Retain Top Talent

Are some of your managers who lead the bulk of your employees having issues about their own engagement. Front line employees observe this attitude and become disengaged when their boss is disengaged.

Here's the quote that reinforced this idea:

"Leader disengagement often happens for the same reasons as employee disengagement. They don’t feel respected by their manager, they don’t feel like they have a say in decision making, and they aren’t kept in the loop in terms of communication. Finally, they usually don’t receive enough positive feedback and appreciation themselves as leaders. Lack of leader motivation and engagement tends to breed cynicism, sarcasm, and negativity in the leader."

Here's the quote that reinforces most of the attitudes about remote work. 

“If I can’t see them working, how do I know they’re actually working?”

This sums up the managerial attitude of the vast majority of my clients. It covers for the excuse of not investing time to define expectations, conduct on-going performance management through one-to-ones, and learning how to coach teams.

Rather than staying stuck in a 1070s command-control mode, when we start working on the things that raise employee engagement and lead to increased productivity, we actually don't have to see our subordinates doing work to trust they are being productive.

I know it's hard to let go of tribal management practices and the tactics that most managers were taught (direct line of sight). The question is when will you start experimenting with best practices to unleash the productivity in your employees that you are missing?

As you start to consider bringing employees back into the office, are you taking this opportunity to go beyond putting up plexiglass shields and moving desks 6 feet apart?

Are you considering a complete redesign based on best practices for a great work environment = I'm noticing that some of my clients who have redesigned their workspace before the COVID crisis, were starting to reap the benefits of increased satisfaction and productivity.

Are you going to return to "business as usual" or use this time period as an excuse to blow up your preconceived notions of office space?

My experience over 30 years of working with small businesses and entrepreneurial organizations is that the ones who manage to achieve creating high performing teams are those that dedicate specific time to team building activities.

Couple of items I took away from this article was tying recognition back to your values, and that the pace of recognition should be one recognition per employee per month. I've never seen that recommendation before - but I really like the suggestion on pace.

A good reminder of some of the key elements to think about related to employee engagement. Which one of these could you focus on to improve your employee engagement - and raise productivity.

Loved the Wall of Happy described in this article. The statistic that rocked me a little was the one about 4 out 5 employees indicated they would work harder if praised/patted on the back.

I agree with this recommendation by the author 100 percent.  Are you staying in touch with your terminated or furloughed employees? How are you maintaining a strong relationship with the folks you might want to hire back?

As you know, I've been doing a webinar on How to Manage Remotely which takes all our content over 2 decades on hiring, performance management, and employee engagement and mashes it together with the element of working remotely.

The first of 8 elements I cover in this webinar is that companies must provide the infrastructure to allow employees to work well with each other. Here's the statistic that shocked me:

The Right Technology. According to a recent Gartner poll, 54% of HR leaders reported that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the single largest barrier to its success. This “technology” category encompasses everything from email to internal messaging platforms to video conferencing tools.

This is pretty consistent with the comments shared by CEOs in my webinars.  If this is a barrier to getting work done - what does that say about the productivity of your organization?

Here's a novel idea - how about involving your employees in decision making around layoffs and cost reductions - counterintuitive idea from HBR.

I'm curious if any of you have tried this compared to the traditional method of top-down instead of bottom-up?

I've been suggesting this idea in the last 8 weeks of doing my Managing Remotely in a Crisis zoom webinar - send everyone company swag. This article reinforces that idea - and breaks down some different recommendations. The big question is whether swag is an effective reinforcement of positive experiences when folks are separated and isolated from being together?

Some interesting statistics on retention and engagement in this article.

"55% of workers say annual reviews don’t improve their performance. Employees would rather – and expect – to have a continuous level of engagement and feedback from their managers on how they are doing in their role."

Almost half of your employees want a different approach to feedback on their performance than the traditional sadistic approach of doing an annual performance review.

Key points in this article about keeping it personal and not micro-managing. Unfortunately, we seem to violate both ideas.

While folks are working from home, many managers appear to have slipped into a mode of only talking about tasks and activities, and have forgotten how to show empathy, appreciation, caring, and sensitivity for their team members. Maybe it's time for some remedial managerial training on empathy.

Here's the quote that got my attention:

"Gallup found that just one in three U.S. employees felt they’d received recognition for a job well done in the past week."

That's a horrible metric. What are you doing to build a strong recognition program into the fabric of your culture?

You'll never realize high productivity from your workforce until they feel you appreciate their effort through recognition.

Interesting article in Fast Company challenging the idea of bringing folks back into the office now that restrictions are lifting. Have you considered a hybrid approach to home/office work?

Some interesting ideas of how Trader Joes creates a unique culture starting at hiring and on-going to reinforce the culture. Perhaps, a few of these ideas might apply to your organization?

Great list of employee reward/recognition ideas broken down in key categories. Are you testing any of these ideas in your company?

I just had this conversation today with a group of CEOs in my webinar on Managing Remotely in a Crisis. I was recommending that the companies should implement a peer-to-peer recognition system in addition to their other methods of showing appreciation.

It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but the author is suggesting that even in the middle of a crisis like the Corona Virus - it might be the perfect time to do an employee survey and measure current engagement levels.

A really good article on defining culture, and details about how to build/refine your culture. Most interesting statistic was:

85 percent of organizations fail in transforming their cultures.

If 85% fail to transform/improve their culture - what's the biggest pain point?