Retain Top Talent

Could your managers answer these questions? What are the questions candidates ask in your interviews to get a glimpse of your culture?

Could all your managers articulate in a few sentences the culture of your company - would your rank and file agree with that perception?

I'm curious if your company has an employee or personal development plan for all employees? If not, this could be an enormous area for increasing retention. Helping people grow, learn, develop, and get better at their jobs is one of the most important part of an effective retention program.

In just a few years - the issue will be finding talent, it will be hanging onto the talent you've got before they get poached by a competitor.

Have you had a chance to review the research Goggle did on the conditions or elements that led to optimal team work. Fascinating stuff to improve how your teams work. Are you focused around any of these issues in improving the results and outcomes your teams generate?

Sometimes we forget about the importance of the on-boarding process as an effective retention tool. How do we wrap our arms around our new hire, making them feel coming aboard was one of the decisions of their life. Why do we sometimes cast them aside making them feel isolated and lonely?

Great article on Mashable about keeping employees happy. How many studies have you read over the last 4-5 years that talks about the importance of feedback - yet nothing has really changed.

Do you have a strong retention program in place to prevent your best talent from thinking about whether the grass is greener somewhere else. Just like having a strong hiring program - you also need to have a strong retention program. Most companies have zero to bits/pieces of a retention program. Are you willing to see your best talent head for the door as the job market continues to heat up?

Every organization should by surveying their employees for cultural and fit alignment. This article has a great set of questions related to how employees view their managers - which is the second most common reason people quit their jobs.

I would highly recommend using the Gallup Employee Survey of 12 dimensions to understand what percentage of your work force is engaged - and what you need to do to raise that number.

Good article on the impact of culture in your company. I zeroed in on this quote:

"According to Gallup, disengaged employees are almost twice as likely as engaged employees to seek new jobs. And it’s not just the disengaged ones that you should worry about - 51% of U.S. employees say they are on the lookout for new jobs."

Is that not frightening? The entire job market is about to degenerate into pure poaching. We could be looking at another 10-12 years of an increasingly difficult job market for employers. How do you protect your existing employees from considering that the "grass might be greener elsewhere?"

Is there any doubt that there is a strong correlation between employee engagement and customer engagement/quality of experience?

Great infographic demonstrating simply the correlation.

My question is if it's that rock solid of a correlation, why are more companies not investing in employee engagement, and why are more companies not tracking the metrics around employee engagement and customer experience?

Are your younger workers demanding more flexible work hours and the chance to work from home. Have you tried to experiment with virtual work arrangements. It's one of the strongest desires from the younger generations. Are you adapting or resisting? Is the lack of a structured approach to managing virtual employees limiting your ability to hire younger talent?

Why do you still use job descriptions as the core document in defining work? It does not define outcomes, deliverables, expectations, performance, results, KPIs and metrics. It has a unfurling roll of irrelevant lists of experiences, education, skills, and knowledge. The traditional job description doesn't come close to describing how someone would apply all these items in the context of their role.

Just like a hiring process, you should also have a retention process. Praying that employees love their job and your company because they show up for work every day could lead to your best talent exiting over the next few years. You need to be intentional about working on culture, feedback, engagement, mediocrity, non-monetary rewards and recognition to mention a few key areas. When should be the best time to create a retention process or system?

The author writes from the perspective of improving the customer experience - but talks about how the employee experience has to come first. Interesting trend developing in recent surveys - particularly among the younger generations - is that they want a more flexible work schedule and opportunity to work from home. What does this say about supervision, performance management, and work productivity - particularly for companies that are not prepared to manage flex time and remote working?

Think about the most successful organizations - for-profit, non-profit, educational, start-ups, large companies - my experience in 30 years - like the author of this article - is that the most successful organizations focus around culture. Are you spending time defining it, managing it, and communicating about it?