Engagement surveys are targeted toward generating company-wide programs, exit interviews aren’t valid data because employees don’t tell the truth, and CEOs want turnover percentage benchmarks instead of cost. Even together, the data from these three common tools give you absolutely no viable pathway to cut turnover.
As important as engagement is, what do you think provides the best data? A one-day snapshot survey or a regularly scheduled one-on-one manager to employee conversation. To truly know how our employees feel about their jobs every day, we know conducting Stay Interviews are the best way to ask, listen, probe, and respond to individual problems and needs. That’s how to truly gauge employee engagement and improve employee retention.
This is a startling statement from the normally conservative Wall Street Journal. The pandemic has been the universal game-changer such that American’s work habits and work values changed in ways comparable to having experienced a war.
A recent Harvard Business Review article provided convincing data that top performers are the first to quit when new hires are getting paid more than they are. Overall salaries are projected to increase another 4% this year, causing even more salary compression. And importantly, the increase in online-everything makes it far easier for employees to know how much peer employees are getting paid…especially new hires whose pay is blasted across Indeed and other hiring sources. So yes, everyone knows.
Even those of us who love hard data must acknowledge the truth that most people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. I have mentioned my belief that what matters most regarding employee retention and engagement is what employees talk about over dinner and bosses are often what they talk about over dinner.
Instead of wondering how to make employee retention goals and tools fit into your current corporate culture, consider making a fundamental change to your culture with the consistent belief, executive buy-in, and full organizational engagement in employee retention as one, if not the, most important focus of your organization.
The short answer is “no.” This discussion must start with our 9 million open jobs and a near-historically low 3.7% unemployment rate. And the pandemic-driven work-from-home trend is playing a major role.
Consider that top performers out-perform average performers by 4 to 1. But during these dog-chase-tail times, retaining even your average workers versus having to dip into the highly competitive recruiting pool makes more sense than continuously playing in the doom loop of recruit/train/do exit interviews and then start over.
“The things that destroy love and marriage often disguise themselves as unimportant. They’re not bombs and gunshots. They’re pinpricks. They’re paper cuts.” The common thinking about why employees quit is usually pay, benefits, career paths, and other broad one-size-fits-all expressions. The reality though is that many employees are quitting their jobs today because of the hundreds of paper cuts by their direct supervisors.
The first quarter of 2024 is a great time for visionary leaders to consider fresh strategies to retaining their organization’s top talent. With the unwavering belief that every company should make it a mission to cut turnover rates, I present to you five employee retention resolutions for your consideration.