“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.

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Further reading: HBR Article on Customers also Applies to Employees

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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.

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

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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.

Make them pop up on your computer screen first thing each morning. Develop an acronym for them so you can say them more quickly. I couldn’t think of one but maybe you can. Let’s settle on MEFF (mobility, entrepreneurial freedom, and flexibility) for our purposes here.

Microsoft says these are the at-work values young workers hold onto most dearly. Their study covered 31,000 workers across 31 countries along with analysis of “trillions of productivity signals in Microsoft 365 and labor trends on LinkedIn”[i]. Any study that references trillions makes me buy in. Microsoft also says 53% of your Gen Z and millennials will consider leaving this year.

These are no longer “young kids”. The two generational groups together comprise more than half of our workforce. And their percentage increases every day. One employee quote from the Microsoft study nailed how the pandemic changed the ways our workforce reconsidered their jobs:

“Covid has not been all doom and gloom for me. It forced me to dig deep and reevaluate what is important.”

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Further Reading: Young Worker Safety Perceptions and Supervisor Trust

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Step #2: Consider Your Company’s Opportunities to Provide MEFF for Employee Retention

Words like “boundaries” help our minds build fences whereas “opportunities” knocks those fences down. Way back before the pandemic made working from home a hip thing, that’s dope for our young readers, I read a study that rank-ordered jobs that could be done remotely. Technology workers sat atop the list with teachers at the bottom.

Let’s split your jobs into two categories with Group A being those jobs where MEFF is imaginable like financial analysts, and Group B where MEFF seems impossible like nurses, security guards, manufacturing workers, bartenders…the jobs where employees must be in the same location every day.  

If your company is comprised mainly of Group A jobs, the so-called knowledge workers, you have an easier path. Your main challenges are to wake up your executive team with articles like this one so they open their minds to MEFF, and then update policies so employees can contribute on their own schedules and from wherever. The trickier part will be how to assign work and measure outcomes that verify your MEFF workers are achieving at high or acceptable levels.

To be clear, I’m not saying climbing the Group A mountaintop is easy, just that it is easier than solving MEFF for Group B employers since MEFF jobs are the “gotta be there” jobs. Let’s turn our focus to those companies who have Group B jobs next.

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Further Reading: WSJ Says “Americans Don’t Care as Much About Work”

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Step #3: Rethink How MEFF Employee Retention Meshes with Work Schedules

Re-reading our MEFF words tells us mobility is out for our Group B jobs so flexibility must be in. Here are five ways to increase schedule flexibility:

Way 1: Remove forced-flexibility first by locking in scheduled work days and hours so employees can plan their non-work hours around families, schools, and other life events. Forced shift rotations must end.

Way 2: Pay employees to accommodate their peers by changing shifts for a day. We all know stories of workers asking others to switch shifts so they can meet with their kids’ teachers. Commit to paying any co-worker who says “yes” an additional three dollars an hour for the shift they take. That’s buying increased flexibility for about $25 per schedule change which is peanuts compared to the cost of losing high-performing employees.

Way 3: Honor those employees who volunteer to change schedules most frequently. Post how often they say “yes” publicly so all know their schedule-changing heroes. Hold quarterly hero drawings for gift cards or weekend getaways where each shift change equates to one slip of paper in the bowl. Give shift-changers extra credit for their unique contributions because you must retain them.

Way 4: Base all permanent shift changes on performance vs length of service, otherwise you are telling sharp new hires they will be long stuck on night shift. Ask a team of top-performing incumbents to identify the precise performance metric you will use, even if you have to invent one.

Way 5: Significantly increase shift differentials. Per-hour pay means more to those seeking work than those already onboard. Signify to potential new hires that you will make it worthwhile for them to adjust their lives to meet your business needs.

Step #4: Triple Your Percent of Jobs Filled by Employee Referrals to Make It Your Best Recruiting Tactic

As I’ve written here before, employee referrals are directly related to the cost of turnover. Pay an eye-grabbing amount and pay it all upfront because most hourly workers live paycheck to paycheck. Hold new-hire trainers accountable to referral goals because new hires know the best workers from the job they just left. Double the payout for life for anyone who refers five workers you hire. Hold referral open houses by appointment only and ask your employees one-by-one who they will bring.

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Further Reading: How Much Are Worker Shortages Impacting Customer Service Today?

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Step #5: Train Your Leaders to Conduct Stay Interviews for Employee Retention

Steps one through four assume all employees want the same things but in reality they do not. Retention is now an individualized game and your best retention solution continues to be each employee’s direct supervisor. This is the person whose name your employees say over dinner, surrounded by good adjectives or bad. Let those supervisors learn how best to retain each member of their team and then hold them accountable for doing so.

Not all MEFF-related issues can be solved by policies alone. Supervisors conducting Stay Interviews are your best opportunity to identify the entrepreneurial freedom in MEFF. Train supervisors to listen…truly listen…to what each employee needs to thrive and to stay. Together with their manager they can find one-off assignments, task force participations, and even readings and webcasts for employees to grow new skills.

Master Training: Employee Retention Intensive for HR Leaders

Are you committed to improving employee retention and engagement? Then consider joining 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 but cannot bring in outside consulting or services at this time. Based on Dick Finnegan’s ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews and Finnegan’s Arrow, our expert facilitators will equip you with all the tools you need to refine and implement your retention strategies to build a thriving, engaged workplace culture. Secure your spot today!

[i] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/great-expectations-making-hybrid-work-work

The post Five Ideas for Retaining Your Young Workers appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Maslow’s original hierarchy describes five levels of the human experience with examples of how each need can be fulfilled, saying that each level must be sufficiently met before someone is prepared to tackle the next level. Here are the five levels from bottom up:

• Physiological such as food, water, shelter.
• Safety such as personal security, resources, sources of income
• Social such as friendship, sense of belonging, intimacy
• Esteem such as dignity, respect, recognition
• Self-actualization meaning creation, exploration, aesthetics^[i]

Impact of Social Movements on Safety Perceptions

For our discussion let’s focus on level two, safety. Three major social movements have impacted our personal sense of safety over the past several years, and each of them therefore impacts how much we take that personal sense of safety for granted in the same ways as we would have done so in the past:

• The Me-Too movement originated with people who were mostly women telling their sexual abuse stories over social media before taking center-stage with the convictions of Harvey Weinstein and other men of power. The movement alerted people of the world that sexual abuse was more prevalent and happened to a far broader group of victims than had ever been assumed before, including well-known celebrities.

• George Floyd’s murder-by-cop was made real to the world by a video that displayed the full 9 minutes and 29 seconds that police officer Derick Chauvin drove his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck to asphyxiate him. One of many trust-breaking outcomes is that Black people and all people now have non-dismissible evidence that an officer of the law actually did deliberately kill an innocent person.

• And while “psychological safety” might be a new term to some, McKinsey’s research has demonstrated that it is both a driver of worker productivity and also that we have too little of it. The term means feeling safe to take interpersonal risks, to speak up, to disagree openly, to surface concerns without fear of negative repercussions or pressure to sugarcoat bad news. McKinsey’s studies make clear that a psychological-safe environment improves retention, engagement, and more…yet too few managers have the skills and courage to create one.^[ii]

These are just three headliners among many social patterns that continue to evolve, all wrapped around the negative psychological swings that developed during pandemic times.

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Further Reading: What is the Worst Way to Increase Young Worker Retention? Promote Them!

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Younger Workers Prioritize Safety and Mental Health

Much has been written about young workers’ mental health since COVID-19, with the American Psychiatric Association reporting over half of young professional workers said they needed mental health help in the past year.^[iii] Reasons cited were the enormous growth of social media, political and cultural divisiveness, and unprecedented upheaval and change related to the global pandemic. And record numbers of young adults are living with their parents.^[iv]

The pandemic also left a negative trail with our children. Having missed out on traditional schooling, test scores are substantially down^[v] and absenteeism has nearly doubled^[vi]…as has the number of students being home-schooled.^[vii]

Compounding on these trends are more mental health issues, more adults living with parents, more absenteeism, less employee engagement, and less interest in relationships. These all call into question whether excessive social media has pushed our youth to be more distant and generally less involved…in their work and in the lives of others.

The outcome is that young workers are much more willing to abandon relationships that feel insecure or unsafe, both at home and in their places of work…and are much more willing to welcome relationships where they feel safe to be their authentic selves.

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Further Reading: Change One Performance Meeting to a Stay Interview for Retention

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Building Trusting and Safe Relationships with Stay Interviews

I shudder when I re-read the above, yet national data for young people continues to trend in this direction. What IS encouraging, though, is we can all help our companies present much safer environments for our young workers. And the best way to build trust is by giving them an opportunity to express their authentic selves in one-on-one conversations with their direct supervisor that have nothing to do with their performance, but instead are designed to build trusting relationships.

My work is predicated on the belief that the only group who can build trust and impact employee retention for any age worker is their direct supervisors.

The argument for this is simple: direct supervisors are in their employees’ faces every day, providing instruction, feedback, and building relationships. This is the person they discuss over dinner each night, good or bad, and this is the person they report to each day. And how they feel about that person, drives how they feel about your company.

When applying this principle to improving how we engage and retain our young workers, it reaffirms that Stay Interviews are the best way to build trust. Here’s a quick refresher:

• Direct supervisors invite each individual employee to meet, saying “I want to learn what I can do to make working here better for you”.
• They are trained to ask five specific and heavily-researched open-ended questions during this conversation, as well as trained to listen, probe to learn more, take pages of notes, and develop at least one action they can take to help employees stay longer and engage more.
• The part that says “managers are trained” is more complex because managers must develop new skills…and practice those skills. The Stay Interview training that we provide consumes three full hours of skill practice, role-play, and feedback to ensure each manager is comfortable scheduling their initial Stay Interviews the very next day.

By asking, listening, probing, and taking notes, supervisors can then work with them on the spot to identify actions to address their concerns – safety, mental health, or others. These are the parts that matter most to young workers and the ones that work best for building the trusting relationships that retain them longer.

Master Training: Employee Retention Intensive for HR Leaders

Based on Dick Finnegan’s ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews and Finnegan’s Arrow, our expert facilitators will equip you with all the tools you need to refine and implement your retention strategies to build a thriving, engaged workplace culture. Secure your spot today!

[i] https://www.cnn.com/world/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-explained-wellness-cec/index.html

[ii] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-psychological-safety

[iii] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/

[iv] https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/success/parenting-adult-children-living-home/index.html

[v] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/student-gpa-and-test-score-gaps-are-growing-and-could-be-slowing-pandemic-recovery/#:~:text=At%20every%20letter%20grade%2C%20post,peers%20who%20earned%20an%20A.

[vi] https://www.propublica.org/article/school-absenteeism-truancy-education-students#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20the%20rate%20of%20chronic,professor%20of%20education%20at%20Stanford.

[vii] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhernholm/2024/04/30/rise-of-homeschooling-and-its-transformative-impact-on-education/

The post Young Worker Safety Perceptions and Supervisor Trust appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Today, May 21^st, Chris and I along with others on our team are partnering to present a webinar to Chris’s clients on how Stay Interviews reduce workers’ comp claims. And I know this is true because Chris told me.

Chris called me out of the blue earlier this year to ask about this Stay Interview thing…all because he had heard about Stay Interviews from a few of his clients. Not coincidentally, each of those clients represented three of twenty-one healthcare facilities as part of Covenant Health…and Covenant Health has been our client for the past four years. Specifically, Chris had noticed a sharp drop-off in workers’ comp claims and when he called to inquire why, the answer he heard was “Because each of our leaders are doing Stay Interviews with their teams”.

Wisdom I’d Never Heard Before

Naively, I’ve always thought of workers’ comp claims as legitimate ones due to true workplace injuries. But Chris has cautioned me to think like this:

Employees who value their employers and connect well with their managers will run through walls for them. But those who feel isolated or disregarded will call in sick on Fridays because of a headache…or a fake headache.

Chris goes onto say that during his nearly 30 years in his field he has seen advances including various robotics, driver tracking, administrative controls, and related training with accompanying software, all of which are important safety advancements. But the greatest variable in worker safety is people, in that each of us is different and “personalities can be hard to manage”. That in Chris’s words “It takes more than a paycheck to make people satisfied with their work…and this has a direct correlation to injuries and claims I have seen”.

Chris Clark’s Introduction Today

Chris has of course planned out how he will introduce our webinar today and here is an excerpt:

“Earlier this year I participated in a claims review for one of our larger nursing home clients.  For those who don’t know, being a caregiver is hard work.  This member was running into their third year of great workers’ comp success.  Better than usual.  At the end of the meeting, I asked their Director of HR what was up.  Is there a reason they are having so much success?  She said, “Actually, yes, Chris.  We’re doing Stay Interviews now.  I believe it has made a major impact on many things here, including our safety program”.    What the heck was a “stay interview” I had to learn more…so, I reached out to Dick Finnegan.”

So now we know Stay Interviews not only improve retention, engagement, and productivity…but also workers’ comp claims as well. Please reach out to me as Chris Clark did if you’d like to learn more.

What are your employee retention goals?  
Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com and we’ll discuss the numbers and needs to evaluate your retention goals. We work with companies in every type of industry to cut turnover by 20% and more by building trust through Stay Interviews and retention accountabilities.

The post Proof: Stay Interviews Reduce Workers’ Comp Claims appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Employees Talk About Their Bosses Over Dinner

During our discussion, I mentioned my belief that what matters most regarding employee retention and engagement is what employees talk about over dinner. That this aggregation of the feelings we tell ourselves on our way home from work plus any subsequent conversations we have soon after ultimately predicts how long we will stay and how committed we are to our day-to-day work. These feelings might be generally positive so therefore we stay longer…or negative such that we join the millions of current employees who are seeking other jobs. Engagement surveys cannot tell you this, nor of course can exit surveys.

Forbes Also Agrees People Don’t Quit Jobs, They Quit Bosses

While we cannot sneak a microphone under their dinner tables…or in their cars, on their trains, in the bars they frequent after work, or the gyms where they pound a punching bag…what we can do is predict their subjects. And I predict those subjects are their bosses first, followed by their colleagues and then their daily job duties.

Forbes Magazine picked up on my thinking earlier this year and said this:

“Dick Finnegan, the Stay Interview expert, writes, ‘The greatest reason why employees quit is what they talk about over dinner’. Even those of us who love hard data must acknowledge this, which reinforces the old adage that people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. And it is those bosses they talk about over dinner.”

The joke line here is when someone asks, “How was your day, dear?”, no one answers “My day was OK…but I just wish we had pet insurance”.

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Further Reading: The Crucial Time of Day for Stay/Leave Decisions

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But back to our story. After stating my belief to this distinguished group, one man in the front row stood up and challenged this thinking, saying he tells his employees that once they leave work, they should not think about their workdays at all, that work/life balance is critical to peace at home. As a result, he said, none of his employees would ever talk about him over dinner.

Now challenged in front of the group…that included the CEO…my initial thought was to say something like your team might be different although I believe most employees do indeed talk about their bosses over dinner. But instead, I took a chance and said this:

“Let’s poll the group. Please raise your hand high if in the last week you’ve talked about your boss over dinner.”

Of 24 remaining people in the room…many of whom reported to someone else in that room…24 hands immediately went up, all as the questioning manager and I looked on.  We had proven our theory to the scientists…with science.

Leaders Workday Decisions are Tonight’s Dinner Topic

The room buzzed for 15 seconds or so, reminding me how important it is to test beliefs via polling so group participants can truly personalize what is being said to them. But more important is the point they made as a team, that in the presence of their own managers they declared “I talk about YOU over dinner”…so therefore it can be rightly assumed their employees talk about them over dinner, too.

Keep in mind, too, that these were senior leaders, senior scientists, not blue-collar workers who we typically associate with complaining about their jobs to others.

Those managers now know that each sentence they say and each decision they make might be served up with dinner that night. Will knowing this make them better leaders? Better communicators? Might they become more likely to provide encouragement and positive feedback versus remain silent and return to their own work? I think it will. Imagine a new hire returning home after the first day of work and telling her family all the things her new boss told her that she did really well!

Those managers…and your managers…have exponentially far more impact on how long their employees stay and how much they apply themselves based on this aggregation of going-home feelings.

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Further Reading: How Employee Turnover Is Like Losing a Marriage

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How Do You Know What’s Really Being Discussed at Dinner? Stay Interviews

Stay Interviews the most successful tool for building trust between employees and direct leaders. Why is trust so important to build? Because people leave bosses, not jobs. Stay Interviews  are delivered one-on-one with immediate feedback. All first-line leaders ask just five SI questions and after asking each question those leaders listen for important answers, probe to learn their deeper meanings, and take notes to ensure all important points are preserved. Can you see why Stay Interviews are effective for retention?

Let’s look at these skills more closely and why they build trust:

• Listening means providing focus on their employee’s key words, gathering the most important messages coming back as the result of the just-asked question; listening is active, focused, and attentive…and the opposite of hearing.
• Probing requires listening so carefully that you know which key words and messages to pursue more deeply; If you stay because of our team, what are the names of the teammates you stay for? If you consider leaving because you can’t master the skills of your job, which skills need help so I can make you feel like a winner? Good probing converts five questions into 20 questions.
• Taking notes means your messages are important to me…and I’m going to refer to my notes immediately so I can ask the right probing questions and then later in our session so we can develop the absolutely best stay plan.

Will some employees tell half-truths during Stay Interviews? Sure…but not nearly as often as the 79% who are lying on engagement surveys. And the proof is the great majority of employees tell their deepest truths if their leaders then work to solve their individual issues. Now dinner conversations change from jerk bosses to something else entirely – trust in resolving issues. And when trust is built turnover is consistently decreasing by 20% and more in the companies who implement Stay Interviews as part of an overall employee retention solution.

Want to keep learning new ideas and ways to improve your retention but not sure where to start or how to convince your executives? Write me DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or connect with me if you want to have a one-on-one conversation on how you can get started on your life-long learning journey to cut turnover.

The post Who Talks About Their Boss Over Dinner? Everyone! appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Manager Relationships Correlates with Employee Retention

With clients we usually cite just one of these studies, conducted by global consulting company Kenexa. Kenexa surveyed 1,000 voluntary quitters across multiple industries and asked their opinions on five variables which were pay, benefits, development, advancement, and their manager. Just one correlation resulted, that the more positively one felt about their manager then the more positively they felt about their pay, benefits, development, and advancement.

The outcome of this and related studies is profound…and redirecting. What it says is the prism or the lens through which your employees see their relationship with their manager is how they see your company. And it mirrors two longstanding Gallup studies: (1) that each supervisor establishes her own company culture which might or might not match the culture your CEO reports to your board of directors, and (2) that supervisors impact a full 70% of the engagement of their teams.

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Further Reading: Seven Proofs Managers Drive Retention, Not HR

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Accepting that Supervisor Trust Drives Employee Retention

I sometimes say, “you must bite the apple on supervisor trust”. It’s my way of saying you must accept/buy in/pass through a threshold of not just accepting the concept…but you must also radically adjust the solutions you bring to employee retention, as well as to employee engagement. Consider this typical checklist of programs that offer little opportunity for supervisors to build trust:

Two important questions surface from this list:

1. What significant thing do you offer your employees that your competition for talent doesn’t also offer?
2. Should you continue to offer these things once you bite the apple on trust?

Only you can answer #1…but the important word is “significant” such that your employees who have a jerk boss actually still stay because of that thing. The answer to #2 is “yes” but don’t expect the items on this list to cut turnover.

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Further Reading: How Bad Managers Drive Turnover

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Supervisor Trust is not the Same as Approachability for Employee Retention

Want another test? Compare supervisors’ turnover percentages against your list of those you believe are best and worst at building trust.

We social scientists long ago determined that the primary, the most important quality in relationships is trust. If you identify in your mind the best and worst bosses you’ve ever had, it’s a sure bet that you trusted the best one and distrusted the worst one. And that the same best boss had shortcomings like didn’t always respond on time or other human failings, but you easily forgave that person because you trusted her. Conversely, your worst boss had strengths…but you were blindfolded to those strengths because that person had consistently broken trust.

Trust is the single go/no go indicator in relationships…yet corporate trainers lump trust in with approachability, communication, recognition, feedback, as though trust has relationship peers. Trust has no relationship peers.

Besides, our brains are built to be emotional before rational. We judge people mainly on how we instinctively feel about them versus what they do for us. Those same brains also react first in ways that are self-protective, so we seek out those who look out for us. We are essentially cave people with a club.

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Further Reading: How Can Stay Interviews Build Trust?

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Stay Interviews are THE Trust-Builder for Employee Retention

Start with Stay Interviews, the concept I invented more than ten years ago which is designed solely for leaders to build trust individually with each of their direct reports. We train leaders to ask five highly researched questions with four specific skills in order to learn and fix at least one thing that is a day-to-day obstacle to that employee’s work happiness. Our model also includes converting turnover to dollars, developing retention goals, asking leaders to forecast how long each employee will stay…all to provide support such that each leader will retain each employee longer.

Stay Interviews are the star, the interactive keystone to developing leaders to build trust. The outcome is cutting turnover…20% and more.

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Looking for new ideas and ways to improve your retention but not sure where to start or how to convince your executives? Write me: DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or connect with me to have a one-on-one conversation on ways you can get started today on your journey to cut turnover.

The post To Retain Your People, Supervisor Trust Stands Alone appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Stay Interviews Q2 is an Easy Way to Open the Trust Portal

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. We teach managers the simplicity of the Q2 process:

1. Ask Q2.
2. Listen to the response.
3. Take notes.
4. Probe to learn more.
5. Then identify something your employee wants to learn.
6. And build a plan for them to learn it.

Sometimes the employee might say “I don’t want to learn anything new, I just want to work and go home”, which is very OK. Or another might say, “I want to keep learning but I can’t think of anything specific right now”, to which we teach managers to suggest they meet again in a few days and each brings a short list.

The solutions to a learning request can bridge from arranging a series of one-on-one training sessions with an onsite subject expert to for another example the manager might recommend an internal or external class…or even suggesting a specific YouTube video. Learning opportunities are all around us, enhanced by the internet, such that anyone who wants to learn has no excuses for not finding a way.

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Further reading: The Original SI5 and Why they Still Matter

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Stay Interviews Q2 Proves Learning Is Easy, Career Development Is Not

Ponder for a moment on the continual appearance of “career development” in your engagement survey results, HR strategic plans, and throughout discussions regarding how to improve retention and engagement. Then consider the following two questions to measure how important is structured, step-by-step career development versus searching out customized opportunities to learn for each of our employees:

1. For what percentage of your current employees do you actually have a career? What percent of nurses, manufacturing floor workers, call center agents and others do you see yourself having a job to promote them to plus their becoming qualified to earn that role? I’m guessing your answer ranges between 10% and 30%…keeping in mind you must first have an opportunity to advance them.

• Again considering your current employees, what percentage of them are ambitiously aiming themselves for another job with your company? Healthcare companies often talk of careers for nurses or CNAs, yet I find both groups are mainly interested in less stress much more than they want to secure a different role.

Now consider the time and energy that many companies have invested into “career development”:

• Some companies require that each manger develop a tightly scripted, specific career plan with each member of their teams.

• “Career check-ins” are prescribed quarterly or on some other mandated schedule.

• HR develops “career ladders” that show likely progression trails…for which managers sometimes force-fit employees into the right box in order to fulfill the tops-down mandate that each employee has a career plan.

A recent poll conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce showed 41% of Americans are looking to switch industries for their next job,[i] which tells me they are looking for something new…something that aligns with their natural curiosity that meets their needs for a happier life.

Here’s another way to view the crucial difference. “Career ladders” are close-ended in that they offer a limited number of industry-specific options. “Learning” is open-ended as it permits employees to choose their own unique path.

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Further reading: Are You Hiring for a Calling or a Job? It Impacts Retention

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Can Stay Interviews Q2 Help You Retain Your Employees Six Months Longer? Maybe.

Below is data regarding low long employees stay by specific generations[ii]:

• Baby boomers stay with one employer an average of 8 years, 3 months.
• Millennials stay an average of 2 years, 9 months.
• Gen Z stays an average of 2 years, 3 months.

A few years ago we would have said that young workers cannot sustain their continual job-hopping, either because employers won’t hire them or they would have developed families, bought homes, and morphed their way into more bills to pay. That wishful thinking, though, is long gone because the excess of jobs compared to our number of workers is such that each qualified worker will have her pick of jobs for the next decade or so.

But as our “wishing for” years went by, young workers became less young. In fact, the oldest millennials turn 41 this year and 51% of all U.S. jobs today are held by either millennials or gen Z. More shocking, millennials will occupy 75% of all U.S. jobs by 2025…and that year begins in just 15 months.

For many of today’s workers, the most optimistic pathway is to retain them for six months longer than you retain them today. And I’m guessing here that the road to retaining each individual employee is to take their cues on what they want to learn rather than instructing them by way of a pre-established career plan. And that’s why our Q2 is “What are you learning here? And what do you want to learn?”

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Further reading: For Employee Retention Career Development is Out, Learning is In

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Want to keep learning new ideas and ways to improve your retention but not sure where to start or how to convince your executives? Write me DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or connect with me if you want to have a one-on-one conversation on how you can get started on your life-long learning journey to cu turnover.

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[i] https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/switching-career-fields-is-more-common-than-you-think/

[ii] Career Builder, 2022

The post Why Stay Interviews Q2 is “What Are You Learning Here?” appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Where Did I Start Addressing Turnover?

The scene was a large regional banking company, and the CEO was responsible for 70 branches in Florida. He had been commanded by his board of directors to cut turnover and had little instinct for why employees quit or how to fix it. So he passed his own feelings of being threatened by a higher authority onto me, given I was the top HR exec so surely I had an improve-retention wand back in my office.

But there was no room for humor here. I was accountable for solving the company’s #1 problem according to our board, and my success would become the CEO’s success. Or his failure which, as they say, was not an option. Sound familiar?

After hearing my orders, I immediately went home to update my resume. No joke. I remember the green couch I was sitting on to this day. Little did I realize, though, that I was about to take part in a nearly ideal research experiment.

Unlike today, those were the times when customers had to travel to a branch to conduct most banking services. But the physical and functional architecture of our 70 branch banks was the same as now. The shingles and bricks of each building were identical…and so were the jobs, the pay, the benefits, and the furniture. So how could some branches have turnover as high as 70% and others had turnover of just 10%? The one variable…and we could easily argue the only important variable…was the manager.

This Was My “Ah-ha” Turnover Moment

If placed in this circumstance today, most HR execs would turn toward exit survey and engagement survey results, form an employee retention committee, and build a list of company-wide “solutions”. First up might be five steps to improve employee recognition which would be to award an employee of the month, give that winner a premium parking space, sponsor an employee appreciation week, and then ensure each employee received a company merch backpack at five years at a company clock at ten. Or to improve communication one would schedule more town hall meetings and provide a CEO video.

Many of these options were available to me at the time, but I knew I had to look at it from another angle. Instead of one-size-fits all programs, I dug into research on what the variables most impacted turnover based on academic studies versus routinely-published exit interview results. Only then could I determine the right course of action for cutting turnover.

What did I find? The branch manager was the primary variable. The difference between who stayed and who left was based on the direct supervisor. Further research and analysis showed it was actually a smaller sub-set of poor managers who drove our high turnover numbers company-wide.

“Ah-ha.” It wasn’t HR, but was instead the managers who drove turnover and who needed to be measured and held accountable for turnover. What did I do? Exactly what I recommend to this day today. Convert turnover from a percentage to a dollar cost so everyone understands how much each exit actually costs the company to lose just one employee. Gather front-line managers together to give them a measurable goal to reduce employee turnover and hold them accountable to meet it.

Want to convert your turnover percentage to a dollar cost?
Use our Free Turnover Cost Calculator.

The Turnover Accountability Push Back and My Push Forward

When speaking at conferences, this is where I say that the managers immediately offered several “suggestions” and each of those suggestions ended in “sucks”…as in “the pay sucks”, “the benefits suck”, and…well…you get the idea. There were stormy moments, all started when one brave manager raised his hand and said, “Now let me get this straight. You expect us to cut employee turnover?”

Our answer was yes, we did expect those managers to cut employee turnover. And our only offer to “help” was to distribute a monthly report that showed their progress against their goal, and it was a separate report, so this data wasn’t buried alongside other data. We didn’t raise pay, didn’t provide additional training, and we offered no additional benefits.

Looking back, in my mind the idea of holding managers accountable for turnover was really a shot in the dark. It was so different from the sameness of the setting, especially when set against the great gaps in turnover across the state. I didn’t know then that one “ah-ha” moment would lead me on a greater journey including further research with a professor of industrial psychology to help me clarify my ideas into these three bedrocks:

• The number one reason employees stay or leave…or for that matter engage or disengage…is how much they trust their immediate supervisors.

• This does NOT mean that each time an employee quits it is because she doesn’t trust her boss because employees quit for lots of reasons…but it might be because she didn’t trust her boss.

• It DOES mean, though, that each individual leader must become your very best employee retention solution.

I outline more on this in my book titled HR’s Greatest Challenge which provides summaries of 25 studies that back this up.

What Are the Key Takeaways from My Turnover “Ah-ha”?

So 90 days later our turnover had decreased by 19%. In the interim I had worked with finance to conduct a cost study for losing one teller and the result was $4,933 per exit…locked in my memory…resulting in our total savings at that point to equal over $4 million. The board was happy, and I had saved my job.

Looking back, I knew then that I had learned a lesson mostly unknown across HR circles. Simply said, that any retention effort that does not include holding first-line leaders accountable for turnover would be a bust.

Much has happened in my professional life since then, but my passion for this remains rooted in these science-based beliefs and it works. I have seen the results of those who have used my SHRM books to implement Stay Interviews and while working with scores of clients to help them save hundreds of millions of dollars for their companies by cutting turnover. One thing I routinely share in jest when speaking at conferences always gets a chuckle from HR people, but it sums up my passion for this work succinctly: When was the last time you heard a really good worker say, “My boss treats me like dirt, but I’m holding on for employee appreciation week. I’ll get a balloon and a hot dog, and I’ll feel great!!!”

Passionate about improving your retention but not sure where to start or how to convince your executives? Write me DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com or connect with me if you want to have a one-on-one conversation on how you can get started on your “ah-ha” journey to cutting turnover.

The post My “‘Ah-Ha” How to Cut Turnover Moment appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

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 with bad management styles see employees’ reasons for leaving as every possible one but themselves?

I think not. Our studies match those of other respected organizations, that the number one reason employees stay or leave…or engage or disengage…is how much they trust their boss. “Boss” in this case means immediate supervisor, the next level up, and the impact of these first-line leaders is so strong that leaders on each level above them can do little to overcome their shortcomings. Or for that matter, improve on their strengths. These leaders’ day-to-day behaviors result in either good management styles or bad management styles.

Savvy managers move their retention and engagement compass away from most companies’ knee-jerk solutions, mainly one-size-fits-all programs, and instead aim this responsibility squarely upon themselves. These managers empirically know that their ability to build trustworthy relationships with each member of their teams brings out the best in each of their employees. And their employees feel such a resulting emotional connection that they work their hardest and smartest, while searching out ways to contribute more. And they also want to stay. Contrast this with bad management behavior where leader-employee connections hardly happen at all.

This connect-the-dots combination of “You have built trust with me so I will give my best and stay here for a long time” is the backbone of the holy grail all organizations seek, better employee engagement and retention.

Bad Managers Break Trust which Drives Turnover

How do bad managers break trust? The obvious ways are by commission, things they actively do such as tell lies, break confidences, and unjustly favor one employee over another. But many bad managers also break trust by omission, by failing to do things good managers do. And too often these managers fail to do these behaviors unintentionally, with no knowledge they are losing their team’s trust in the process. Here are the top 3 ways we see bad managers unintentionally break trust:

1. Provide the daily silent treatment.

These managers provide little informal, voluntary interaction, and instead focus their energies on their own work instead the work of their teams. Their core belief of “I do mine, you do yours” sets a bad leadership example. They become present for required meetings and expected interactions but for little else. And seeing employees as replaceable parts becomes natural to them because they never see their teams as humans. Trading their teams for robots would be terrific for them.

For employees, the silent manager is just a mystery. So his employees consult their imaginations to fill in the blanks on what their communication-absent manager thinks of them. And they see no evidence to believe it’s good. So the result of this bad management style is suspicion at best, turnover at worst.

2. Micromanage to get the precise outcomes they want.

Ultimately, managers who coach others too closely are simply saying “I don’t trust you to get it right yourself” which is a bad manager behavior. Regardless if their employees have 10 years of experience or 10 months, the micromanager wants full control of strategies, tactics, outcomes, and usually credit, too. Employees become their tools for their own success, and those employees never become quite good enough because the micromanager cannot release the employee from his over-reaching grasp. Instead, the micromanager’s ego whispers to himself, “Good thing I’m so effective because other people never are”.

The micromanager’s ways produce the opposite environment for employee engagement and retention. Which qualified employees would want to work under strict tactical management every hour, with little chance of growth and no chance of achievement?

3. Giving “feedback” to help you grow.

“Feedback” has grown to encompass many forms of communication in our society, but for the non-trustworthy manager feedback has only one meaning: Telling others what they did wrong. Missing is telling them what they did right.

At best, the “feedback” manager’s employees develop a “No-news-is-good-news” approach, again resulting from their leader’s bad management style.  But at worst they wear down over time from the broad-sided or subtle hits to their self-esteem, when going to work becomes a completely eclipsed, dark spot in their lives. Work harder? Give more? Stay longer? Instead these employees have been tossed into an emotional survival mode, and they seek the freshness of new opportunities as soon as they can, causing even more employee turnover.

Good Managers Build Trust and Improve Turnover

What makes a good manager? The full list of trust-building behaviors is long, but these 3 ways leap out as core, as getting these methods right builds the foundation for deep-seated, engagement- and retention-building relationships. This list represents good management skills.

1. Listen intently and patiently.

Let’s first acknowledge that managers cannot always drop what they are doing to lend a fully-focused ear, but they can always say “Can we continue this conversation at 2 PM?” And, yes, some employees will talk that ear off, as they say, with non-work chit-chat. But savvy leaders know how to re-direct those conversations into meaningful ones.

Listening builds trust because it shows that the listener cares. Make time, delivering attention via eye contact, taking notes, and asking probing questions all convey the same message, that your thinking is important to me. Good listeners separate their own needs from the moment by resisting pulling the conversation to themselves, for example saying, “That happened to me once so let me tell you about it”. They instead hear the speaker’s words but listen for the speaker’s emotions, as those emotions are always the most important message for the speaker. Responding by addressing those emotions such as, “You seem really happy/sad/angry about that” sends the clear, unfiltered message back that I am with you…and I care. Any listing of how to be a great manager must start with good listening skills.

2. Show professional and personal interest, from the heart.

Employees bring one hundred percent of their lives to work, not just the work part. Even though some employees express the non-work part more than others, all of those parts are with them each day. Smart managers understand this so they draw careful but loving lines between work and non-work topics. Because they care, they listen to all parts of their employees’ lives but rarely cross the line of giving advice.

Likewise, caring managers give feedback in ways that honor the full person instead of just the work one. They include phrases like, “I am telling you this because I care about you, and I want you to succeed”, rather than delivering cold, uncomfortable declarations of improvement instructions. Best management styles must include caring for the whole person instead of just the “work” one.

3. Credit good work, no exceptions.

Trustworthy managers look for good performance so they can co-celebrate it with their teams, both with individuals and groups. They intuitively know the difference between a common, expected achievement and a substantial one, realizing that making a small achievement large will hurt their credibility rather than grow it.

They have usually caught on early that the greatest of all motivators is achievement, so giving feedback that is specific, timely, and with smiles/handshakes and other proper non-verbal behaviors go far to make their teams want to stay and work harder.

Great Managers Shift to Meet Employees’ Individual Needs and Cut Turnover

So what makes a great manager? And how do managers develop good management skills? Stay Interviews provide these savvy managers with the pathway to learn precisely what their individual employees need…and how effectively those managers are fulfilling those needs…and help each leader develop the very best management style. For example, one employee might crave public recognition in front of peers, whereas another believes she gets no recognition whatsoever. Or another employee defines caring as his manager delivering solid career guidance while his peer who works beside him just wants to work each day and go home. Employees come in all shapes and sizes, physically and emotionally, and the very best managers must stretch their own levels of understanding to learn, adapt, and accommodate to those various employee needs.

Our company consistently helps client companies cut turnover by 20% and more, and our solution training first-line managers to conduct Stay Interviews, plus costing turnover, establishing retention goals, and forecasting how long each employee will stay…and then holding them accountable for retention outcomes. The key to improving managers who ultimately improve turnover is the scripting and training related to the five specific Stay Interview questions:

1. When you travel to work each day, what things do you look forward to? To begin with a positive question that brings the employee’s thinking into the present hour here and now.
2. What are you learning here? Helping employees learn is an easy gift to give, whereas career talk should be reserved for those employees who might actually have a career with your company.
3. Why do you stay here? My favorite, in part because many employees don’t immediately know the answer and therefore must discover it and announce it to themselves. And knowing this answer along with the answer to Q1 tells us how to make employees happy.
4. When was the last time you thought about leaving our team? And what prompted it? “When” signifies that everyone thinks about leaving so it’s OK to say you think about it, too. And responding to Q3 above means you have now presented a balanced position of why you stay and could leave.
5. What can I do as your manager to make working here better for you? We close by addressing the relationship between us.

By applying skills like listening, probing, and taking notes, about 90% of employees tell the truth.

The Stay Interview manager uses these precise skills for learning and providing for each employee’s unique needs. And when managers acknowledge, respond, and even make a few changes to day-to-day work, magic happens and employees stay longer. The result is the highest level of achievement for managers to retain and further engage their teams to meet and achieve all of their operational goals.

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.

The post How Bad Managers Drive Turnover appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.

Manager Relationships Correlates with Employee Retention

With clients we usually cite just one of these studies, conducted by global consulting company Kenexa. Kenexa surveyed 1,000 voluntary quitters across multiple industries and asked their opinions on five variables which were pay, benefits, development, advancement, and their manager. Just one correlation resulted, that the more positively one felt about their manager then the more positively they felt about their pay, benefits, development, and advancement.

The outcome of this and related studies is profound…and redirecting. What it says is the prism or the lens through which your employees see their relationship with their manager is how they see your company. And it mirrors two longstanding Gallup studies: (1) that each supervisor establishes her own company culture which might or might not match the culture your CEO reports to your board of directors, and (2) that supervisors impact a full 70% of the engagement of their teams.

Accepting that Supervisor Trust Drives Employee Retention

I sometimes say “you must bite the apple on supervisor trust”. It’s my way of saying you must accept/buy in/pass through a threshold of not just accepting the concept…but you must also radically adjust the solutions you bring to employee retention, as well as to employee engagement. Consider this checklist of one-size-fits-all programs that offer little opportunity for supervisors to build trust:

Two important questions surface from this list:

1. What significant thing do you offer your employees that your competition for talent doesn’t also offer?
2. Should you continue to offer these things once you bite the apple on trust?

Only you can answer #1…but the important word is “significant” such that your employees who have a jerk boss actually still stay because of that thing. The answer to #2 is “yes” but don’t expect the items on this list to cut turnover.

Supervisor Trust is not the Same as Approachability for Employee Retention

Want another test? Compare supervisors’ turnover percentages against your list of those you believe are best and worst at building trust.

We social scientists long ago determined that the primary, the most important quality in relationships is trust. If you identify in your mind the best and worst bosses you’ve ever had, it’s a sure bet that you trusted the best one and distrusted the worst one. And that the same best boss had shortcomings like didn’t always respond on time or other human failings, but you easily forgave that person because you trusted her. Conversely, your worst boss had strengths…but you were blindfolded to those strengths because that person had consistently broken trust.

Trust is the single go/no go indicator in relationships…yet corporate trainers lump trust in with approachability, communication, recognition, feedback, as though trust has relationship peers. Trust has no relationship peers.

Besides, our brains are built to be emotional before rational. We judge people mainly on how we instinctively feel about them versus what they do for us. Those same brains also react first in ways that are self-protective so we seek out those who look out for us. We are essentially cave people with a club.

Stay Interviews are THE Trust-Builder for Employee Retention

As you keep chomping on that apple, our retention solution becomes clear. And the fact that our solution consistently cuts turnover by 20% and more becomes believable.

Start with Stay Interviews, the concept I invented ten years ago which is designed solely for leaders to build trust individually with each of their direct reports. We train leaders to ask five highly-researched questions with four specific skills in order to learn and fix at least one thing that is a day-to-day obstacle to that employee’s work happiness. Our model also includes converting turnover to dollars, developing retention goals, asking leaders to forecast how long each employee will stay…all to provide support such that each leader will retain each employee longer.

Stay Interviews are the star, the interactive keystone to developing leaders to build trust. The outcome is cutting turnover…20% and more.

You Can Cut Turnover by 20% or More, Even During The Great Resignation

Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com to discuss your employee retention roadblocks and I’ll share ideas for how you can move forward and what is working for other companies to cut turnover by 20% and more, even during The Great Resignation that may benefit you.

The post Do You Agree Supervisor Trust Drives Employee Retention? appeared first on C-Suite Analytics.