Hats, Client Focus, and Employee Retention

I’m flying home from delivering a keynote address on employee retention to executives of Reser’s Fine Foods in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. After the address one of the group gave me a Reser’s hat, the baseball kind.

I’ve never cared much for hats, even though some men with my hair situation welcome them to shield their bald spots. So at first I gladly accepted the hat but wondered inside what to do with it. But now I have a new idea.

I’m going to move a hat rack into my office, collect hats from all of our client companies, and put their hat on my desk when I’m working on cutting their turnover. Whether on a call with their management team, or with my C-Suite Analytics colleagues, or drafting plans for them, I will leverage their hat and their logo to focus my energy on the single best thing we do to cut employee turnover.

So here are three turnover-cutting ideas for Reser’s inspired by my new hat:
1. Their managers know that employees must work in cold, wet conditions, made worse by the cold of winter and the heat of summer; since these job conditions won’t change, I’ll suggest they include them in a realistic job preview to ensure applicants fully grasp and accept these conditions as part of the job rather than be surprised by them and subsequently quit in their first few weeks

2. Stopping early turnover stops all turnover, so I was confident before checking data that a high percent of quits happen in the first 60 days; establishing a goal to improve the percent of new hires who reach 60 days is therefore essential, but just as important all those who impact new hires must own that goal…and this group usually includes HR recruiters, new-hire trainers, and most or all supervisors

3. Now train those managers to conduct two Stay Interviews with new hires in that initial 60-day period, usually at 3 weeks and 6 weeks; learn precisely why these newly-hired employees stay and also could leave, probe to learn every detailed thought, and take actions in the form of a retention plan to retain them so each supervisor meets their 60-day new-hire retention goals.
Sometimes retention ideas are more client-specific. One manufacturing company placed new hires in their internal labor pool as floaters to fill in for absences and other areas of need. Doing so made their initial turnover worse because new hires not only were restricted from learning skills for one particular job, but more importantly they began their careers without one steady, easily-identifiable supervisor with whom they could build a relationship based on trust. Now this client sees this process flaw and will soon name 15 veteran employees as floaters and celebrate their promotion, in order to give new hires a permanent work home.

I like this hat idea. Someone might think it’s hokey but I think it brings creative, intelligent focus…to do our jobs which is helping our client companies retain more employees and engage them in their work. Now I’m suddenly a hat guy.

We work with companies of all sizes, even those too small to have their own hats. Learn how we can help you stabilize your workforce, cut employee turnover, and greatly increase the number of employees who bring their best to work for you every day and I’ll hang your hat on my rack.