Why is Q2 “What are you learning here? And what do you want to learn?” Because Q2 is the low-hanging-fruit way for supervisors to identify how they can add one additional brick to the foundation of building trust with each member of their teams.
My professional passion for cutting turnover began decades ago with my CEO saying words that HR professionals, dread: “Turnover is high so HR, go fix it.” Looking back, I knew then that I had learned a lesson mostly unknown across HR circles.
Employee engagement directly impacts productivity far more than pay, benefits, and other compensations. However, most employee engagement conversations are centered on survey scores because scores are tangible. But engagement is more than just a number, and one day of data isn’t enough metric to measure it effectively.
If improving employee engagement and retention is top of your priority list, consider changing just one Employee/Manager meeting to a Stay Interview where employees talk about their needs, not their performance.
It’s likely that in the next few months our national workforce data (open jobs and unemployment) will get closer to “normal”, but the data is painfully clear, that we will not have enough workers to fill our open jobs for a long time. So says the Census Bureau which has released a chilling chart.
When it comes to the US Marines, US Air Force, and national pharmacy chains, retention is faltering due to lowering standards instead of building trust.
Gallup’s ongoing reporting shows that engagement has stayed the same for years, long before the pandemic, through “The Great Resignation”, and shows no signs of improving in the future. But there is a way you can move engagement from stagnation to success starting right now and I have proof it works.
In a Forbes article, a manager shares the story of losing a top employee unexpectedly. The question arises as to why this happened, but by the time it's asked, it's already too late. This scenario is all too familiar for many managers who have experienced employees leaving without warning.
Two hours in the day matter more for turnover than any other hours of that day. Those two hours are the ones immediately after work ends, regardless of each employee’s schedule or shift. The hours when we review our day.
Is it just a coincidence that the worst managers usually blame their employee turnover on pay? Not enough staff? HR recruits ineffective workers? That leaders see employees’ reasons for leaving as every possible one but themselves? I think not.