Employee retention still a risky issue for companies today: Part 2

Posted by: Jessica Bacher

This is Part 2 of 2. For Part 1 in the series, please visit Retention Still A Risky Issue for Companies Today:  Part 1.

A suggestion for uncovering this is to do a quick audit of your approach:

- Have you severely degraded your employee retention program in the past, cutting expenses for employee promotional and reward opportunities? Have you ‘really’ developed your employees and have you ‘really’ invested in your development programs?

- Do you use a one size fits all approach to attracting, selecting and retaining the best talent?

If so, you are like many and you may need to improve your strategy, quickly.

A suggestion for a high impact and low cost approach, conduct ‘Why do you stay’ retention interviews. As the economy is turning upward and those employees who have decided to hunker down and stick it out are seeing an improving economy, retention issues will increase, and you will need to get to improving the situation for either new employees coming in or to retain the ones you have.  Its important to figure out why folks are leaving, and exit interviews are not giving you the right answers, and even if so, they are simply too late to retain that employee.

By asking employees what keeps them in place and what is going well, you will be able to quickly understand what you need to keep doing well and what must change. Even if an employee doesn’t share what is not going well, because as an employee they may feel its simply too risky or they may feel retribution later you can understand what is not being mentioned and find ways to improve ‘what the employee avoided mentioning is going well’. Significant areas to cover are listed, based on the collective feedback will help you identify where you need to invest time, money and resources before your strongest resources walk out the door.

1. Employee/manager relationship (this is likely best uncovered by a 3^rd party, ideally an outside of the organization or secondarily a neutral 3^rd party inside, a great way to uncover employee/manager issues is to have leadership conduct skip level INDIVIDUAL meetings on a regular basis) – once just won’t cut it the trust and credibility of the leadership will not be in place to divulge information or details if, in fact, the employee does not have an established relationship with the leader
2. Frequent reorganizations; lack of control over career (people want choices, ask your employees what choices they have in their career, do they know? Ask them their thoughts on their perception of how mobile internal movement is, do they feel its scarce? A reality? A reality for them? )
3. Inability to “grow and develop” (Is there really chances and investment in development? Now is their really?)
4. Lack of resources to do the job (do your employees describe the team as lean, do you frequently talk about ‘right sizing’ in leadership discussions, if so it’s likely your employees feel stretched too)
5. Unclear expectations (ask your employees to state what they believe is their roles expectations, is that the way you as a manager would describe it? Is the description consistent across your team in like roles?)
6. Lack of flexibility; no ‘whole life balance’ (what you think is life balance to your employees may not be their idea of life balance)
7. Salary/benefits (use your marketing group and compensation group to scour the market – how are you lining up to the competition)