The above paragraph sounds like I made it up, but every detail is true. And if you’re heading for the SHRM Annual Conference later this month in San Diego, I’ll be speaking on how to fix it on Sunday, June 29^th, at 1:30 PM.

First, Engagement Has Never, Ever Gotten Better

Gallup has reported on U.S. companies’ employee engagement every year since 2000. We at C-Suite Analytics track their reporting each year and update the below chart. Here are the results so far:

Gallup reports engagement in three categories: the green on the left indicates the percentage of U.S. workers who are engaged, the blue in the middle indicates the percentage who are not engaged, and the orange on the right indicates the percentage who are in Gallup’s terms “actively disengaged”. This latter group undermines the work of the others.

The obvious first conclusion is that U.S. employee engagement has been steady throughout, regardless of changes in our economy, war vs peace, or any other societal trend. So I would conclude secondly that engagement is based on what is happening inside our buildings versus outside in our society.

Second, Engagement Is Getting Worse, No Matter How Much $ We Through At It

The above chart says so, as does a recent Gallup report headline: U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low. So the logical question becomes now that we have done these surveys for so many years and we should be getting really good at this, plus we seem to have unlimited money to fix engagement, how can we be failing by such an incredibly high margin?

The easy out is to blame workers, and especially young ones. Baby-boomers are moving on, young workers don’t bring the grit, helicopter parents have been far too easy on their kids, blah blah blah.

Third, Here Are the Reported Reasons Why

There have been many published opinions for this failure of course. In the same report noted just above, Gallup pointed their finger toward clarifying job expectations and ensuring “someone” cares about them as a person and encourages their development. Gallup’s ultimate conclusions are for leaders to (1) define what they want in their workplace culture, (2) lead with their own strengths while clarifying the organization’s purpose, and (3) prioritize identifying and selecting managers with the innate ability to engage and inspire employees. In another Gallup report on employee detachment, Gallup says employees are disconnected from their employers due to rapid organizational change/hybrid & remote growing pains/new customer expectations/new employer expectations/broken performance management systems.[iv]

Here’s A Better, Winning Idea

The above paragraph is full of broad strategies without proven tactics, but in fairness it’s because Gallup’s business intent is for us to click on these reports to learn more. Nonetheless, every phrase in that paragraph stands in stark contrast to another, much more usable Gallup report that says this, from a book authored by their CEO:

Of all the codes Gallup has been asked to crack dating back to 80 years to our founder, George Gallup, the single most profound, distinct, and clarifying finding –ever—is probably this one: 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.[v]

Wow. This triggers the main point of my report here, that not just Gallup but every engagement survey vendor points to broad strategies that inevitably lead to one-size-fits-all programs, that completely overlook and result in zero engagement responsibilities for first-line managers.

Gallup speaks of high-level organizational development terms like culture, purpose, organizational change, and employee detachment…and they almost, almost name first-line leaders when they say that someone cares about employees and encourages their development. Yet the common company employee engagement survey response goes like this:

1. Conduct the survey.
2. Wait a month for the results.
3. HR reports major trends to the executive team.
4. Improvement plans are developed, usually by HR and by each manager.
5. The manager plans are never scrutinized for quality and more importantly managers are not held accountable for implementing their plans.
6. HR often times gathers an employee committee to develop items with the lowest scores.
7. And then the CEO sends an email to employees reporting all that will be done to improve the next round of scores.

And one-size-fits-all programs prevail. Want to improve recognition? Employee-of-the-month plus backpacks for ten years of service and clocks for twenty. Communication? CEO videos, town hall meetings, and more info uploaded on the company intranet. Benefits? Let’s add pet insurance.

What Employees Really Want

They want a manager they can trust. From their start, employee engagement solutions have been trains off the track. Arrows that miss the target. Baseball teams that have everything but pitching and hitting. When employees are having dinner and respond to “How was your day, dear?”, no one says their day was OK but they wish they had pet insurance. They talk about their boss, their colleagues, and their duties…and their direct supervisor has by far the most influence on all three.

So The Best, Fresh-Thinking Solution Is…

…hold managers accountable for their own engagement survey scores. And teach your managers to conduct Stay Interviews with each employee so they know precisely what that employee needs to become engaged, to stay, and to become happy with their work.

This is what I’ll talk about at the SHRM Annual Conference in San Diego on Sunday, June 29^th, at 1:30 PM PDT. Much more detail is available in my upcoming book, Targeting Turnover: Make Managers Accountable, Win the Workforce Crisis, which will be available in September. I welcome your questions and feedback at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com

[i] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/393497/world-trillion-workplace-problem.aspx

[ii] https://blog.haiilo.com/blog/employee-engagement-8-statistics-you-need-to-know/

[iii] https://decisionwise.com/resources/articles/truth-employee-engagement-measurement-practices/#:~:text=Most%20Companies%20Measure%20Employee%20Engagement%20Every%20Year&text=45%20percent%20of%20companies%20reported,and%2014%20percent%20measure%20sporadically.

[iv] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/653711/great-detachment-why-employees-feel-stuck.aspx

[v] It’s The Manager by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, Gallup Press, 2019, page 12.

The post SHRM25 Session Preview: Fixing Employee Engagement appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

And Gallup keeps reminding us of one unshakable truth: Managers are the single biggest factor in employee engagement.

Gallup’s Data Speaks—And It’s Loud

A few data points worth revisiting (or maybe hearing with fresh ears):

• Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
• Two-thirds of employees whose managers focus on their strengths are engaged.
• One in two employees has left a job just to get away from their manager.

Let that settle. We keep spending millions on engagement strategies, yet half of our people are walking out the door because of their direct supervisor.

——

Further Reading: Who Drives Retention Success? Gallup Says Your Team Leaders

——-

The Manager Math Still Doesn’t Add Up

Gallup’s deeper dive into management ability is even more sobering:

• Only 1 in 10 people naturally possesses the talent to manage others.
• That means, statistically, only 10% of employees report to someone well-suited to lead.

When you consider that many large organizations have one manager per 10 employees, the conclusion is hard to ignore: Just 1 out of every 10 employees works for a manager truly built for the job.

And Gallup doesn’t mince words:

“Bad managers cost businesses billions of dollars each year… and nothing fixes that—except making better decisions about who manages.”

Why Engagement Efforts Keep Failing

So, what are most companies doing instead? You know the list:

• Recognition: Employee of the Month, cake in the breakroom, company clock at 10 years.
• Communication: CEO video updates, annual town halls.
• Career Development: Career Day, a guest speaker from the local community college.

These initiatives aren’t inherently wrong—but they’re not moving the needle. Deloitte reports that U.S. companies now spend $1.5 billion per year on engagement strategies, yet average engagement levels haven’t budged in 20 years.

Roughly one-third of employees were engaged in 2000. It’s the same today. Why?
Because recognition, communication, and coaching only matter if they come from the boss.

——

Further Reading: Gallup’s Post-Pandemic “Best Friend” Turnover Solution

——-

Engagement Is Local—and It’s Built on Trust

We’ve bought into a myth that corporate-led programs can replace what only a frontline manager can provide: genuine connection, consistent coaching, and real-time recognition.

But there’s no shortcut around this:

Employees engage when their manager engages.
Employees stay when their manager builds trust.

That’s why we developed Stay Interviews—to give managers the tools they need to do exactly that.

Stay Interviews: Training That Actually Sticks

Stay Interviews aren’t conceptual. They’re tactical and immediate.

We train supervisors to ask the right questions, listen deeply, and document what they hear. No lag between training and action. No guessing about what employees care about. Just conversations that build trust—one manager, one employee at a time.

Because at the end of the day, engagement doesn’t live in HR.

It lives in the hands of your leaders.

Want a Practical Way to Start?

If you’re frustrated with low engagement or unsure how to convince senior leaders to invest in manager training that works, let’s talk. Write me directly at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or send a note through LinkedIn. We’ll explore how you can cut turnover and finally move the needle on engagement.

The post The Real Cost of a Bad Boss; Gallup Doesn’t Mince Words appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

“Pride in their work and loyalty to colleagues are the strongest correlates of readiness to stay with an organization. Competitive pay supports recruiting, but organizational culture, is what makes them stay. Improving organizational culture is a leadership challenge that is more complex than finding the money to increase compensation or correcting the problems that cause unhappiness. After all, in life in general, happiness is something beyond the absence of unhappiness.” (excerpted)

Employee Retention Lessons from Outside Healthcare

While the original article focused on healthcare, the insights resonate across industries. Consider these results from a manufacturing client with high turnover rates across nine U.S. facilities. Historically, 50% of new hires left within the first 60 days, leading to production delays and inflated recruitment costs. The goal? Achieve 80% retention at the 60-day mark.

The key to success was empowering front-line team leads to conduct Stay Interviews and actively participate in retention initiatives. Initially skeptical, the leads embraced their new responsibilities. By scheduling Stay Interviews on day five and again during the sixth week, these leaders created personalized action plans to address potential issues early.

Within six months, the plant not only met but exceeded the retention target. The transformation didn’t stem from higher pay or better benefits but from equipping team leads with the tools to foster stronger relationships with their teams.

——

Further reading: HBR Article on Customers also Applies to Employees

——

First-Line Supervisors: The Untapped Retention Engine

Gallup research underscores this point, showing that 70% of employee engagement is directly influenced by front-line supervisors. Yet many organizations continue to invest heavily in surface-level perks while neglecting this pivotal role. Leadership needs to shift focus and invest in the day-to-day managers who make or break the employee experience.

So, what doesn’t work?

• Higher pay alone? Nope.
• Flashy benefits packages? Nope.
• Employee appreciation events? Nope.

What does work? Equipping supervisors with skills, data, and accountability.

—–

Further Reading: What’s a Direct Route to Distinguishing Your Culture?

—–

The 5-Step Turnover Reduction Framework for 2025

The latest research and field-tested strategies point to our proven framework we call Finnegan’s Arrow for reducing turnover by 30% or more:

1. Dollars: Translate turnover rates into financial metrics. Use tools like the Turnover Cost Calculator to get your CFO on board with concrete financial implications.
2. Goals: Analyze past turnover data to set specific, measurable retention goals for the entire workforce and new hires.
3. Stay Interviews: Train supervisors to conduct structured interviews, using five targeted questions to uncover retention risks and craft individualized retention plans.
4. Forecast: Have supervisors predict the tenure of each team member, fostering proactive engagement rather than reactive responses.
5. Accountability: Track retention metrics with the same rigor applied to sales targets. Recognize high-performing supervisors and coach those who fall short.

The Bottom Line for HR Leaders

In the early ’90s, political strategist James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” For HR executives in 2025, the mantra should be: “It’s the supervisors.”

Front-line leaders shape the culture and retention outcomes more than any other factor. Equip them with the right tools, and watch your turnover rates plummet while engagement and productivity soar.

You Can Cut Turnover No Matter Your Industry

There is an established solution for employee turnover…start here to learn about our comprehensive turnover solution, and watch the 2-minute video to open your eyes to fresh thinking for cutting turnover 30% and more. Then schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.

[i] Harvard Business Review, What Makes Health Care Workers Stay in Their Jobs?, March 2^nd, 2023 by Patrick T. Ryan and Thomas H. Lee.

The post Employee Turnover in 2025: Why Culture Matters More Than Compensation appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

I’ve never been a smoker but have been close to people who’ve labored through the quitting process, over and over and over. So changing jobs is 50% more stressful than that?

So let’s say your company’s annual turnover is that same number, 50%, or half that at 25%. What does this new information tell us about how badly your employees want out? How much they disdain working for your company? What could be SO bad that they are willing to drag themselves through half of the same stress level as if they were getting divorced? Or the identical amount of stress from the death of a close friend?

—-

Further Reading: How Employee Turnover Is Like Losing a Marriage

—-

The Data Behind the Data on the Stress of Quitting

This study was published in The Atlantic which brings a pristine reputation for data quality. The study was conducted on the Holmes-Raye Life Stress Inventory[ii] which compares life’s common stress events, scoring the top life event which is death of a spouse at 100, and then compares the remaining events to this number. The remaining top five stress events after spouse death are divorce at 73, marital separation from mate at 65, and then detention in jail or another institution along with death of a close family member are tied at 63. 

But we also know that quit stress levels differ among individuals. One study focused on technology workers tells us that just 30% of those who indicated that they would quit within a year actually did quit[iii]…which is why I never quote “January studies” that say a certain percentage of workers intend to quit this year. The more relevant data is how many actually do quit later.

That same study indicated that while many who said they would quit did not quit, that about a third of them had risk-averse personalities that make it even harder for them to quit.

—-

Further Reading: The Blatant Unfairness of Retaining Poor Supervisors

—-

So How Do You Prevent Employees from Quitting?

This weekly piece has been packed with employee retention ideas…so given the space available, let me offer the top four:

Sounds easy I know…but there are many obstacles to make that above happen in any organization. Our clients cut turnover by an average of 34% across all industries, so we’ve conquered every challenge that’s included in these top four approaches.

Email me to learn more at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.

[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/job-hunt-quest-meaning/681299/

[ii] https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Holmes-Rahe-Stress-inventory.pdf

[iii]https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2843824.2843827?casa_token=YGHnXTTuCXkAAAAA:PrOxMtBqHJXllQrqWsZx5R4a997EWQ3-PQOgu-31C1oPQ3__s2NqS_vSKB4fRQpvwPd_qK-rgUWf

The post How Bad Does It Have to be for Someone to Quit Your Company? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

We’ve invented a turnover cost calculator, an actual algorithm, that you can use that will produce a reliable cost for any employee who leaves. But the ongoing accumulation of these costs on company productivity plus the spinning wheel of hire/onboard/train/wave good-by is like an ever-worsening chronic illness. And I’m certain that illness has killed off some companies. And it’s possible those companies thought early turnover was just “the cost of doing business”, flying blindly, right up till the end.

—-

Further Reading: Escape the Benchmark Data Trap and Calculate Turnover’s Real Cost

—-

Data Says Much, and an Impact Example is Manufacturing’s Monthly Turnover Churn

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the median tenure for US workers has slipped to 3.9 years, down from 4.1 years in 2022 and the lowest since 2002.[ii] This slip seems tiny except when compared to the average tenure of baby boomers which has been greater than 8 years which is double the above amount.[iii]

We will miss them in oh so many ways. Even the “get off my lawn” ones who still brought day-to-day grit to their jobs.

Many manufacturing companies tell us a tale like this one:

Last year we lost 241 employees and hired 236. We’re trying to grow staff but it’s impossible because every month we’re hiring about as many as we’re losing.

This is probably why we buy faulty products. The machines that make the products work OK but not the people who run them. One must wonder how well these new hires are trained when rushed into production, and how much they care if they feel unwelcomed or unprepared. I’ve actually heard stories of managers who say I won’t memorize their names until I know if they’re going to stick around.

—-

 Further Reading: Young Workers, “Grit”, and New-Hire Turnover

—-

The Cavalry Isn’t Coming to Fix Turnover

My recent work with the U.S. Census Bureau makes clear that fewer new workers will come our way, and the quality of those workers offers no greater promise. That sentence is as meaningful as any in this report, so it’s time that we get a lot smarter about who we hire and how we retain them. Here are four ideas that I promise will work.

New-Hire Retention Idea #1:

Invest at least 10 hours to develop a realistic job preview. Start with the top 3 reasons employees in this job quit and the top 3 reasons you fire them. Take candidates on a realistic job tour, turning on the “tell’ and turning off the “sell”, using these examples:

• How hot/cold/wet does it really get in here?
• How much overtime and is it forced?
• How many people have you fired this year because of attendance?
• When will my pay increase?
• How much time do I have to ramp up to meet the production standards?
• What must I learn in the first 30 days?
• What’s the real percentage of time I must travel?
• Is your return-to-office policy final or might it change?

Then ask each candidate (1) what’s the least attractive part of this job, and (2) how unattractive is that part on a scale of 1 to 10? Some you will pass on and others have already gone out the door. But the remaining group is better prepared to stick around.

New-Hire Retention Idea #2

Advise them to accept your offer only if they can see themselves working with you for at least one full year. The counter is they might have plans to take your job short-term till they get a better one, or return to school, or move away to another town. Stress how much actual job training and coaching you will provide such that two-way trust is required to move forward.

While a few might lie, some will refuse your job based on their personal integrity…and those who take your job will recall their commitment during a bad day in their fourth month. These are both good outcomes and will improve your productivity and reduce workforce errors.

New-Hire Retention Idea #3

Hold first-line supervisors accountable to new-hire retention goals. Calculate the percentage of new hires who reach 30/60/90/180 days to determine the targeted retention period, and then establish a goal to improve it. Tell supervisors they are accountable for that goal and how you will report it…and then tell them 1-1 if they are making their goal and what they need to do better.

New-Hire Retention Idea #4

Hold your in-house recruiters accountable to the same new-hire retention goal, knowing they represent the first gate to employment with your company. And if you have multiple recruiters, horse-race them against each other to see who advances the highest percentage of new hires who stay through the goal period.

And if you want to ensure early retention success, invite us to train those first-line supervisors to conduct Stay Interviews in the ways I invented that concept way back in 2012. Open their minds to the precise reasons why each newly-hired employee joins, stays, and might leave, along with what that supervisor can address in order to retain that treasured worker.

Getting an “A-ha!” to Tackle Turnover

You can use our free turnover calculator to see what even just one open job is costing your organization. Costing turnover is the beginning for gaining vigorous support from your c-suite to then establish retention goals for leaders, implement Stay Interviews, and all other solutions that are part of Finnegan’s Arrow®.

Email me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com to discuss holding a Cost of Turnover session with your executives to calculate your dollar cost of turnover together as a team. I guarantee, it will stun everyone and give you proof of value for addressing turnover.

[i] ASHHRA 2024 Healthcare Workforce Report, October 2024

[ii]https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm#:~:text=For%20women%2C%20median%20tenure%20was,See%20tables%201%20and%203

[iii] https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/blog/how-long-should-you-stay-in-a-job

The post Four Proven Ways to Stop New-Hire Turnover appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Unfortunately, today’s engagement still remains low. I vowed then to tell you how to improve employee engagement moving forward to overcome Gallup’s ongoing reporting that that just about one-third of our U.S. employees are engaged and that engagement has stayed essentially the same for years and years, long before the pandemic, and still to this day.

Why Hasn’t Employee Engagement Improved?

Let’s start with why most engagement strategies fail:

1) Reliance on employee surveys. A recent article in Fast Company declared employees are sick of surveys.[i] Why? Today’s employees are concerned about privacy and lack of trust in their organizations and managers that their answers will be heard. Surveys provide data but not solutions, and few organizations get the solutions right.

2) Using external benchmarks to judge internal data. Most surveys provide external benchmarks to compare results to. External benchmarks are momentum killers because most organizations are happy to be in the middle of the pack. And benchmarks which are so valuable in other areas of organizations are downers here because the easy cop-out is to say if other companies can’t fix this, we can’t fix it either. For most executives and many HR professionals, their reaction to their “average” engagement score compared to benchmarks is the same as their reaction to rush-hour traffic, something we cannot change and therefore we must work around. “The benchmark proves we can’t do better.”

Let’s pause here for a moment. Can you imagine your CEO thinking it is OK to be average in sales or service? Thinking that if competitors can’t do these things better then we can’t do them better either? This tells you the true state of engagement today, and why it hasn’t changed in twenty years.

——

Further Reading: Why Hasn’t Engagement Improved in 24 Years?

—–

Can Engagement Scores Really Be Raised?

Absolutely! We have dozens of clients who not only improved their employee engagement and improved their employee retention by 20% or more, they did it during the worst of the pandemic’s trials. First, educate your top team that engagement is more than a score. A few years ago I published a paper on employee engagement’s correlations to productivity and profitability that is still relevant today and may be a helpful place to start.  

The time has come for CFOs to see employee retention and engagement as areas of both high cost and high opportunity for increased revenue. If your management meetings include CFOs reporting on essential operations performance against metrics while HR reports on engagement and retention, ask your CFO to report all of the data including engagement and retention. Otherwise, engagement and retention are seen as second-class metrics, less important than the operations metrics for which they might have the greatest influence. What influences operations performance more than the people who do the jobs there?

Second, share this Gallup study with your executive team regarding how much each individual leader impacts her team’s engagement.

Start by telling them the statement at the top is extreme, that Gallup researchers likely debated about whether to ask a question that included terms like “strongest personal relationships” when discussing employees’ bosses. But they did. And the outcome on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being high is 65% of the engaged employees…the ones we most need to keep…scored their manager relationships a 3 or above. And for the employees who are actively disengaged…the saboteurs…a full 92% scored their manager relationships a 1 or a 2.

—–

Further Reading: Yes or No: Do Engagement Surveys Cut Turnover?

—–

Nothing Improves Employee Engagement more than Stay Interviews

The you-can’t-miss-it conclusion is clear. Solving employee engagement must be done on a boss-employee level, one-on-one, and not with one-size-fits-all programs. The joke line here is no one stays longer or works harder for pet insurance.

One easy way to think about improving employee engagement…and for sure employee retention…is to ask what do your employees talk about over dinner. When someone asks, “How was your day, dear?”, employees focus on three topics…bosses, colleagues, and duties. There are zero one-size-fits-all programs that address these subjects because each person’s circumstances are unique.

In my book titled HR’s Greatest Challenge, I presented 25 studies proving the #1 reason employees stay/leave or engage/disengage is how much they trust their boss. This means every post-survey “solution” you implement matters less than bosses building trust. So yoga classes, company clocks, events with food…put your own list here…all matter not just less but far less than employees trusting their bosses.

Now it is easy to see why the U.S. spends $1.53 billion each year to improve engagement but engagement has not improved, right?

So if “boss trust” is the driving force for retention, how does each boss build trust? The obvious answer then becomes by making each employee’s day better…and not worse. Stay Interviews are a major part of the solution. The concept is simple but smart, that if employee turnover is based on how much employees trust their boss, then those bosses need an interactive way to build trust. And that interactive way must be based on topics each manager can control. So our five questions, the SI 5 as we call them, must address day-to-day issues that a first-line manager can change.

Our research tells us these are the right questions to ask…to learn what your employees think about during those first two hours after work and what they talk about over dinner. Nearly all day-to-day good things/bad things that are within their manager’s control.

The real proof is our client managers ask these questions, then listen, take notes, and probe to learn more by converting five questions to twenty or more. Then they build individualized stay plans for each employee. And their overall company turnover decreases by twenty percent or more.

Let’s have one more pause moment here. Does any metric across your entire company matter more than employee engagement? Or employee retention? Unless you are creating revenue entirely without employees, the answer is no.

You Can Cut Turnover by 20% or More, No Matter Your Industry

There is an established solution for employee turnover…start here to learn our comprehensive turnover solution, and watch the 2-minute video to open your eyes to fresh thinking for cutting turnover 20% and more. Then schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com.

[i] https://www.fastcompany.com/91191527/employees-are-sick-of-surveys-heres-an-ultimate-guide-for-how-to-fix-them

The post Why Employee Surveys Fail to Truly Boost Engagement appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Exit Interviews and Surveys for Employee Retention and Engagement?

Now onto meatier stuff for us regarding the uselessness of exit surveys. The often-applied medical metaphor is that exit surveys are autopsies, meaning they provide the real reasons employees quit so management can fix those reasons and turnover then falls. But to keep up the medical jargon, let’s call exit surveys toe tags instead.

—–

Further Reading: Exit Interviews – More Like Autopsies or Toe Tags?

—–

Too harsh? Many times I’ve polled HR audiences on their use of exit surveys by asking these two probes:

1. Please raise your hand if your company does employee exit surveys in any form…to which 90%-plus raise their hands.

2. Now please raise your hand again if you can think of one good outcome for your company as a result of your conducting exit surveys…and less than 5% raise their hands a second time.

On the surface, exit surveys should become strong tools to improve employee retention as long as…

• Surveys are designed to elicit the real reasons employees leave.
• Employees tell the truth.
• And organizations address these newly-discovered leave reasons by solving the problems at their roots.

But none of those things happen and here’s why.

“Better Opportunity” Doesn’t Explain Employee Turnover

Some time ago I went on a google quest to learn the supposed #1 reason employees quit their jobs…and better opportunity was the winner. And it’s the winner because nearly every exit interview questionnaire contains that response, whether the questionnaire is delivered by a person, by an online program, or by a third-person interviewer.

Since we associate opportunity with pay or career, the resulting assumption is that some other company swooped in and made our employee an offer…and that offer was financially enticing or included an exciting, higher-level job. So there’s absolutely nothing we could have done to stop that. Especially the assumed much-higher-pay part.

The truth is that “better opportunity” could have also meant a shorter commute, working with nicer people, or abandoning my jerk boss. Accepting that phrase as a leave reason is mush.

But the greater point beyond “better opportunity” being misleading is that it also implies that a new job just appeared.  And those who are leaving us know this is a safe answer because any short explanation that they provide for accepting their “better opportunity” ends the discussion.

—–

Further Reading:  Two Real Examples of Stay Interviews’ Connection to Retention Solutions

—–

The outcome is that “better opportunity” avoids the more deeply-rooted, drill-down discussions that come from asking questions like “Why did you look?”

Most job changes today require the job-changer to go online and click. That first click is the first step toward changing jobs. For a very select few this first step is instead a direct inquiry from another company pitching a job that your employee didn’t know was available and had never considered. But for the great majority of job-changers, the first step is that proactive click. So much better exit interview questions become…

• When did you initiate your job search?
• Why did you initially decide to leave us?
• Was there one trigger event that caused you to seek out other jobs?
• What’s the single-best thing we could have done to keep you?

The one overlap between exit interviews and Stay Interviews is that qualified interviewers must bring great probing skills. They must recognize which broad responses contain juicy behind-the-scenes details that lead to solutions, and then probe their ways down that cookie-crumb trail to learn deep-seated truths…regardless of whether that interview’s objective is to learn why an employee is leaving or how to better help an employee to stay.

So conducting exit interviews in a way that will actually help your company is not, let’s say, an entry-level job, but instead one that requires training, practice, and feedback on how effectively that exit interviewer can seek out the real reason each employee has chosen to look and then to leave.

Truth-Telling is Key for Employee Engagement and Retention Improvement

While the above section addresses a common exit survey design flaw, employees still have little reason to tell their real-life-story full truths…especially when inputting data into a computer or talking to a stranger.

Let’s make a safe assumption here that employees’ greatest frustration with employee engagement surveys…that I told you and you didn’t address my complaint…applies to employee exit surveys as well. Then why would an employee who has already checked out of her job believe that re-canting her story will make things better, for her or the person who replaces here? Besides, she’s already told her story to a few work peers and outside friends and she’s ready to move on with her life.

The survey design flaws combined with many employees’ reluctancy to be open make for an easy way out. If they can get by with “better opportunity” or by clicking just a few keys during an online survey, then telling abbreviated stories or misleading ones becomes easy and OK.

In most companies, exit survey results are tabulated into a report that is delivered upstream monthly or quarterly depending on turnover volume. That report rank-orders the reasons employees leave, often placing “better opportunity”, pay, or career at the top. Next steps are usually to build a few one-size-fits-all programs or to do nothing at all.

The contrast here is that the number one reason employees stay or leave is how much they trust their managers…and rarely are exit survey results delivered to that employee’s supervisor. And if they are, the results are left to that supervisor to read, interpret, and decide what if any future changes he should make to his supervisor style, with little or no coaching coming from above.

So 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.

—–

Further Reading:  Is There An Exit Interview That Works For Turnover?

—–

The Best Exit Survey Story I Know

Years ago, I was speaking at the Chicago University Club to about a hundred senior managers who were attending a conference there. The topic of exit surveys came up and after extensive group discussion a man in the back right corner raised his arm, stood up and spoke…with great wisdom.

This man explained that he was CEO of a 400-employee consulting firm in Portland, Oregon, and that he needed and cherished every talented employee for his firm to successfully win over and retain top clients. So when an employee quit, he had established a protocol which was widely known throughout his management ranks. No re-hire could begin until he as CEO signed the new-hire requisition order, and his managers understood he wouldn’t sign that order until they had scheduled an in-person meeting with him to discuss why that employee had left and what that manager could have done to retain that employee.

This CEO’s method worked because (1) he was skilled such that he would ask tough questions regarding why each employee left, (2) he was immediately following-up at the likely root cause, and (3) his managers knew that any exit led to an uncomfortable interaction with the CEO, so they were motivated to build trusting relationships with each employee in order to keep them.

A Different Idea for Exit Surveys is Stay Interviews

Not every company’s CEO is going to do what the one in my example did above. For those, who have been told, “HR, go fix it,” there is still another way to tackle the real reasons employees leave your company, pushing turnover higher and engagement lower. Implementing Stay Interviews.

The SI 5 are deeply researched, and we know when combined with solid probing can gather an abundance of important information about each employee. And this information leads to far greater employee engagement and retention.

I recently wrote an article about just one of our SI5, that is the perfect antidote to the Exit Interview question of “Why are you leaving?”

Stay Interviews Question 3 (Q 3) is “Why do you stay here?”, and we train managers to ask it and then wait patiently for the employee’s answer. Most employees can immediately tell you why they might leave, but few have actually catalogued in their minds why they stay. Asking why and patiently waiting for their answer causes these employees to self-search, to go to a place where maybe they’ve never been before. And once they announce to you why they stay they also announce it to themselves…and they tend to never forget it.

There is a lot more that goes into implementing Stay Interviews successfully, including executive buy-in, training, and tracking. But if Exit Survey are giving you “better opportunity” problems to try to solve, Stay Interviews change that to give you the solutions to making changes before your employees leave.  

—–

Further Reading:  Want to Implement Stay Interviews Internally? Join Me at Disney

—–

Learn How to use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention & Engagement In-Person Training

No matter what size or type of company – public, private, non-profit and no matter your budget, we will give you 100% of the support and training you need to leverage our solution to do it yourself.

The in-person event is in Orlando, Sept. 25-27 and registration includes all the training, tools, and resources, plus one year enrollment to our Finnegan Institute Stay Interviews Certification course to add to your credentials.

Based on my ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews, our expert facilitators will train you on our entire process so you can return ready to implement an effective and proven retention and engagement strategy.

Some of the most asked questions for the event are answered in our brochure and on our registration page.

I hope to see you in Orlando. If you have any questions or need further information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com.

The post Requiem: The End of Exit Interviews appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

I know you accept this challenge/opportunity/burden. However, a recent study of HR professionals reveals that the top assignment from CEOs is one that gets the least amount of attention for training: improving retention. And retention is not only the solution to keeping good workers but also to reducing the number of open jobs.

Stay Interviews are a Piece of a Proven Retention Solution

Those who are familiar with our work can anticipate what I write next, that (1) engagement per Gallup has been completely stuck for 22 years, (2) that only 33% of our employees at best are giving their all, and (3) the culprit here is surveys, engagement and exit, because we believe data identifies easy solutions…but data only provides data, not solutions.

Imagine cutting your turnover by 43%, 45%, or 67%…and the impact this would have on reducing open positions, improving engagement/productivity/profitability, and obviously reducing employee turnover. Our most recent clients achieved these turnover reductions by not only implementing Stay Interviews but also applying additional business principals to your retention solution. You can learn how to do it too!

Stay Interviews without executive team buy in for goals and forecasts become flavors of the month, whereas when you have buy-in your executives must build in accountability of direct supervisors for retention, engagement, and building the right, individualized stay plans so employees feel valued, recognized, appreciated…and accommodated when possible.

HR Can Be in The Driver’s Seat and Lead the Retention Change

Stay Interviews as part of a comprehensive business-driven solution puts HR in the driver’s seat by addressing each employee’s needs as individuals, as people, and as people who need to trust their direct supervisors. Building trust with employees and having managers, not HR, accountable for their people directly affects productivity and the bottom line, something your CEOs and leaders will respond to.

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.

And be the HR hero I know you are.

Genesis of our Employee Retention Intensive

I was sitting at SHRM24 frustrated by the inability to help so many SHRM members who would love to implement Stay Interviews, but just can’t get the buy-in or time to do so. Often, I’ve had HR leaders tell me they bought my book and then created their own Stay Interviews program, only to find out that they needed more support – more help getting buy-in from their executives, more training methods for their managers, more tools and processes for consistency, and more tracking to prove sustainability. It’s a lot for someone in HR who is wearing many hats.

That was my AHA moment! I said, let’s figure out a way to get all the training, resources, and tools into a cost-effective package for HR professionals, so they don’t have to figure it out themselves. So, my team pulled all our pieces together and realized we needed 2 ½ days to cover everything an HR professional would need to be able to go back and start implementing immediately.

Okay…great…we’ve got the program and training together; now how do we deliver it? 

We decided in-person was the best way for attendees to get the most out of training. It gives HR leaders an opportunity to step away from their office and really focus on the materials and delivery. Plus, it allows our team to be actively engaged with them in the process and able to answer any questions right then and there.

We also built in practice sessions so the cohort can build skills together as well as share best practices and ideas. Also, by creating this 2 ½ day intensive, we were able to secure 20 SHRM credits for this training. So instead of a lot of one-offs, SHRM members can take care of 20 credits in one fell swoop, plus add a critical skill to their HR resume. 

Learn How to use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention & Engagement In-Person Training

No matter what size or type of company – public, private, non-profit and no matter your budget, we will give you 100% of the support and training you need to leverage our solution to do it yourself.

Here are the details: The in-person event is in Orlando, Sept. 25-27 and registration includes all the training, tools, and resources, plus one year enrollment to our Finnegan Institute Stay Interviews Certification course to add to your credentials, and three nights stay at the Omni Orlando ChampionsGate just outside the gates of the Walt Disney World Resort area, with transportation access and more for friends and families to enjoy.

Based on my ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews, our expert facilitators will train you on our entire process so you can return ready to implement an effective and proven retention and engagement strategy.

Some of the most asked questions for the event are answered in our brochure and on our registration page including:

1. What is the main benefit of this training? To return with everything you need to implement an effective and proven retention strategy – a critical advantage for any organization, and a game-changer for your HR credentials.
2. What significant results has this previously achieved? Once implemented, turnover, costs for recruitment, training, and workers’ comp claims go down; and engagement and client satisfaction scores go up.
3. What is the fiscal value to my organization? Specifically designed as the most cost-effective way for an internal team to improve employee retention and engagement themselves without incurring any external consulting costs. The baseline ROI for this training is 4x the registration fee. Retaining just ONE employee more than covers the cost of this training.

I know these decisions are often hard to make quickly, and that budgets, more than ever, are tight. So I also wanted to share our 5 Key Reasons PDF that may help you make a case with your executives for why you should attend. Plus, we have group rates for multiple participants from an organization. Or forward this to anyone you know who would benefit from this training and put your own group together! It can be anyone – your SHRM or HR group you’re a member of, or other professionals you’d enjoy traveling and learning with. We will work with you to make it work FOR you!

I hope to see you in Orlando. If you have any questions or need further information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com or visit our information page with links to individual and group registration.

The post Want to Implement Stay Interviews Internally? Join Me at Disney appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

In an interview with Forbes Magazine detailing why the 5 Stay Interview questions…or what we refer to as the SI 5…yield more useful answers than spontaneous, random questions that come from the gut. The SI 5 are deeply researched, and we know when combined with solid probing can gather an abundance of important information about each employee. And this information leads to far greater employee engagement and retention.

I have a bias, and often express it by calling Stay Interviews Question 3 (Q 3) the “money question”…my slang for this sleepy-sounding short collection of words that ultimately unlocks very important answers. Q 3 is “Why do you stay here?”, and we train managers to ask it and then wait patiently for the employee’s answer. Here’s a common exchange:

Manager: So Veronica, please tell me why you stay with us. You’ve been here for more than a year and you are so talented that you could leave us, and I’m grateful that you don’t. So why do you stay?

Veronica: Well, I have to pay the bills.

Manager: Yea, I know. And I have to pay the bills, too. But I’ve thought about it, and I realize getting paid is not really why I stay. In fact, I could get paid anywhere and so could you. So what are the real reasons that you stay?

Veronica: I guess I’ve never really thought about it.

Manager: That’s OK. Take your time. I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Would you like one?

I’ve inserted the “cup of coffee” line here to make an important point: the manager in our scenario did not make the question easier by making it multiple choice. Some managers would be uncomfortable causing a little stress for the employee and therefore not allow silence…nor the potential for self-discovery. They instead would break the silence with questions like, “Do you stay for our team? Or for our customers?” But savvy Stay Interviewers know to pause, accept silence, and encourage the employee to find their own unique answer.

Stay Interviews Q3 Cause Employees to Self-Search

The reason for doing so is simple. Most employees can immediately tell you why they might leave, but few have actually catalogued in their minds why they stay. Asking why and patiently waiting for their answer causes these employees to self-search, to go to a place where maybe they’ve never been before. And once they announce to you why they stay they also announce it to themselves…and they tend to never forget it.

Let’s continue our role-play exchange, and imagine Veronica says she stays because she likes working with her team. Her manager would then probe for more details, to ask Veronica to dig deeper so Veronica learns and tells more about herself.

• Who do you specifically like working with, Veronica?
• What is there about William and Andrea that makes them such good coworkers?
• Can you identify that specific quality that makes a good colleague for you?
• Who else do you think could be a good coworker, but you haven’t worked with them enough to know?
• And who is not a good coworker and why?

Veronica then listens to her own answers…and leaves her Stay Interview meeting with a new appreciation for this most important aspect of her job which is the coworkers she values most. The result is she is likely to engage with those coworkers further, be on the lookout for others to connect with, and her overall engagement and retention will climb.

Veronica’s answer might have been about other topics…likes working with patients, likes working with numbers, likes getting to work early to prepare for the day. Regardless of each employee’s response, managers can then be on the lookout for additional duties that connect directly back to what makes each employee stay. In other words, the part of work that turns them on the most.

“Why do you stay here?” opens the door to important clues to engage your employees more and also retain them longer. And that’s all based on asking just one of the SI 5 questions.

Stay Interviews in the News

Want to see the real impact Stay Interviews can have on an organization? Our client Quest Diagnostics was featured in an NBC News report on Stay Interviews as an important business tool. The outcome was honest and shows the trajectory of an employee’s skepticism to relief in being heard. It also closes with great advice for how employees can prepare for Stay Interviews to get the most out of it for themselves.

Use Stay Interviews to Improve Employee Retention – In-Person Training

Specifically designed for those who need to cut turnover, improve employee engagement, and internally implement Stay Interviews cost-effectively. Learn innovative strategies to cultivate a positive workplace culture, enhance employee engagement, and refine retention tactics for your organization’s unique needs, while positively impacting your personal HR credentials.

Secure your spot today!

The post Why Stay Interviews Q3 is  “Why Do You Stay Here?” appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

• Engaged Employees – Engaged employees work passionately and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.
• Disengaged Employees – Not engaged employees are essentially ‘checked out.’ They’re sleepwalking through their workday, putting time — but not energy or passion — into their work.
• Actively Disengaged Employees – Actively disengaged employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

—–

Further reading: Who Jeopardizes Engagement the Most? Gallup Math Says It’s Managers

—–

Gallup’s reporting includes both U.S. and Canadian employees, and here are their results since 2000:

The chart tells us that over a full 24-year period there have been small gains and small losses, but that overall there has been little positive movement at all. And Gallup recently announced that early in 2024 employee engagement had reached an 11-year low.[i]

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. But here is the real reason:

Firstline managers are hardly if ever held accountable for increasing their employee engagement scores.

I reported this first in 2018 in my book titled How to Raise Your Team’s Employee Engagement Score.

A Gartner report tells us that a full 74% of U.S. companies conduct annual employee surveys[ii]. And what do they do with the data? Here’s a very common process using lack of employee recognition as an example:

1. HR pulls together an employee committee to solve employee recognition.
2. After three meetings the committee presents its report.
3. The top recommendations are to schedule employee of the month, employee of the year, and employee appreciation week…and also provide a backpack for five years of service and a clock for ten.
4. One year later, the employee recognition score is the same or worse.

When employees complain about lack of recognition, the last thing they want to do is watch someone else win an award. And the first thing they want is for their manager to tell them they did a good job.

Manager accountability for engagement is nowhere. I recently asked a crowd of 500 SHRM attendees to raise their hand if they’ve ever known of a manager to be fired for a continual low engagement score. No hands went up.

This process of conduct a survey/wait a month for results/ develop one-size-fits-all programs/re-survey a year later with no improvement is as outdated as suitcases without wheels, the ones we used to carry through airports.

Consider this Gallup quote:

Gallup’s most profound finding — ever — is probably this: 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.[iii]

So the obvious question becomes that if engagement is mostly driven by direct supervisors, why then do we think we can improve engagement with one-size-fits-all programs that do nothing to improve manager/employee relationships? These programs like town hall meetings, career ladders, and better benefits look as though they are designed to work around manager relationships rather than improve them.

—–

Further reading: Best Employee Engagement Gauge: 1-Day Survey or 1-on-1 Conversation?

—–

Why Don’t Companies Focus on First-Line Supervisors to Improve Engagement?

Because they don’t know how. Their best move is to ask managers to submit engagement improvement plans and then never follow up to see if the manager executed their plans. Nor do they have a critical eye to provide feedback to the manager on whether the plan would work, whether it would actually improve engagement. And worse, no one compares managers’ scores from year to year in order to coach or fire those managers who just don’t have the required skills, energy, or interest.

If employee engagement really mattered to executive teams, they would fire a few managers each year who failed to increase their scores over time. These are the same executives who throw around terms like culture, best place to work, and employer of choice, yet they saddle some of their best workers with an ill-equipped supervisor.

The Fix That Works for Engagement

Here’s an easy way to improve engagement that neither Gallup nor any other consultant will tell you:

1. Structure your survey reporting so you get reports with scores as far down the organization chart as possible.
2. After the first administration, provide each of your first-line supervisors with a specific and measurable goal for the next survey administration, and for most companies this is the following year.
3. Train your leaders to conduct Stay Interviews the right way, the way I invented Stay Interviews to be put into place, and ask them to build one-on-one engagement plans with each member of their teams.
4. Then hold them accountable to achieving their goal score.
5. If they miss, ask for details about their Stay Interviews and then coach them…or can them.

This is the cousin to how our client companies improve employee retention consistently by 20% and more.

In-Person Employee Retention Intensive for Leaders

Are you committed to improving employee retention and engagement? Then join us this September in Orlando for two-and-a-half days of intensive training specifically designed for HR leaders who need to cut turnover, improve employee engagement, and decrease recruiting spend in the most cost-effective way. Based on Dick Finnegan’s ground-breaking, our expert facilitators will equip you with all the tools you need to implement your retention strategies to build a thriving, engaged workplace culture. Secure your spot today!

[i] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/647564/employee-engagement-inches-slightly-year-low.aspx

[ii] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/is-it-time-to-toss-out-your-old-employee-engagement-survey

[iii] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/395210/engage-frontline-managers.aspx#:~:text=business%20success%20soars.-,Gallup’s%20most%20profound%20finding%20%2D%2D%20ever%20%2D%2D%20is%20probably%20this,determined%20solely%20by%20the%20manager.&text=Managers%20are%20the%20difference%20between,retain%20and%20engage%20their%20teams.

The post Why Hasn’t Engagement Improved in 24 Years? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.