Improve Retention & Engagement with these 8 Tactics

Turnover and disengagement are symptoms of a poor employee work experience. That bad experience is usually linked to an employee being in the wrong job, or reporting to a manager lacking a leadership mindset. This article will provide a remedy to both.

A recent December 18/2019 Gallup Report estimates that a trillion dollars is what U.S. businesses are losing every year due to voluntary employee turnover. A?few weeks earlier, the?U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced ?that the number of American workers who quit their jobs in 2018 topped 40 million and represented 26.9% of the workforce.

When Gallup talked with workers who quit their jobs, they found two fascinating bits of information: First, more than half (52%) of them said their manager or organization could have done something to keep them from leaving. Second, 51% said that in the three months before their departure neither their manager nor any other company leader had spoken with them about their job satisfaction or their future. Remember these are highly talented professionals whose skills are in demand and yet their managers failed to have meaningful career conversations with them.

With a trillion dollars on the table, businesses must take steps to curb turnover now. If your company's products or services were losing market share or experiencing a drop in profit a fix should be a CEO's top priority. Failure to retain a skilled engaged and productive workforce especially during times of full employment has severe bottom line consequences. Odd as it may seem, the hidden costs of turnover, as gargantuan as they are rarely appears on financial reports, and forecasts. These costs are exacerbated when you consider that overlapping studies point to a correlation between high turnover and poor customer satisfaction, patient and employee safety, absenteeism and employee morale. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Psychometric job fit assessments are a powerful force to help business leaders make better people decisions - decisions that flow directly to a healthier bottom line.

Here are eight tactics that improve the employee experience.

1. Develop personalized action plans for each employee

The number one driver behind exiting professionals is a career stuck in limbo. LinkedIn put that insight to work several years ago. As the ferocious fight to retain engineering talent heated up, it created a proactive retention program that drew attention to the turnover threat.

LinkedIn identified engineers who had been rated “exceeds” or “far exceeds” expectations and then engaged senior leaders in the company to meet with targeted employees. The conversations were designed to 1) acknowledge the contributions of these engineers, 2) express gratitude, and 3) learn what was keeping them at LinkedIn and what would cause them to leave.

Based on those conversations, individualized plans were developed for engineers that included giving them opportunities to build X or learn Y, depending on their stated interests.

It could be argued that all employees are critical to a business and therefore the LinkedIn approach wouldn't work for you, or you don't have highly skilled engineers, or you don't have LinkedIn's deep pockets, or your culture is different. These objections are legitimate but inaccurate as you will see when we explore the eight tactics below.

This model can be made to work with the right assessment tool that can be scaled to the front-line manager level so every employee from entry level to management will feel valued, and receive coaching, while the organization improves employee engagement and retention across all roles.

2. Optimize an Employee's Talents

Many employees exit because they are bored not because they don't have enough to do but because they feel they have the capacity to take on more and aren’t given the chance, or because there are aspects of the job as in the example below that although they can do the work it has no appeal to them. Boredom or lack of challenge is a significant turnover risk regardless of industry or position. Assessing employees is an eye opening experience. Employers discover diamonds in the ruff and customize roles that fit with their strengths.

Let me give you an example.

Jane is a marketing campaign manager and she was responsible for developing, launching, and tracking campaign projects. Jane loved certain aspects of her job which leaned toward the content development, and market research but hated the spreadsheet driven, multi-tasking time sensitive project management side of the job. Her assessment made this divide abundantly clear so she and her manager crafted a reset of her responsibilities shifting the project management side of the job to a colleague Jim whose assessment revealed strengths in project management. At the end of the day the marketing team was strengthened, two team members became more productive and engaged. Now compare that result with one where Jane and Jim whose skills are in demand quit and joined another firm in search of their ideal job.

3. Provide career coaching from your top employees

Given that a lack of opportunity for career advancement is the top driver of attrition, companies that want to slow down turnover should offer coaching or mentoring for their top performers.

Overlapping studies reveal that providing employee coaching with a focus on strengths and challenge areas promotes career development and retention. Regular and productive one on one sessions that boosts productivity and engagement. An employee's personalized coaching profile covers a range of career based topics that include enhancing job specific behaviors and skills, career path options, enhanced teamwork, leadership and development skills.

Coaching and career mapping allows employees to receive one-on-one coaching from their direct manager or seasoned managers in other areas of the company that are also a good fit for the employee.

The program is a win-win, with employees getting insightful advice from company insiders and coaches finding an elevated sense of purpose by helping colleagues.

4. Give your workforce autonomy and the space to be creative

It’s critical for managers to trust their employees and to avoid the temptation to micromanage them. Giving employees the space and permission to solve problems on their own can drive your business forward. For some of your leaders, shifting into that trust mode is easier said than done. Studies confirm that we tend to manage others in ways that are similar to how we were managed.

This influence can become a bump in the road to the manager's effectiveness. The PXT Select's Leadership Coaching report helps burgeoning leaders and managers feeling uncomfortable with adopting new leadership behaviors that will help them navigate the white water world of being a team leader.

5. Recognize achievements, big and small

When professionals start looking for new opportunities, the job hunt isn’t always sparked by a manager who is silent about development. Two out of three talented and in demand employees when surveyed said they won't stay in a job if they felt ignored or unappreciated and they often begin looking elsewhere if their manager is silent about recognition.

Recognition needs to be timely, genuine, and in keeping with the performance. Recognition need not be as grand as a promotion, or bonus but simple as a thank you for a job well done.

6. Set clear expectations

In 2018, LinkedIn Learning surveyed nearly 3,000 professionals about their biggest frustration with their boss. A manager whose expectations were vague or in constant flux was the number one frustration.

Expectations should be delivered clearly and consistently, starting during the hiring process, continuing with onboarding, and then moving on to regular one-to-one meetings. Keep in mind the motto "Employees without goals are overhead, employees who achieve goals are appreciating assets".

7. Actively support volunteerism and community outreach

Company-sponsored volunteer programs are still an under leveraged tool for boosting retention. Even though turnover drops by 57% when employees feel connected to their company's philanthropic and volunteering efforts only 38% of U.S. employees say their company has a volunteer program

8. Leverage technology to provide flexibility for employees.

Work flexibility was one of the four major trends Gallup reported in their 2019 Global Talent Trends report. The report cites Jason Phillips vice president digital HR and global chief of staff at Cisco. “Work flexibility is becoming the norm,”

Technology is liberating providing countless opportunities for business leaders to streamline tedious workflows and give employees who are tethered to cubicles the freedom to work anywhere and whenever. This ubiquitous digital landscape however has created a challenge in the talent selection hemisphere.

A study published by the Oxford University Press and authored by renowned behavioral neuroscientist?Kelly Lambert ?reports that between 1980 to 2015 desk jobs have grown by 94%. The unparalleled growth in this narrow skill set means that we have more people employed today to work at computers than we did thirty-five years ago. This statistic has consequences when looking through the talent selection lens.

The study revealed that screen gazers and mouse pushers tend to have a highly analytical and systematic approach to their environment; but typically lack essential adaptation and engagement skills to be highly successful in a rapidly changing, team oriented, silo busting interpersonal driven culture.

Suppose you are sourcing a Mechanical Engineer for an open position. You would typically narrow the focus on a B.S. in mechanical engineering and the interview would focus primarily on vetting the candidate's technical qualifications. However a closer look at the job and the environment will uncover many non technical requirements to be successful. Is this candidate a team leader? How will this person work under pressure to meet deadlines? How does this person make decisions etc? Ironically multiple turnover studies have found "an employee's mis-alignment with cultural norms and expectations is a leading cause of disengagement, poor job satisfaction and turnover and not his or her technical skills; overshadowing the usual suspects "compensation and benefits".

Does this mean that technical skills and great people skills are mutually exclusive? Of course not, they can and they do co-exist. In today's interconnected environment talent acquisition professionals and recruiters need 21st century pre-hiring assessment tools to transition from pure impression driven to data driven decision making to ensure a good job and cultural fit.

Final thoughts: When you improve retention by improving your culture, you’ll have an easier time finding new hires when your people do leave.

The U.S. economy has now had eight straight years of rising voluntary quits, with the total number going from 22 million in 2010 to 40.1 million in 2018. The Work Institute’s 2018 Retention Report says that “while turnover of any kind has a negative impact on organizational performance, and should be controlled, voluntary turnover is more detrimental to organizational performance than involuntary turnover.”

For the U.S. workforce, the tight labor market is a great opportunity for employees to jump to jobs with more compensation, more responsibility, or more of both. For companies, the current high churn is both a challenge and an opportunity.

The opportunity is to embrace one, some, or all of the tactics above. Each of the practices cited can help cut attrition. And the bonus is that nearly every one of these strategies will also help boost productivity, employee engagement, or employer brand.

According to a Harvard Business Review 20-year Job Fit study “Employees who are well matched to their jobs are 2.5 time more productive and they stay longer”. Discover why every organization can improve retention and benefit from using a Job Fit hiring approach.?

Is your organization an “Employer of Choice”? Glassdoor, ZipRecruiter, and other transparency job boards help job seekers avoid companies with toxic cultures. What can an organization do to attract, hire, and engage top talent as an "Employer of Choice "?

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