Techniques for Retaining and Engaging Your Workforce

If your organization is aware of the tremendous cost associated with turnover, and you realize you are losing some of your best people, it is important to assess the symptoms and address methods for enhancing employee retention.

Every 8 seconds a boomer turns 50, and 1/3 of the country turns 50 by 2010. This means that we will be opening new opportunities without enough of the younger generation ready to step up. Plus, finding a job has never been easier. There is no more blind loyalty to organizations. The internet has opened up new avenues for connecting people with prospective employers at a more accessible rate than ever before.

When it comes to retaining your most important human capital, a little prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best place to find talent is right under our nose.

So where do you begin? We recommend you conduct a targeted, in-depth retention survey to identify why your current employees choose to stay with you, and why those who left did leave. Exit interview data may help. A really valuable resource may also be provided from employees who have already left but may be willing to provide you with candid feedback.

From this data, you want to be able to identify where the weak links in your organization lie. Are there any groups or divisions with a higher turnover rate? Are you losing a lot of people within their first year of employment? You want to target any unique trends or needs that your organization is facing.

The solution to retaining your key employees is unique to every situation. A cookie cutter approach won’t identify and address your key issues. So diagnose your own organization before you prescribe the right approach to best meet your organization’s retention needs.

When you are informed that a staff member is leaving, you may feel surprised, disappointed, confused, and want them to stay. You will ask them why they are leaving and they may state that they “got a better offer”.

But if you dig deeper, you may discover the real reason frequently doesn’t have as much to do with financial compensation and as you may have thought. One study noted that 89% of managers believe employees leave for more money. In reality, however, 88% of them left for reasons other than money. Very frequently, this has to do with they way they were treated in their jobs and their relationship with the manager. In fact, 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite a lack of appreciation as a key reason for leaving.

The relationship that each employee has with his or her immediate supervisor or manager is one of the most critical links for retaining and engaging your workforce. Below please find 5 tips you can use now to encourage your managers to help retain their staff:

• Conduct “Stay Interviews”. Why do we ask great questions in exit interviews but neglect asking early enough to make a difference? The obvious is often overlooked. Instead of conducting Exit Interviews, managers need to conduct Stay Interviews! A stay interview is an extremely powerful tool. It is a discussion between the manager and employee that demonstrates how much the employee is valued and helps to uncover what would make them at risk for leaving. Each employee is asked:
  
  
  • What can I do to keep you?
  • What would make you happier?
  • What would entice you away?
    
    
• Show Them They are Important. If appreciation is such a key motivator, it is important to ask yourself if this is happening enough within your organization now. Frequently, managers will think it’s not necessary to let people know they are sincerely valued and appreciated. But without this key element for retention and motivation, your employees may be at risk for going someplace where they will feel more valued. The best way to show appreciation is to make it sincere, and have it come directly from the employee’s immediate manager. But you may also consider asking your employees the kinds of things they would like. Some organizations create recognition committees for this purpose.
  
  
• Enhance Career Growth, Learning and Development. Top performers will seek out jobs with employers that put extra effort into helping them learn, grow and advance internally. This becomes especially important with Generation X and Y employees who are especially interested in new skills acquisition. So each manager needs to ask their employees what opportunities they seek, and then link them to people and resources that can help them achieve their goals.
  
  
• Hire the Right People to Start With. If you don’t hire for retention to start with, all your other efforts will be futile. Make sure you listen for clues that the candidate has the true ability to do the job, and the right mind set to demonstrate your organization’s key values. We recommend analyzing the job requirements needed for any new position, and then using Behavioral Interviewing techniques to identify if the candidate can perform the competencies needed.
  
  
• Provide a Realistic Job Preview and Manage Expectations. If you are losing a high percentage of employees within their first year on the job, this is especially critical. At the root of causes with new employee turnover is an expectation that was not met. That’s really the bottom line. So let each new candidate know all the expectations your organization will have for them. Don’t let them be surprised, and don’t “sugar coat” the down sides of the job just to get them to come on board. If you do, they won’t be happy, and they will leave.

In summary, managers and supervisors play a key role in retaining and engaging your staff. There are many things they can do to influence employee loyalty.

Below please find 9 suggestions to help create the most powerful and cost-effective program for your organization.

• Know Why Your People Are Leaving. Do your research. Really dig. Use a retention survey and one-on-one conversations to help you. Analyze the feedback and target where you should begin.
  
  
• Gain Support of Senior Leadership. Make them visible. Involve every level of management in your learning design. Senior leaders need to show support and walk the talk in order to lead your organization’s retention initiative. They need to share your retention targets with everyone in the organization and discuss why this is important to your company’s success.
  
  
• Make learning a process, not an event. Divide your learning program into shorter sessions, spread over time. Make sure participants have assignments to complete and actions to take between sessions. Monitor their progress. Reinforce it. You don’t want a workbook sitting on the shelf somewhere gathering dust. Make your program vital, strong, dynamic and action-packed.
  
  
• Build Action Planning into the Process. Make sure your managers and supervisors are held accountable for sharing their action plans with their own managers. Most importantly, make sure they are implementing the plans they put in place. Managers need to know specific, tangible actions they are to take in order for them to put your retention initiative into action.
  
  
• Reinforce all the time. Make sure you maintain the momentum you will create. Share success stories among other departments and branches. This encourages peer pressure and commitment. One very effective way reinforcement tool is conducting live web-based meetings with senior leaders involved, as a facilitator addresses key concepts and encourages leaders to call on managers who have implemented successful retention practices with their own staff.
  
  
• Keep Communication Open. Encourage active 2-way communication regularly between your managers and the senior leadership and learning team. One way to do this is by providing monthly Retention Tips newsletters, that also include short survey questions. This enables your learning team to collect the data, monitor progress, and also share it with senior leadership.
  
  
• Retention Teams. Encourage management teams in each department or branch to work together to identify the key retention issues in their respective office. Then encourage them to formulate plans for best targeting their unique needs.
  
  
• Measure, Measure, Measure. What gets measured gets done. Let everyone know your retention targets. Share your progress. Keep all employees informed.
  
  
• Use Blended Learning Resources. This can be a very effective way for creating a learning process that is effective, targeted and focused. Incorporate web meetings, eLearning, action planning, newsletters and reinforcement checks throughout your entire process. Not only will this minimize your costs, it will maximize your effectiveness. The end result will be a tremendous reduction in your turnover costs, and greater profitability to your organization.
  

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"This course provided alot of good assessment tools that helped me realize I wasn't hiring the right people to begin with”.

“This course helped our company realize that it takes a group effort to keep good employees, from the senior leadership to the managers, we all had to work together to make it a company someone wanted to stay with ”.

"Great course, that provided real tools I will use!”

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Susan Cullen is the President of Quantum Learning Solutions, Inc. and has extensive experience working with organizations of all sizes to enhance management and leadership development. She is the author of numerous articles and e-learning programs focusing on the most effective tools for retention, engagement and performance.

Quantum has been providing high quality training and development solutions since 1988. We work with a variety of Fortune 500 organizations and smaller companies, in the areas of Management Development, Employee Development, and Team Building. We have offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois.