|
Imagine
you have been working late to finish an important
project when your sales manager walks into your
office and tells you she has been offered a better
job. This is the same person you handpicked,
trained, and recently gave a pay raise. As she turns
to depart she says, "There are others thinking about
leaving too."
What went
wrong? How are you going to finish this project? Who
will be next to leave? The dread is starting to sink
in.
Employers
face enormous challenges when they consider the
increasing difficulty of finding skilled people, a
more demanding younger workforce, and a growing
population of older workers heading toward
retirement. In the next 10 years, HR professionals
expect three out of 10 employees in their
organization's workforce to retire.
The
difficulty in finding and keeping talented people is
having a catastrophic impact on many businesses and
industries throughout the world. In addition to
those retiring, surveys show one out of every three
people plan on quitting their jobs this year. The
greatest threat employers face is losing their best
and brightest to the competition. That's a lot of
talent leaving organizations and just the beginning
of what many people have described as the "perfect
storm."
Here
Comes the "Plug and Play" Generation
A new
generation of workers is transforming the landscape.
There are several reasons why. On one end of the
workforce, the Baby Boomer generation is retiring,
leaving fewer skilled people to choose from. On the
other end, a smaller group of younger workers is
entering the workforce who place their needs for
instant gratification first and foremost. The
average tenure of a 20-something is less than 18
months, creating a swinging door and a cycle of
misery for employers.
The Cost
of Turnover
Each year
businesses spend billions of dollars recruiting and
replacing their employees. They assume turnover is
unavoidable and think there is very little they can
do to prevent it. For the most part, organizations
focus on retention after they start experiencing a
turnover problem.
Few
businesses consider the impact of turnover on their
bottom line. It takes $7,000 - $14,000 to replace a
typical employee, and to replace a key manager costs
the same as buying a Lexus. To replace a critical
care nurse can run up to $185,000; and when a top
talented individual in a key role departs, it can
cost millions. In spite of the staggering cost, the
majority of businesses do not have a formal
retention program.
Money and
benefits are important, but studies show most
employees leave for other reasons. Obviously, a
certain degree of turnover is unavoidable, but with
a small amount of effort organizations can make a
major difference. Your retention plan should address
the following key components.
Hire the
best and avoid the rest. Cisco CEO John Chambers
said, "A world-class engineer with five peers can
out produce 200 regular engineers." At Yahoo they
would rather leave a position open than hire the
wrong person. Instead of waiting for people to apply
for jobs, top organizations spend time looking for
high-caliber people whether they have a job opening
or not. Redesign your orientation program for new
employees. The old saying, "You don't get a second
chance to make a good first impression" is true in
this case. Organizations experience the highest
level of turnover during the first 90 days on the
job. The purpose of onboarding is to quickly
assimilate the new person into the organization, so
make the first critical days stand out as a positive
experience. This is a great opportunity to make new
hires feel proud to have chosen your organization.
Provide
flexible work schedules adapted to the needs of the
individual. In today's workplace, flexibility rules.
A one-size-fits-all approach has long since lost its
effectiveness. Workers will migrate to a company
whose benefit packages and schedules help them meet
the demands of their lives, whether they are single
parents, adults who care for aging parents, older
workers, younger workers, part-time workers, or
telecommuters.
Get rid
of the slackers and whiners. Employee retention does
not mean you keep everyone. Employees say one of the
main reasons they stay is because they like the
people they work with. No one wants to work with
people who do not pull their weight. Those
businesses that tolerate poor performance will drive
off the good employees and be stuck with the bad
ones.
Soft
skills are becoming the hard skills. Interpersonal
skills are a critical element of the high-retention
culture. People want to feel management cares and is
concerned for them as individuals. Yet, poor "soft
skills" are one of the biggest factors driving
people away. To build stronger bonds between the top
management and employees, one corporate office
practices something called the 'Employee Scavenger
Hunt.' Once or twice a year, they give every
executive or manager five names of employees. They
find each person, meet them, and learn about them as
individuals. The process builds a better bond,
improves communication, and increases trust within
the organization.
If they
can't "move up" they will "move out." For many
people, learning new skills and advancing their
career is just as important as the money they make.
In a study by Linkage, Inc. more than 40 percent of
the respondents said they would consider leaving
their present employer for another job with the same
benefits if that job provided better career
development and greater challenges.
Create an
early warning detection system. Ask employees to let
you know if they hear of people who are thinking
about quitting. Advance notice will give you an
opportunity to try to prevent the departure. One
practice Applebee's put in place is the "Turnover
Alert Form." It is designed to identify and prevent
discontented managers from quitting. In those
situations, Applebee's brings the managers in to
meet with the CEO and possibly other executives.
They want to identify and repair anything that might
be causing job dissatisfaction.
Create an
alumni program. No matter how good you think your
company is, your employees always think they can
find a better job elsewhere. "The grass is greener"
mentality is alive and well in organizations across
the country. So keep the doors open for the good
ones to come back. Keep in contact with previous
employees, send them newsletters, keep recruiting
and talking to them until they return. Who knows,
they may refer other employees to you.
Look for
triggers. Focus on individuals going through some
form of change such as marriage, pregnancy, divorce,
a child's graduation, mergers, or other important
events that could influence job satisfaction and/or
persuade or force employees to leave the
organization prematurely.
Re-hire
your employees. An emphasis on hiring new people can
cause "older" employees to dis-engage, feel ignored,
or forgotten. To combat this situation, consider
reinterviewing all of your employees periodically.
During the interview, review their training and
development, ideas and suggestions, identify new
skills acquired, and review their pay and benefits.
Take the
temperature of your workforce. High-retention
workplaces use employee climate assessments to
measure the attitudes and feelings of their
workforce. Every organization should conduct some
form of climate assessment periodically during the
year.
Complete
an Individual Retention Plan on your best employees.
You must manage retention one employee at a time.
Focus on the key jobs that have the most impact on
profitability and productivity. Everyone has a
different set of needs and expectations about their
jobs. By conducting an individual retention profile,
managers can quickly identify the employee's unique
motivations, goals, level of job satisfaction, as
well as other expectations.
Focus on
the family. One small company gives their employees'
children a $50 Savings Bond twice a year when they
get straight A's on their report cards. Another
survey of 1,000 companies showed half of them let
workers stay home with mildly ill children without
using vacation or sick days. Two-thirds permit
flextime defined as allowing employees to adjust
work hours on a daily basis.
Identify
and weed out poor managers. The relationship with
the employee's front-line manager is the most common
reason people leave. As part of LaRosa's employee
retention strategy, all workers evaluate their
bosses twice a year using a special report card. It
asks the employees to give their managers a letter
grade from A to D in four categories. Any score less
than a "B" requires a specific comment from the
employee. After it's completed, they tabulate the
comments and design action plans for improvement.
Adopt
your employees. Starting employees off on the right
track is incredibly important, and maintaining your
hiring initiatives and keeping strategies fresh and
creative is the key. One organization goes a step
further than most--they ADOPT their employees. After
they are hired and complete the orientation program,
the new employee is brought into a conference room
and presented with a set of "Adoption Papers." The
certificate is printed on parchment paper. The
employee also receives a cupcake and with a lit
candle commemorating this important event.
Greg
Smith's cutting-edge keynotes, consulting, and
training programs have helped businesses reduce
turnover, increase sales, hire better people and
deliver better customer service. As President of
Chart Your Course International he has designed and
implemented professional development programs for
hundreds of organizations globally. He is a former
examiner for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award, the nation's highest award for business
excellence. He has authored eight books including
his latest, 401 Proven Ways to Retain Your Best
Employees.
Greg is founder and President of Chart Your
Course International, a management development firm
located in Atlanta, Georgia. Many of his clients
include both Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
winners and Fortune Magazine's "Top 100 Best Places
To Work." Greg Served on the Board of Examiners for
the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. He is
listed in Harvard University's Profiles in Business
and Management: An International Directory of
Scholars and Their Research.
|
