During a recent client discussion, I mentioned my belief that what matters most regarding employee retention and engagement is what employees talk about over dinner. That the feelings we tell ourselves on our way home from work plus any subsequent conversations we have soon after ultimately predicts how long we will stay and how committed we are to our day-to-day work.
I kept searching for clues as to how a poverty-stricken person views work, clinging to the naïve notion that work = money = getting out of poverty, so therefore one would give all to their job as the ticket out. Then I read more about poverty and the big lesson for me is that a poverty-stricken person’s reality is worse than I thought, with a lack of support systems and knowledge of hidden rules.
Last month the Wall Street Journal reported the results of a survey conducted with a large group of economists. Of the 52 economists surveyed, 22 predicted that workforce participation would never return to its pre-pandemic levels. So the challenge of recruiting and retaining in 2019 was cake compared to what’s ahead in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.
With much data circulating about “The Great Resignation”, you may think it’s hard to separate which information really matters. Recently, our Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, reported quits rate by state and the complete report reveals two Americas...and this data matters.
The data doesn’t tell us why people quit, just that they quit. Making this worse, the labor market is still down five million jobs since before the pandemic.
As I've shared in two recent articles, most employees won’t care about your referral program if you don’t pay out a significant chunk the day the referred employee starts – and Forbes agrees.
The science shows that helping managers solve turnover is equally as important as recruiting new hires, and at a time when the number of open positions AND the number of employees quitting across our country has never been higher.
Last week I had three separate meetings with organizations that said they had conducted Stay Interviews but turnover and engagement had remained the same…no improvement. I learned next, though, that the Stay Interviews they had implemented were not the proven approach with Stay Interviews that we provide to our clients…and not a form of Stay Interviews that is based on research.
Pay at least half of the total reward to the referring employee on day one, especially if that employee is paid by the hour. Otherwise your referral program begins with a fatal flaw…at a time when you’ve never needed employee referrals more.
Employee referrals are four times more likely to be hired, save companies over $7,500 per hire, perform their jobs better than their peer employees…and most importantly for our purposes, stay longer. What’s not to like?