Retain Top Talent

Good whitepaper by Dale Carnegie on issues of driving employee engagement. The research shows that 85% of leaders say employee engagement is a strategic priority.

Why then do 4 out of 5 employee engagement initiatives fail to drive business gains, such as reduced turnover, higher productivity, greater profitability?

One of the most powerful tools in your toolkit to drive high employee engagement and productivity - is training and development. In a perfect world - everyone of your employees would have a personal development plan. Learning, growth, development, becoming more effective, having a bigger impact, doing my job better are all important elements of retention, culture, and employee engagement.

The big buzzword in HR today is employee experience. Many companies are undertaking intiatives to improve the employee experience. Unfortunately, as the article point out roughly 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 of these initiatives will produce any sustainable outcome. Here's the quote:

A Mercer survey found that while delivering on EX (employee experience) is the top priority of HR, only 27% of executives believe this will deliver any returns to the business — a result which undermines much of the rationale for EX.

If the record on execution around this fundamental HR initiative is so poor - how can we ensure a higher level of success?

Great article on the subject of employee engagement, productivity, and happiness through empowerment, especially in the government space. Unfortunately, most organizations - be it profit, non-profit, government - do a terrible job of empowering employees.

The number one reason as the article points out is the lack of agreed upon outcomes, deliverables, expectations, and accountability - when employees doesn't know what the target looks like they are relegated into a micro-management submissive role of their boss being the bottleneck. When employees know the target, they are liberated to take action to reach the target instead of circling their boss as the center of the universe.

Until organizations start to do a better job of cascading down through the organization top level objectives so that everyone knows what the target looks like, what success looks like, and what the measurement stick looks like - then we're stuck with micro-management oriented supervision which results in low engagement (productivity).

It's interesting to see the same issues crop up again and again related to tactics of employee engagement. Here's the quote:

"We did identify a major communication gap: only 20% of employees reported that they receive weekly feedback. So it appears that managers and employees are talking regularly about ongoing work and projects, but employees still aren’t receiving the coaching that they desire."

Why are employees not getting the coaching they want - because most managers don't know how to coach. Is it time for some remedial training for managers on coaching?

Everyone is struggling with how to drive higher levels of productivity through employee engagement initiatives. Yet, many of these initiatives fail miserably. Perhaps, 1 in 5 succeed. 20 percent success is horrible.

There is a groundswell of support in HR to apply IT approaches of Agile Development to HR initiatives. I am going to suggest this is an ineffective approach to implementing HR initiatives. The problem occurs because most HR initiatives are not tied to business outcomes with metrics. Once we start linking the investment and effort in HR to specific business outcomes, the results and focus starts to change.

Is HR seen as a business parter in driving results - or an admin function putting SOPs in place?

Interesting article on Forbes.com related to performance management. Although, I would say the points probably align more along coaching than just performance management. The issue is that it's impossible to get to coaching without an effective performance management system.

There are a few basic elements of creating a great employee experience - listening to staff, having deep and difficult conversations, being flexible, granting autonomy and not micro-managing. How well would you rate your company on these dimensions of employee experience?

So many of my clients are still stuck in a 70s model of command-control, autocratic, and negative focused annual performance reviews. Perhaps, it's because that's what they learned growing up in the baby boomer generation. It no longer works!

Have you considered moving to continuous performance management like this article recommends - particularly in a hybrid-remote work environment?

Loved the various ideas in this article to stimulate team - culture interaction, learning about each other, and building strong relationships.

Have you considered gamification around some of your employee engagement initiatives, such as supporting teammates, exhibiting core values, going above and beyond for a customer or teammate, coming up with a recommendation/suggestion for improvement, making referrals - the list is endless. This article does a good job walking through gamifying activities to drive behavior or action. It's all the time in the sales function - why not everywhere else in the organization?

In my workshops for Vistage Groups on Managing Remotely in a Crisis, many members complain of Zoom Fatigue. Here is an article on how to overcome this issue in your organization - since it appears it's going to be awhile before we're all back together in person.

This is an interesting idea for on-boarding. I actually had to do this years ago when starting a couple of new jobs. I think it's great way to gain appreciation for what goes on in other departments and a way to get to know folks.

Have you tried out this on-boarding idea in your organization. Even if it's not job rotation, it could at least be a shadowing experience.

As you know, I am a huge proponet, if you can't measure it, it's not worth managing. Here is a good article from Hubspot on setting sales objectives and then breaking it down at the activity level. We call our process SOARing in the Vistage Community - comparable to SMART goals, metrics, KPIs, OKRs - defining outcomes, results, objectives, performance, expectations at a quantifiable level.

Not going through this exercise leads to failure at every level - hiring, performance management, and most importantly, employee engagement (productivity).

One of the key elements I talk about in the workshop I do for Vistage Groups on how to improve employee engagement (productivity) is the idea of matterness - does anyone care that I am here - am I adding value to what we are doing?

This affects communication around purpose, mission, and values. It's about the execution on driving clarity about job expectations, or having a structured approach to employee recognition. This article does a good job laying out these ideas and reinforcing the "why" I am here and "why" I do what I do.

One of the elements I discuss in my workshops with Vistage Groups on Employee engagement is the idea of helping people understand how they matter ot the boss, team, department, and organization. One of the most powerful tools to execute on this idea is to cascade expectations, results, outcomes, deliverables, KPIs or OKRs down through the entire organization. Less than 20 percent of all companies I come across build this level of clarity, purpose, matterness, and expectations into the fabric of their organization.

Not doing this is the number ONE reason hiring fails, performance management disintegrates, and employee engagement (productivity) remains at low embarrassing levels.

I'll assume you're running employee engagement surveys. This article gives a data-driven approach to understanding employee survey information?

I'm a huge fan of data to understand what's happening and how to focus resources. But how about the other metrics of success that might determine employee engagement - absenteeism, number of managers achieving results, sick days, eNPS, number of referrals hired, mistakes/error reduction, productivity metrics?

What else do you measure to determine if your employees are being more successful and productive as the outcome of employee engagement initiatives?

Although many of my clients are finding great value in bonus.ly as a platform for managing employee recognition and rewards, the article pinpoints some of the issues leadership might be focused on in why should we invest in employee recognition and rewards at a significant level.

Notice the information linking to Gallup's work on employee engagement. For those of you that have seen me do my Vistage One Hour Complimentary Webinar on Managing Remotely in a Crisis - communication, setting clear expectations, and providing appropriate rewards and recognition. No brainer initiatives - what's holding you back from moving down the path of starting to do these basic fundamental initiatives that lead to high productivity.

Many of my clients continue to downplay the investment in initiatives around employee engagement and the employee experience. The benefits of small investments in this area pay off huge dividends in a variety of direct profit areas as this article points out.

So, in the face of overwhelming benefits from investments in initiatives around employee engagement - why do we still continue to ignore or hestitate to move in that direction? Is it so far outside the traiditional HR comfort zone, that we're afraid to experiment?

Interesting article on the thought process of shifting from an old-school mentality that everyone must be together in the office for collaboration and determining if they were working hard to a more flexible work environment embracing work from home. Have you considered this shift or are you still stuck in a 1970s model of management, oversight, and lack of trust regarding your employees? This might become the edge by which companies are able to attract better talent in the future.

Many of my clients struggle to think about strategies and tactics to engage frontline employees. Here is a good article on how to engage those frontline folks. How many of these tactics are you using in your organization?

From one of my favorite publications - Psychology Today - on the importance of employee recognition and why most companies/managers struggle with this issue. It is the number 2 element of why you're not seeing appropriate levels of productivity from your workforce - you're employees don't think you care.

Here's one of the key points I've been advocating in my workshop for Vistate Groups - Managing Remotely in a Crisis!

Here's the quote that grabbed me in the article:

Three out of five employees believe employee recognition and appreciation is more important while working from home, yet only one out of five employees (26%) say their company has implemented new ways to reward and recognize them since the current pandemic started"

One of the most powerful elements to drive motivation, engagement, and productivity is showing appreciation, recognition, gratitude. It's shameful not to have a strong recognition program.