Retain Top Talent

At the end of the day, the key metrics are customer satisfaction and productivity. In my consulting practice, I find that most companies are achieving sub-standard levels of customer satisfaction and employee productivity because of a large number of employees (50-70%) who are unmotivated, dissatisfied with their job, unhappy with the lack of appreciation and recognition, and feeling like they don't matter. The research around this metric is well documented - even though most companies find it a hard pill to swallow.

The problem is when an employee is disengaged, they end up giving you the rock bottom level of effort and productivity they believe you'll tolerate to allow them to continue to receive a payroll check. Shame on the executives and managers who tolerate this effort level. It's an easy fix. My head-scratching moment is why more companies are not implementing best practices to improve employee motivation, morale, and effort?

As I mention in my workshop "You're NOT the Person I Hired", referrals should be the number ONE source of hiring since they are the most effective. Like most company initiatives, 80 percent of tactics for driving referrals fail miserably to achieve consistent results. This article discusses the research around that issue - 2 of the major reasons are a lack of communication (if we don't let folks know we're seeking referrals - no one knows to make the referral). Secondly, not leveraging technology - particularly with social media can be the process of driving referrals manually very painful.

When do you think it's time to conduct a check-up on your employee referral program?

I've seen more and more articles appearing that discuss the issue of being in the office is not about improving your culture or communication. That's a myth. The problem is the starting point of most organizations having weak cultures that are incapable of attracting and keeping outstanding employees, and a communication environment that is minimal to non-existent. Until we fix some of these basic fundamentals - it doesn't matter whether people are in the office or remote - the problems still exist.

Here's another good insight published on the Fortune Website. It talks about the need to feel connected to a team - another element of high performing teams. Yet in my experience most organizations actively do the opposite - they promote a sterile and separate culture that leads to feelings of not belonging to a team and isolation. This goes all the way back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

You'll never extract the productivity you deserve from your teams when the team members don't feel like they belong, they don't trust their boss and teammates, and they don't feel like they matter to the team success.

Great article on resilient workers - a key element of high performing teams. My question would be if you had to score yourself on each of these 5 elements - where would you fall? Secondly, would the resulting output exceed your investment to improve in all 5 of these areas.

In my executive search practice I speak with 20-30 executives/managers every week. You wouldn't believe the things they tell me about why they want to leave - irrational bosses, dysfunctional teammates, horrible culture, and very little trust of others.

The indifference most companies show toward their workers - at every level - is what makes my job so simple as an executive recruiter.

Who would have thought pay is not the top issue of why employees stay? Obviously, they want to be fairly compensated. Once fairly compensated lots of other issues come into play of whether they stay or go - where do you stand on this spectrum?

Interesting perspective on splitting up the candidate pool by McKinsey in terms of different motivations - depending on where your candidate is - are you tapping into the right pool?

Interesting artile about corporate purpose and individual matterness - why should I care - why should I lean in - why should I give you 100 percent effort? Most companies barely scratch the surface on aligning purpose and connecting it to their employees.

"While leaders worry about the Great Resignation, there’s a concerning new trend emerging amongst burnt out employees – “Quiet Quitting” – in short, when an employee is physically present at work but have made the decision to do the bare minimum amount of work to stay employed and collect a paycheck."

The issue is not burnout -the issue is a lack of employee engagement - not defining expectations, weak reward/recognition programs, poor to non-existent learning and development, horrible managers who don't know how to coach - the list goes on.

As Gallup shows - 50-70 pecent of your workforce is disengaged - resulting in employees who give you the absolute minimum effort. This Quiet Quitting is a NOT a function of employee burnout - its a lack of strategic leadership about driving high performing teams to deliver great results.

Great two presentations at the end of last week with Dick Singer's Vistage Groups.  We had outstanding discussions about moving beyond posting generic job descriptions on generic job boards, using a definintion of success to drive where we find great employees and using it as a focal point in interviewing, and putting on a marketing hat to build a compelling messaging platformto attract the best.

A growing number of workers describe themselves as actively disengaged in their jobs. Some 81% of leaders surveyed said employee recognition isn’t a company priority, and roughly two-thirds said they have no budget dedicated to it. Just 23% of employees strongly agreed that they were satisfied with the amount of recognition they receive.

Next to not defining success/outcomes/expectations in clear precise language, the number two reason for employee disengagement (low productivity) is a culture that is not rooted in appreciated, gratitude, and thankfulness for the effort of your employees. Fixing it is quite easy.

The head-scratching moment for me is why companies prefer to endure low productivity, poor customer satisfaction, and below average financial returns - because they are unwilling to invest in creating initiatives around non-monetary employee recognition and rewards. So stupid not to implement of rigorous set of best practices.

Here's another good article on the subject of how important someone's manager is to their level of engagement and retention.

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"line managers aren’t promoted for their people skills. Most people find themselves managing a team because they were high-performers in their former roles – not because they had exceptional people skills. Chucking new managers into the deep end with limited resources and training can result in conflict, micro-management, unrealistic expectations and poor communication."

This is a little different take on what I'm usually sharing or publishing. My experience, as I've mentioned before, is that most managers and executives are not good at managing and leading people - they've never been trained in effective best practices. This is one of the great benefits of belonging to a executive/CEO roundtable like Vistage to learn these skills and abilities as you build your team.

One of the core skills of success as a manager/leader is listening and most of us do a terrible job of listening without judging the speaker. Perhaps, it's time to teach our managers and leaders how to be better listeners?

Many of my clients are struggling right now whether to demand everyone comes back to the office, no one comes back, or we move to hybrid structure. The vast majority are moving to a hybrid structure where everyone has to come in for 2-3 days a week.

The big question is whether a physical location where we are all present determines how good your culture is and the level of collaboration. Where do you weigh in on this debate?

I'm not sure the issue of quiet quitting has to do with an unhealthy work life balance as so many have pointed at for the cause of the great resignation. I'm seeing issues of disengagement around a lack of learning, a lack of a great culture, people not feeling like they matter, and weak managers/executives who have no idea how to coach their teams.

What's the right time to start to implement some of these initiatives to overcome employee disengagement? Should we wait until a recession that starts dragging us down? Are we too busy to consider our most valued resource - our people?

The issues raised here in this article are not specific to retention - they also dramatically affect recruiting. One of most popular services is helping companies think through how to better attract great employees. Some might call this the employee value proposition.

It starts with thinking about what makes you compelling, why do your employees stay when they have other choices, what's unique about your culture, learning, development, employee experience? Where do people go from their initial job, what type of impact will they have, what's your vision, why will they matter.

If you cannot answer these questions, and present them in a tight pithy marketing message - you have NO chance of attracting great people. You're just sticking warm bodies in chairs.

Less than 1 percent of all advertising is compelling - the other 99 percent is a posting of a generic job description which is boring, mundane, a back-office regularly and compliant document that is disgusting, revolting, and replusive to potential great employees.

Start putting your marketing hat on and using the same tactics you use to attract customers and clients - they work equally well in attracting and keeping great people. Bring your marketing professionals into this conversation.

Two key points I would raise from this Fortune article -one there is no cultural transformation going on - the way managers and executives manage people has not changed much in 25 years. That's why we're sitting the quiet quitting or disengagement on search a large scale.

Secondly, the vast majority of managers and executives have no clue how to effectively manage the younger generations - from the baby boomers to the Zs. Most organizations are incredibly weak at teaching, training, coaching, and developing their managers and executives to be great leaders of people. One of the primary resasons people leave their jobs is their disgust over the way their boss manages them.

In my engagement and retention workshop, You're the Person We Want to Keep, I recommend conducting an LIB (learning-impact-becoming) conversation which in technical HR langauge is called a "stay interview". It's a powerful early warning mechanism for determining if you're employee is a flight risk due to disengagement.

So now the drum beats that employee engagement is not enough.

"When employees experience these three things—engagement, enablement, and celebration—they will feel successful and will be happy at work, every day. That’s going to make a meaningful difference in any organization."

Most companies have not begun to effectively execute on the engagement piece, let alone consider moving beyond to enablement and celebration.

When is the right time to start tackling these critical components of employee impact and productivity?

More and more of my clients are asking their employees to return to the office - and those same employees are pushing back on not wanting to return to a 5 day week in the office. Interesting Forbes article on the issue of belonging and how it's effecting the willingness to return to the office. How do you create a sense of belonging?

Scary quote from the artile - 17% of employees don't make it past their first 90 days. One way to improve that horrific metric is to integrate recognition into the on-boarding process. Most company's on-boarding practices resemble a pathetic extension of what they were doing in the 1970s.

There is no more powerful tool to manage performance, develop boss-subordinate trust, and engage and motivate employees than an effective one-to-one.

Why do most managers and executives FAIL to use one-to-ones effectively?

A good reminder on the importance of learning and development. Next to not defining success for each role, and secondly not having a rigorous reward and recognition program, learning and development is the 3rd major element of why so many employees are disengaged (50-70 percent). The really sad news is that those disengaged employees are giving you the minimum level of productivity they belive you will  tolerate to allow them to continue to receive a paycheck.

In a world where the new normal is a hybrid work environment, why are we not embracing the multitude of digital tools to deliver training, knowledge, skill improvement, and coaching?

One of the reasons most companies don't pay much attention to upgrading, refining, and conducting process improvement against their hiring./recruiting process and their engagement/retention process is that they've not taken the time to understand the costs of errors and mistakes, and there are no metrics/KPIs being used to measure progress or set targets.

I've published numerous times on the key theme of this article - the managers who supervise the bulk of your employees are one of the primary keys in engagement and retention.

MOST managers/executives are terrible at leading people. They are outstanding individuals - however they have never been trained or coached in best practices of managing people. Is it time for some remedial training to help your management team? An especially important element since Gallup identifies managers as 70% of the reason employees either lean in and give you full productive effort or lean back and give you the minimum they think you'll tolerate to allow them to remain on the payroll system.