Retain Top Talent

Here is the quote that captured my interest in this article: "Building high-performing teams and retaining top talent requires every leader to have a strategic playbook".

I find that most companies cross their fingers and hope for the best. There is not insightful playbook, strategy, tactics, or action plans. Hope and luck is not a great strategy. Is it any wonder that most executives are fed up with the talk of employee engagement and employee experience since they are failing miserably at moving the needle.

Some good points in this article about feedback and listening. Many employees feel disengaged because they either don't feel they are heard, or their manager is not providing useful feedback to improve. Is this an awareness issue, a cultural issue around communication, or perhaps a basic training managers need?

Good article by Arianna Huffington on the idea that work still be a place for passion and energy without being completely defined by it. How do we as companies ensure we're contributing to our employee's well-being, mental health, stimulation, and self-motivation?

The quote that grabbed me in this article "Employers that fail to make internal hiring processes fair could drive employees away". How far do you go to promote and develop internal candidates vs. always reaching to the outside?

Just a few examples of why some companies are rated as one of the best places to work. Can you claim in your local community that you're a best place to work. Many of the most successful Vistage companies I consult with have won these type of rewards over and over - they don't have a problem finding and keeping great people. What is it going to take to put your company in this space?

An interesting article from Chief Executive Magazine challenging our concept of flexibility in working. When will you make the shift from doing bed-checks on employees because you don't trust them to a more flexible type environment?

As the war for talent continues to heat up over the next few years, is your older generation, old-school, command-and-control structure going to be able to adapt to the new demands of the younger generations expectations about work?

I agree 100 percent with this author that quiet quitting (giving you the rock bottom level of productivity I think you'll tolerate without firing me) is just a new hot term for an old problem - disengagement.

The author points out "This year in the U.S., employee engagement dropped for the first time in more than a decade with just 34% of workers reporting themselves engaged."

What are you doing to correct this downward trend in your company. The crying shame is that your seeing weak effort and productivity from 65-70 percent of your workforce. The problem is only going to get worse unless we start reversing the trend - what's your first step?

I disagree with the article's premise that a toxic work place environment is the number one reason people leave jobs. I think the number one reason is a lack of understanding what's expected.

However, a toxic work environment clearly is a contributing factor to an employee seeking greener pastures. How toxic is your work environment? What are the things you tolerate in employees - back talk, anger outbursts, discrimination, passive-aggressive behavior, finger pointing - it's a long list.

You are what you tolerate! Are you inadverently creating a toxic work environment by sticking your head in the sand?

Here are some excellent questions to use to determine if your employees feel you've got a good recognition program in place. Not having a strong non-monetary reward and recognition program is a sure fire way to encourage at least 50 percent of your employees to start looking for a new job.

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?

I did a workshop on Monday for the management team of a client on how to engage and retain employees. One of the questions I challenged them on was if they were fully leveraging technology for communication, team building, and culture? Social media, as this article suggests, is one of those technology platforms we should be leveraging in this evolving hybrid/remote work environment.

I could sum up a lot of the traits mentioned in this article as self-motivation. The best show initiative, proactivity, inquisitiveness, wanting to have an impact, anticipatory behavior, challenging the status quo. 

These are your "pareto employees" where you get 80 percent of your outcomes and results. Very few companies measure this trait f self-motivation in the interview deeply enough. It's probably one of the major reasons most research shows that 50% of hiring fails to hire someone who can deliver the desired results.

In tracking over 250000 candidates through 1000 executive searches in 30 years, my partners and I have discovered that this one trait is the greatest differentiator between average/mediocre people and top performers at every level.

When will you start adding questions in your interviews to measure self-motivation?

What could be more simple - reward and recognize. Number 2 reason for dissatisfaction after Number 1 - not knowing what's expected of me.

Why don't more companies implement initiatives around reward and recognition. What's wrong with giving people praise when they do a great job.

Why is thanking people and showing gratitude something we reserve for the annual awards picnic or performance review - why can't it be a continuous process?

One of the trends that has shocked many of my clients is how fast folks in the younger generations are willing to quit compared to the baby boomers who hung on forever - even in toxic work places. The younger generations vote quickly with their feet when the work environment doesn't match up with what they were told in the interview. How much has your culture/work environment evolved over the last few years to meet the needs of younger workers in terms of culture, values, flexibility, feedback, and communication?

As a recruiter with 30 years of experience, 250,000 interviews with my partners, and well over 1000 executive search assignments, I must politely disagree with the recommendations of this author.

Most managers take less than 10 seconds to review resumes. They are not interested in stories and verbose descriptions. They want to see bullet points of how your experience and skills match exactly what they described in their posting. Secondly, the higher up the food chain you move, they want to see bullet points of results, change, impact, and outcomes that are quantifiable. Short, crisp, hard-hitting proof.

If HBR thinks this is important - shouldn't we take a step back and consider whether we are doing enough to recognize our employees?

"A recent study found that employees who reported that their managers were great at recognizing them were more than 40% more engaged than those with managers who were not."

A key element of a strong non-monetary reward and recognition program is a peer to peer recognition element. How strong is your program?

When you have an employee who is underperforming in their job, typically you'll develop a performance improvement plan before terminating. I like the author's approach of using these NOT as the beginning of termination, but rather a tool to improve performance.

Can your employees be more productive working in a remote or hybrid environment than in the office full time. This is about to become a major issue of recruiting. Many employees who don't need to be in the office full time are going to begin rejecting offers that require them to be in the office full time. I'm actually witnessing this trend in my executive search practice - I believe it will begin to cascade down through your business very soon.

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.