Retain Top Talent

As you may be aware from some of my previous posts, I've been urging my clients to move to a chat-based tool for communication like the yammer tool on teams or slack. Interesting article about taking the pulse of your employees through such a tool on a continuous basis throughout the year.

My experience with CEOs in the entrepreneurial sector is that communication during this crisis is woefully inadequate. Many CEOs are allowing the same cadence of communication to occur that went on when everyone was in the office.

Huge Mistake!

If that's your culture, I'm sure you're seeing employee engagement and satisfaction crash through the floor and productivity decline to levels of distress.

When we return to a regular pace and start hiring again - hopefully June/July, here are some ideas on how to improve the effectiveness of your on-boarding. Ensuring an employee gets off on the right foot and feels engaged from day 1 is a function of having an effective onboarding program. Is it time to take  a hard look at whether you're effective in this department?

eNPS is becoming all the rage to measure as a metric your employee satisfaction, happiness, and willingness to refer other employees. Are you effectively measuring this metric and using it to improve your culture?

Teach your managers these six simple phrases to say to their teams and you'll see a dramatic improvement in happiness, engagement, and job satisfaction.

Thoughtful article summarizing Gallup Employee Engagement Findings and some specific recommendations on improving employee engagement centered around listening/feedback, defining expectations, and recognition.

Pretty simple stuff! Why then are so few companies practicing it? Why do so many managers/executives seem not to care about making changes to raise employee engagement - as in "it's good enough."

Employees Unhappy with their employers. Big surprise here!

I'm surprised the number is not higher with most employers not doing anything of substance different than before the Corona Virus.

This level of dissatisfaction, disengagement, and unhappiness is only going to increase substantially over the next two months.

Are you managing as if nothing has changed?

The article on Forbes attempts to dispel the traditional command and control management approach of time studies and tracking how much people are in front of their computers.

"If your company’s culture is based on micromanagement, think about how to manage the transition away from it."

Let's transition to using OKRs, outcomes, deliverables, expectations, KPIs, and metrics to determine if people are being successful instead of control mechanisms to see when they are working.

Good ideas and reinforcement about employee recognition and appreciation. I liked giving shout-outs on social media to teams and individual employees and having managers write hand-written notes to their subordinates who then post those notes on the refrigerator so the whole family can see how much they are appreciated.

Great quote focused on remote workers:

"These interactions are really important in a distributed company because one thing that you have to recognize is that you aren't around people all day, so it's easy for loneliness to set in."

What are you doing to prevent loneliness and isolation? How do you keep everyone focused on the future, working on projects that are important but not urgent, and continuous improvement when the natural tendency is to become paralyzed by fear and uncertainty?

What steps are you taking - specific tactics to get your employees into that engaged mode of leaning in, taking responsibility, being proactive, taking initiative, and doing more than is asked of them?

Although this article is pointed at the PR sector, it could be extended to any business. Productivity is down. How do we still get stuff done? What are the right tools, tactics, and methodologies to ensure you can still hit your business goals, outcomes, deliverables, expectations, and KPIs?

Incredible retention rates when employees feel their employer cares about them. These rates fall to dismal levels when an employee feels that they don't matter, there is no transparency in communication, and caring/empathy is not part of the culture.

What are you doing to fix it before it's too late?

I've found the research and insights from the Gartner group to be outstanding. They've published a series of podcasts on managing remotely during this Corona Virus Crisis. Might be worth a listen.

You've probably heard me say over and over that one-to-ones are the most important managerial tool you have for coaching and retaining high performers. This article shares some specifics around creating a culture of doing one-to-ones. It's especially important if you're now managing remotely.

I thought this was a good breakdown of different elements of the language of appreciation. Most employees don't feel appreciated enough and most managers don't know how to appreciate their employees.

Here's my key take away from the article (there was some other good information about communication and the cadence of check-ins):

“Most people are probably worried about where they stand from a job standpoint. HR departments should definitely be open to having people talk to them about anxieties related to their job security, that’s a huge one. You may even want your leadership to pre-empt some of those worries by getting in front of that question. I took the time to actually let people know I’m available if you are worried about job security: ‘Come and talk to me.’ I’m going to tell you all the things that we’re going to do before they even have to worry about that.’”

Are you or your management team members having these conversations? Do your front line employees feel reassured?

If you're not a member of the top executive team, has your manager taken the time to give you comfort the future of your job?

Some really good ideas to "sharpen the saw" as Covey called it around sustaining and amplifying employee engagement during a time when people feel isolated, lonely, out of sight/out of mind, and disconnected from the culture.

Which one of these ideas are you currently working on  OR which one appeals to you to start working on?
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In my Vistage webinars for Groups and members on Managing Remotely in a Crisis - one of the biggest concerns CEOs express is how to maintain their culture wth a remote workforce.

This article specifically addresses that issue and starts with the recommendation to nail down your values.

Here's my favorite quote from the article:

“Company culture comes from the people, not the physical space they inhabit.”

Some really good suggestions and ideas - simple to implement to bolster engagement and strengthen your culture with remote workers. How many of the items on this list are you currently working on?