Retain Top Talent

Good article from HBR and the role of trust and the issue with not trusting HR departments. The big question is how do you effect actual change in trust through specific initiatives - or perhaps you have the wrong folks in those roles. Maybe it's time to take a hard look at whether you're actually building trust with your employees.

Interesting perspective in the latest out of MIT Sloan regarding lateral career opportunities for existing employees. Rarely do I hear of employees being challenged through lateral moves - particularly to gain cross functional experience. Is this part of your portfolio in engaging and retaining employees?

I'm a huge proponent of metrics and tracking. It's the old adage "If you can't measure it - it's not worth doing."

As you begin to implement employee engagement initiatives it is important to track the starting point, where you want to get to, and the intermediate points of success-movement along the journey.

Next to NOT defining success - the number 2 reason your employees are disengaged and considering leaving is that you don't have a deep program for non-monetary reward and recognition. Here are some examples of what you might consider in that program. How deep does your program go around each of these elements?

Some important reminders that you cannot assume people are in love with their job just because they show up for work everyday. How many of our important team members are we making the false assumption "they'll never leave!" I highly recommend the HBR article mentioned here.

Interesting article in Forbes about moving away from the crisis management process, communication, and protocols we put in place during Covid. Is it time to conduct a check-up on this waterline metaphor?

One of the most powerful tools at your disposal is training - it's a powerful tool in recruitment and more so in retention. My best clients are learning organizations that invest heavily in people. Or perhaps you fall into the cateory of why should we train people and prepare them for better jobs elsewhere? Is that not one of the most dysfunctional statements you ever heard? I'm amazed how many leaders believe it - so they invest very little in training and development. No wonder they have trouble recruiting and keeping great people.

Next to not defining success - clear metric driven outcomes - the number two reason why employees quietly quit or become disengaged is that you lack a rigorous non-monetary reward and recognition program that reinforces a culture of gratitude, thankfulness, and appreciation.

Here are some examples of ideas to recognize your employees. How many of these are you implementing?

I agree that the whole process of annual performance reviews is BS as the author indicates, it either falls on the side of gamesmanship or it becomes a demoralizing sadistic exercise. It's useless the why the vast majority of companies implement performance management.

My recommendation is to KILL this process and institute monthly coaching conversations between managers and subordinates. Yes - it requires teaching, role modeling, auditing, more teaching, more learning, and continually refining. The benefits are extraordinary. Why don't more companies do this instead of the sadistic performance review - they just simply don't want to put in the additional effort.

My disappointment in this article on Fast Company is that the author keeps suggesting using a new metric called a passion index to measure why people keep coming back and showing effort - unfortunately the author does not elaborate on what data points are used in the passion index and how it is calculated. Shame on Fast Company for getting us excited and then dashing our hopes in generic platitudes.

As a key element of my workshop on hiring, titled You;re NOT the Person I Hired, I recommend not hiring anyone until you first give them a personality assessment to determine fit with your culture and job alignment. Especially in sales - it's important to use a sales aptitude assessment to determine alignment with the type of selling. Not doing these as part of your interview process leads to a high failure rate or unhappy employees giving you weak effort.

I concur with this article. You'll always have folks who try to get by doing the absolute minimum necessary to receive a payroll check. You should be moving these folks systematically out of the organization. Find employees who are self-motivated, want to learn and grow, and want to have an impact, make a difference. These are your pareto employees - the ones you should be seeking to fill openings and wrapping your arms around to not allow them to leave your organization. STOP worrying about the bottom performers.

This has to be one of the most awkward conversations managers have with their staff. Some good ideas and tips are presented in this article when your employee comes to you and asks for a raise.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to move the needle on employee satisfaction, happiness, and engagement - resulting in lower turnover, less poaching, less effort needed in recruiting new talent, and higher productivity levels. Not to mention the direct correlation to customer satisfaction.

My head scratching moment is why more companies don't put a process or initiatives in place like this article suggests. Crafting a engagement/retention strategy should be no different from crafting a hirng strategy. Just because your employees show up every day doesn't mean they love their job or are giving you more than the minimum level of expectations they hope will avoid being fired.

Here are some good ideas for creating a better employee experience. More and more of my clients are starting to ask their HR departments to focus on improving the employee experience. What have you done recently that has had a significant impact?

Wonderful article emphasizing the issue of who you choose and keep on your team is critical to success. The quote ""The strength of your team is the biggest indicator of future success at the earliest stages" is spot on!

Many CEOs/Presidents choose the wrong person who cannot move them to the next stage of growth, or they let the ones who are only partially competent hang on too long.

The biggest problem in selection and retetion is not having a constantly evolving definition of success on a quarterly or semi-annual basis.

Having a best friend at work - (in school, on the project team, on the sports team) all make a dramatic difference in someone's desire to give ZERO effort or a 100 percent. The question I've got is what's the employer's role/responsiblity in fostering these relationships during the workday?

Oh my goodness - another business fancy idea to consider. It's all a bunch of BS. The issue is not with employees. The issue is with employers - you're turning your employees into zombies who only want to give you the absolute rock botton minimum effort you'll tolerate to allow them to continue to receive a paycheck.

This rock-bottom effort or productivity - or the desire to do only that which is necessary to avoid being fired is a horrible syndrome that is cancer in most organizations. Why does it occur?

You're not being clear and precise about your expectations with employees, you lack a culture of gratitude-thankfulness-appreciation, there are very few opportunities to learn and grow, your communication with employees is akin to throwing manure on mushrooms in dark cave, and you're doing a terrible job showing your employees that they matter. Take these elements into account and is it any wonder that Gallup shows us that 50-70 percent of your employees are disengaged.

All of my clients are under pressure due to increasing cost of living and a candidate market that tips the supply-demand curve. Here are some ideas you might consider instead of the losing battle of constantly giving salary increases - particularly as the job market continues at an unheard of pace for the next few years. I particularly liked the unlimited PTO - many of my clients have found employees using less PTO under this approach - and they've seen a rise in productivity.

This article sums it up well - if you're not conducting surveys to determine what your employees really think - the big question they ask is "Do you care?"

THIS Article NAILS the problem in most organizations as it relates to employee productivity and effort!

Here's the quote that literally made me sit up in chair:

"We want more than a steady paycheck. We want interesting, challenging work. We want opportunities for growth and development. We want to build meaningful relationships and be supported. In exchange, we won’t just check the boxes in our job description. We’ll come in early, stay late, help our colleagues, go the extra mile, and be good organizational citizens.

When employees feel like employers aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain, you end up with quiet quitting. In other words, workers are starting to define their psychological contract more narrowly — more transactionally."

As an employer are you keeping your end of the bargain? It's not that your employees are deadbeats and don't naturally want to give you 100 percent effort - when they feel you are not living up to your end of the bargain - then they start not living up to theirs and giving you the absolute minimum effort they believe you will tolerate to allow them to keep getting a payroll check -- this is the definition of the popular phrase "quiet quitting".

We all have had critics on our team. Did we push them aside - or find a way to engage them.  I have found over the last 40 years the technique of engagement works most of the time - whether it be with teens on a high school sports team, in a business setting, or in volunteer leadership work in the local community. Sometimes we don't have direct hire/fire responsibility - so how do we make it work?

You're always going to have the critics, hecklers, disruptive, folks who try to knock you off your mountain - or constantly challenge you.

Do you approach the conversation with anger and defensiveness - or with empathy and understanding. This probably took me 30 of the 40 years to learn. My initial reaction would have been anger and defensiveness - and through lots of reading, coaching, and working with people, I began to reflect deeply on this issue. It was an amazing discovery that by engaging those initial detractors to your leadership - they than become some of my biggest supporters.

Are you facing this issue now as a leader? How do you choose to deal with it?

Love this idea. In my workshop titled "You''re the Person We Want to KEEP" I talk about the need to conduct LIB (Learning IMPACT and Becoming) Discussions - very similar to Stay Interviews. This is your early warning system of whether an employee is considering leaving or is unmotivated to provide 100 percent effort in their job.

Some good pointers on effective managers - remember the folks at Gallup were onto these ideas 15 years ago. We're just a little slow in adapting. Most companies have not begun to put their toe in the water to effect employee engagement - tied directly to productivity.