put in place a rigorous system of recognition vs. a random process based on what each managers wants to do.

Good refresher on core elements of employee engagement - measuring it, benchmarking, Gallup research. Frightening stats on weak employee engagement.

Once again, reinforcement that 50-70 percent of your workforce is disengaged. The author lays a number of benefits that occur through better engagement - many of which have been well documented in a wide variety of studies over the past decade.

Here's my question: on each of these elements mentioned in the article are you setting metrics to measure your success in moving the needle on employee engagement?

Most of the goal setting done in entrepreneurial businesses is at best weak and superficial. This article serves as a good reminder around the steps of setting goals for people. We can our process SOAR which is a variation on the older model of SMART outcomes.

Very scary statistic: almost 1/3 of employees leave their job within 6 months due to weak employee engagement - number one is a lack of clear specific outcomes/goals. Are you forcing good employees to leave by not defining success for their jobs, and not implementing initatives in areas like recognition?

Good reminders of accountability and performance management. One of the key points is about having regular feedback sessions, a point I've been stressing on doing 1-to-1s in my Managing Remotely in a Crisis Workshop.

Are all your managers conducting regular 1-to-1s with their direct reports on a weekly basis. See my LinkedIn articles on the rationale of conducting 1-to-1s and an efficient model to do them in a 20-30 minute timeframe every week.

Tracy writes about the role HR can play in driving signficant change for organizations to be more successful. I agree this is the role HR should be playing. Unforunately, I see it less than 5% of time when interviewing HR executives in my executive search practice. CEOs dream of having an HR leader who can do what the author describes - why do most HR execs constrain themselves to the role of admin instead of a strategic force?

Great set of statistics reminding us of the value of creating a sense of belonging, community, and matterness. What specific intiatives is your organization moving forward with to stimulate this level of employee engagement around relationships?

People might come to you because of your rep, salary, location, job opportunity - but they'll leave for a lack of relationships - boss, peers, teams.

Most companies invest ZERO time in stimulating the relationships among co-workers, and creating a sense of community and shared purpose. If we don't work on these elements, how can we ever hope to build high performing teams?

I keep seeing articles showing a trend for companies to be monitoring how much and where employees are spending their time - NSA type monitoring.

Something doesn't seem right about these attempts? I've always been a big proponent of not measuring screen time, but rather setting mutually agreeable outcomes, deliverables, metrics, and KPIs.

The problem is when managers don't want to invest the time to define success, then we are left with the fallback position of measuring hours and screen time.

What's going on in your organization?

Some ideas/thoughts for boosting motivation by your employees working from home and suffering burn-out, zoom fatigue, isolation, separation, and the stress of balancing childcare, home life, and work expectations. My concern is that most companies are not spending enough time thinking about these issues, their cultural implications, and the resulting low levels of productivity based on employee disengagement.

Something to think about - your working parents - whether they will continue to work from home or come into the office now that restrictions are being eliminated.

Are you setting your organization up as a great place to work because of your sensitivity, empathy, caring toward family issues, and parents struggling with at-home issues?

The great part of working for an entrepreneurial company is the flexibility and family style atmosphere  - is that really the case in your actions as we cycle through this Crisis? 

Here's an interesting quiz on identifying where you are in having a systematic, structured, organized, planned approach to employee recognition.

Some good reminders about keeping the folks who are still working remotely both engaged and motivated. Some of these ideas I've been sharing in my zoom workshop for Vistage Groups on Managing Remotely in a Crisis: regular check-ins/1-to-1s, setting goals/outcomes, having fun and team-building.

Some interesting research out of Glassdoor on employee satisfaction during the Corona Virus Crisis and the overall job market trends.

What's my takeaway from this report:

1. We need to do a better job of boosting remote worker engagement to stimulate higher levels of productivity.

2. Now might be a great time to upgrade some of your staff members with better talent at a more affordable rate.

Fairly sophisticated ideas from HBR on shaping employee experience. Allow me to boil this down to it's most basic elements - like the key concepts I talk about in my workshops on employee engagement.

1. There are some basic fundamental elements of employee engagement that have the most significant impact - such as defining expectations and having a systematic reward program.

2. You must solicit feedback from employees in the form of 1-to-1s (stay interviews), town halls, group meetings, and employee satisfaction surveys.

3. A better communciation plan must be put in place - ideally in partnership with your employees about company information, business vision, personal opportunities.

4. Managers have to be trained to do an effective job of managing their employee expectations, dreams, and vision - as it relates to the  capability of the organization to meet these needs.

Not investing time and effort in these four elements means your just a short stopping point for most hires when they realize the grass is greener somewhere else.

First point in the article - the traditional employee performance appraisal should be proclaimed as DEAD!

Instead we should be using a dynamic process of setting goals, effective communication and feedback (such as a regularly scheudled one-to-one at least on monthly basis), and frequent discussions around matterness - showing and demonstrating how your teammembers matter and are aligned with the purpose of the organization.

You'll be in shock over the increased productivity and impact if you just do these simple steps in performance management and coaching.

Some good tips on managing performance - particularly when performance falls below your expectations. NOTE the importance of setting clear and specific goals/outcomes.

Some basic fundamental ideas on virtual on-boarding. Most companies approach to effective on-boarding is either non-existent or completely ineffective. Hiring people in a virtual world just amplifies the need to do a better job of making people believe this is the most important decision they've made to join your organization.

Here from Forbes some key points reinforcing those I've been making in my Vistage Managing Remotely in a Crisis workshop on Zoom: set expectations and manage them, do face to face meetings on video, over communicate, create a communications plan and stick to it,

How well is your leadership doing leading across these elements?

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

Note on Facebook's shift to remote working:

"The impact of the coronavirus has caused Facebook to reassess its requirement for employees to work out of an office"

Have you gone through a similar analysis of who really needs to be in the office full-time or part-time?