While exit surveys bring a concept that at first glance should be helpful to our overall retention quest, the combination of poor survey design, minimal truth-telling, and the absence of constructive follow-up all dilute their value. You should be asking “Why do you stay?” versus “Why are you leaving?” to get better employee retention data for your company.
Each week I present here the absolute best information and solutions to implement Stay Interviews and cut employee turnover. But today, I want to invite you to spend a few days in Florida learning it all such that you could return home to MAKE IT HAPPEN…to not only reduce turnover but also slash open jobs, make real employee engagement happen, and improve productivity across your company.
Most employees can immediately tell you why they might leave, but few have actually catalogued in their minds why they stay. Stay Interviews Question 3 is important as it causes employees to self-search. And once they announce to you why they stay they also announce it to themselves…and they tend to never forget it.
Gallup recently announced that early in 2024 employee engagement had reached an 11-year low. Gallup attributes this absence of engagement improvement to areas like lack of job clarity, a short supply of manager skills, and survey burnout among other reasons.
Recent surveys say these are the at-work values young workers hold most dear: Mobility, entrepreneurial freedom, and flexibility. Lock these key employee retention words into your brain, make them pop up on your computer screen first thing each morning because 53% of your Gen Z and millennials will consider leaving this year.
Recently I’ve seen two examples of organizations essentially saying that increased turnover is unavoidable and then proposed work-around plans with no proven track records. In fact these voices are saying that entire industries, supply chain management and nursing, have no fix for turnover and they should waive a white flag of surrender.
Young workers are much more willing to abandon relationships that feel insecure or unsafe, both at home and in their places of work…and are much more willing to welcome relationships where they feel safe to be their authentic selves.
I addressed the crowd at the SHRM24 Annual Conference in Chicago and HR professionals who associate us with Stay Interviews alone often miss out on what I described in the session’s title as “the best-ever employee retention solution”.
It’s become common to complain about poor customer service, mutterings by those with clear memories of right-in-front-of-me employees who were eager to help. And those who mutter are right because a full 75% of American businesses have already turned away customers or cut operating hours because they can’t hire enough staff, making us wonder how much worse customer service can become.
In the Harvard Business Review article, “Customer Surveys Are No Substitute for Actually Talking to Customers,” HBR now deems customer conversations as more effective for engagement than customer surveys. Shouldn’t this same principle be applied to employees as well?