As the economy revives, companies
\nwith dissatisfied employees will
\nexperience a swift exodus of their top
\ntalent. Here is how to keep your staff
\nengaged and happy.<\/p>\n
In a down economy, employees have So what is one of the biggest reasons How Bonuses, vacation days, office There are “2 issues generally How Even if you resolve to be more In the last 10 years, as CEO of Despite Hoffman’s How Over the years, Engage has Here are a handful of examples<\/p>\n In addition to spurring employees to How One reason CEOs of small businesses Murphy recommends holding monthly While Hoffman does not meet with For example, when Hoffman’s How Though the adage that you join a A lot of small businesses “make How Whenever you task an employee with a And no job is too simple or mundane Murphy cites the example of a group Empowering employees to improve their As the economy revives, companies with dissatisfied employees will experience a swift exodus of their top talent. Here is how to keep your staff engaged and happy. In a down economy, employees have fewer opportunities to take a job at another company, but entrepreneurs would be remiss to take their fingers off the pulse of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":[],"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-6851","articles","type-articles","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nfewer opportunities to take a job at
\nanother company, but entrepreneurs would
\nbe remiss to take their fingers off the
\npulse of company morale simply because
\nemployees have fewer options.
\n“Companies that don’t think
\nabout [employee retention], that
\nbasically rest on their laurels and
\nthink ‘the economy will take care
\nof us, where are they going to go?’ Those are the companies that, as
\nsoon as the labor market picks back up,
\ntheir turnover rates are going to go
\nfrom 5% to 50% and it will happen
\novernight,” says Mark Murphy,
\nAuthor of The Deadly Sins of
\nEmployee Retention<\/em> and CEO of
\nLeadership IQ, a Washington D.C.-based
\nexecutive education firm.<\/p>\n
\npeople quit their jobs? “One of
\nthe major reasons is being dissatisfied
\nwith their supervisor,” says Linda
\nArgote, a Professor of Organizational
\nBehavior at Carnegie Mellon and
\nEditor-in-Chief of Organization
\nScience. In the
\ncramped confines of a small business,
\nthat relationship can create even more
\nof a strain. “In bigger companies
\nthere are more opportunities to move to
\nother jobs if you’re dissatisfied
\nwith a particular supervisor but like
\nthe firm, whereas smaller companies may
\nhave less options so they run the risk
\nof losing the employee,” Argote
\nadds.<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention:
\nMotivation Is Not Enough<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nparties, and many of the tools in a
\nbusiness owner’s arsenal revolve
\naround rewarding employees for a job
\nwell done and motivating them to produce
\nsimilarly stunning results in the
\nfuture. But Murphy says that leaders who
\ndole out these types of perks are only
\nfocusing on half of the picture.<\/p>\n
\ngoing on with employees at any given
\ntime: there are ‘shoves,’
\nthings that demotivate people, and then
\nthere are ‘tugs,’ the things
\nthat motivate you, that tug at you to
\nstay at the organization,” he
\nsays. While these factors will differ
\nfor every employee, leaders often make
\nthe mistake of focusing on the
\nmotivators without adequately
\nconsidering what rubs people the wrong
\nway.<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention: Keeping
\nthe Employee Satisfied<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nattuned to employee likes and dislikes,
\nit can be difficult to ascertain what
\ndrives your employees, especially when
\ntheir motives differ from your own.<\/p>\n
\nEngage Direct Mail, Dennis Hoffman
\nlearned the hard way that “I never
\nknow what’s inside people’s
\nheads. I used to assume
\neverybody’s ambitious because
\nI’m ambitious and that
\neverybody’s motivated by money
\nbecause I’m motivated by money,
\nand I’ve learned through painful
\nexperience that that’s not the
\ncase.”<\/p>\n
\nself-professed learning curve, his
\ncompany
\nactually has a stellar retention rate
\nfor its 130 employees. Engage has a
\n90-day trial period during which
\nthey
\nevaluate whether new hires are good fits
\nfor the company. During that time, their
\nretention rate is about 77%, and
\nafterwards it is over 95%, which is
\nabout as good as you can get. After all,
\n“0% turnover is not a thing to aim
\nfor,” Murphy explains. You want to
\nretain your high performers and strong
\nmatches, and gracefully part ways with
\nyour worst performers.<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention:
\nAttracting the Right Candidates<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n
\nimplemented a number of policies that
\nserve the dual purpose of attracting
\npotential employees and keeping current
\nones passionate and committed.<\/p>\n\n
\ngives hiring priority to people who live
\nnear the office because they believe
\nthat long commutes are detrimental to
\nwork-life balance.<\/span><\/li>\n
\nof a traditional vacation policy, the
\ncompany lets employees take time off
\nfrom a leave bank, in which they can
\naccumulate as many as 60 days off to use
\nas they see fit. This policy has helped
\nwith employee retention, particularly by
\nmaking it easier for female employees
\nstarting families to take time off and
\nultimately return to work.<\/span><\/li>\n
\nthe hiring process, Engage administers
\nthe DISC Personality test, which charts
\nthe 4 characteristics—Drive,
\nInfluence, Steadiness, and
\nCompliance—to build personality
\nprofiles for new hires. All
\nemployees’ test results are public
\nknowledge, which Hoffman feels helps
\npeople understand one another and get
\nalong.<\/span><\/li>\n
\nsetting quarterly goals with rewards
\nattached, such as iPods for the whole
\nteam or a trip to a nice restaurant,
\nEngage can encourage employees beyond
\nthe competitive, and potentially
\ndivisive, realm of salary bonuses. The
\ngroup nature of these rewards is
\nimportant, says Hoffman, because
\n“somebody who is not motivated by
\ngetting an iPod knows that other people
\nin his or her group are and
\ndoesn’t want to let them
\ndown.”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nproductivity, this team structure can
\nmake them happier in the workplace.
\nArgote says, “there’s
\nevidence that being in cohesive work
\ngroups where members like each other
\nreduces turnover.”<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention: Keeping
\nin Touch<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nmust remain vigilant against high
\nturnover is that it impacts them more
\nthan their counterparts at larger
\ncompanies. Argote notes that,
\n“smaller companies are hurt by
\nemployee departures more [than larger
\ncompanies] usually because a lot of
\ntheir knowledge hasn’t been
\nformalized or embedded in processes and
\nroutines.” But where small
\nbusinesses fall down when it comes to
\ninstitutional memory, they have a
\ndistinct advantage of giving employees
\ngreater access to the boss.<\/p>\n
\ncheck-ins with every employee to see
\nwhat is motivating them and demotivating
\nthem. This can give a CEO foresight into
\npotential morale problems much sooner
\nthan he or she would ordinarily catch
\nthem. “Instead of getting 2
\nweeks’ notice when somebody is
\nquitting, if you’re doing these
\nconversations regularly, you should get
\na minimum of 4 months’ notice if
\nyou’ve got a real problem with an
\nemployee, and that’s just
\nlight-years better,” he says.\n<\/p>\n
\nevery employee individually, he conducts
\nfrequent all-hands meetings to give
\nemployees a role in setting company
\ngoals and to stay in touch with what
\ntheir needs are. Still, especially as
\nyour company grows, details of the
\nemployee experience will escape your
\nattention, which is what the exit
\ninterview is for. It is the last line of
\ndefense against a bolting employee and
\nit can sometimes yield surprising
\ninsights and reveal fixable problems.\n<\/p>\n
\nHead of Accounting quit, everything was
\ngoing amicably. She gave plenty of
\nadvance notice, and she helped train her
\nreplacement; it was only at the exit
\ninterview that Hoffman realized why she
\nwas leaving. It had nothing to do with
\nthe company. She had simply grown tired
\nof accounting and needed a new
\nchallenge. That was all it took, and 2
\nmonths later, the employee returned to
\nthe company in a different department,
\nand she is now its head buyer.<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention: Do Not
\nBurn Bridges<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ncompany but quit a manager holds a lot
\nof truth, as showcased by the previous
\nexample, employees do not always leave
\nbecause of a personal dissatisfaction
\nwith their boss or their company. While
\nat a small company, it can easily feel
\nlike a personal slight when an employee
\nleaves you in the lurch, but it is
\nimportant to remain on good terms.<\/p>\n
\nthe mistake of doing the whole
\n‘you’re dead to me’
\nthing when an employee leaves,”
\nMurphy observes, “if you part with
\npeople in a friendly way, you’ve
\nprobably got a new customer and a friend
\nout in the industry.”<\/p>\n
\nto Improve Employee Retention: Leave
\nSome Room for Error<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nproject, you want them to succeed,
\nright? Murphy poses the counterintuitive
\nsuggestion that if you only give
\nassignments where success is assured,
\nyou are hurting yourself in the long
\nrun. If your employee is “not
\ngoing to have to learn anything,
\nprobably the assignment you gave
\nwasn’t robust enough,” he
\nsays. Pushing people out of their
\ncomfort zones and allowing them to
\ndevelop new skills is also a key
\nstrategy for retaining your best
\nemployees.<\/p>\n
\nfor a boss to give employees room to
\ninnovate. While employees might be
\nsuspicious at first if they have never
\nbeen presented with such decision-making
\npower before, they will often not just
\nadapt to, but thrive in, an environment
\nthat gives them additional control.<\/p>\n
\nof garbage men making the rounds in a
\nplanned community. Once their supervisor
\nencouraged them to improve upon the
\nexisting methods for collecting garbage,
\none employee discovered a way to cut the
\nroute in half, saving both time and fuel
\ncosts. By carrying an empty can with him
\non his route, he only had to make 1 trip
\nbetween the truck and each house instead
\nof 2.<\/p>\n
\nwork processes can increase their sense
\nof satisfaction and reduce turnover.
\nConsider this and the aforementioned
\ntips to reduce turnover and increase
\nyour chances of holding on to your best
\nemployees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"