Seven Proofs and A Free Offer

Seven Proofs and A Free Offer

Note to get started: I’ve been writing this weekly blog for years and no previous issue is as important as this one.

At last month’s SHRM conference in Las Vegas, I addressed a mega-session crowd on the topic 7 Proofs That Managers Drive Engagement & Retention, Not HR. My book HR’s Greatest Challenge contains more than 25 distinct studies that all point to managers as the main reason employees leave and dis-engage, so selecting a top seven for SHRM was easy:

  1. Manager opinions impact pay & more.
  2. Managers drive 70% variance in engagement.
  3. Holding nurse managers accountable for retention out-performed childcare and scheduling.
  4. Managers drive 22 of the top 25 stay/leave predictors.
  5. School managers…principals…drive teacher turnover.
  6. Poor leadership causes over 60% of all employee turnover.
  7. And per Gallup’s decades of research on this topic, employees join for things and stay/leave for managers.

Would you like to receive an expanded white paper of these details, contact me
at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and I’ll send you the link.

As shared with the group, reading and circulating studies is a no-brainer…The trick is what to do with this data to improve engagement and retention when you return to your jobs. 

C-Suite Analytics SHRM21 Turnover Tsunami
SHRM placed this “The Turnover Tsunami is Coming” wall on the expo floor at the conference, asking attendees to jot and post their very best ideas for stopping turnover. The responses included recruit better, improve onboarding, and of course do more engagement surveys and exit surveys.

After reviewing SHRM’s Wall, it became clear there was a total disconnect between what research and science screams at us and what we actually have on our daily to-do lists to improve retention. If you accept that the science behind the seven studies as true… then it means you must also accept that any investment of your time in the following activities is less important than helping your managers solve turnover:

  • HR onboarding new hires
  • Purchasing better benefits
  • Conducting engagement surveys
  • Conducting exit surveys
  • Benchmarking pay and benefits against competitors

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. Which is why the single most important metric regarding turnover is turnover by manager, and right behind that is turnover by length of service. This data is likely to reveal that your new hires are quitting soon after onboarding and that you’re in danger of the doom loop of recruiting, failing to grow your total headcount because new hires don’t stay.

Back to SHRM, I went on to share with attendees precisely how to cut their turnover by leveraging the seven proofs and implementing Finnegan’s Arrow which includes (1) determining turnover’s cost so executives establish retention goals, then (2) training managers to conduct Stay Interviews, followed by (3) asking managers to forecast how long each employee will stay.

Next we discussed resistance as we often find there will be blowback when HR asks managers to do something extra like learn to conduct Stay Interviews. Here are some of their reasons:

  • “We have too many meetings already, don’t have time”
  • “Employees leave because of pay”
  • “We do surveys and that’s enough”
  • “Employees won’t tell the truth”
  • “Millennials will leave no matter what”

The great news, though, is that your empowered executives are now driven to ask your managers to conduct Stay Interviews instead of HR. Having fully digested the  the cost of turnover,  the seven proofs, and the power of retention goals, it is now your executives who are instructing managers to conduct Stay Interviews and be accountable for retention instead of HR.

Closing the SHRM mega-session, I made a free offer to every attendee, to present a short version of the session remotely to their executive team for no cost. That I would be an outside voice…an expert guide…to help their HR team shatter long-held beliefs about retention and engagement among their CEOs and other c-suite team in less than 30 minutes. Today, I make that same offer to you. Please email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or even call me at 407-694-3390 and I promise to advocate for you and your HR team!

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