Employee Retention/Turnover
...nce me that greener pastures were ahead of me. It was easy for me to believe my supervisors since I had faith and trust in their leadership. I liked my job and the positive atmosphere my manager created in the work environment. Pay was my only complaint and in the end wasn’t enough for me to walk away. The power of a strong manager in the employee retention process was very evident. Companies should try to train their managers to follow a general process when building the all important trust and the great working relationship you’re looking for. Some great starting points might be the following steps: • Being able to find an employees talent and not focusing on the skills they have or do not have. A talented employee will be able to learn the skills necessary and also be flexible to the changing environments of your business and should be the focus of your retention efforts. • Don’t tell your employees how to do their jobs. Tell them what your desired outcome is and let them wow you with their talent. You hired smart people; now let them prove it to you. • Be the motivator and not the terminator. Focus on your employee’s strengths and not their weaknesses. Using employees for the right tasks will save you from wasting time on trying to turn them into something they aren’t. Now we know that managers play a key role in our employee retention and have the ability to prevent turnover. Another key step to consider is “training” and “Career Development” opportunities within the company. Not many people want to do the exact same task for five or ten years. Most employees are always eager to learn something new in order to receive compensation financially and promote themselves to higher positions within the company. Marcia Zidle in her article titled Employee Retention: Five Leadership Fundamentals said, “Most employees have a few ongoing needs that motivate them to do their best work and to stay. They include a clear direction of their job or project; specific assignments that help them grow; access to necessary organizational resources; and feedback on their performance on a regular basis.” Customizing training and career planning should be a high priority for employers. Focus on the strengths and interests of those working for you and create a development plan for the individual. If your employee knows where he or she is headed in the company, they are more likely to stick around and work hard to reach that goal. It gives the employee a purpose for being at work every day and giving it their all. They know that the company has faith in them and has made an investment to train and develop them to someday be a leader in the company or at the very least have a bigger role. In the book Leader As Coach: Strategies for Coaching & Developing Others, Author David B. Peterson and Mary Dee Johnson Hicks make a valuable point. “First, help the individual identify his or her "motivational gap" (defined as an "important difference between where you are and would like to be"); second, create a plan to guide the development process.” Of course this is a very important factor to your success. It is the connecting point between our first point of managers and supervisors being the key, and training and career development being the door to the employee’s success. David B. Perterson and Mary Dee Johnson continued with this brilliant observation, “The supervisor agrees to act as a coach by working one-on-one, orchestrating resources and learning opportunities, and providing encouragement for learning and focus. The direct report agrees to assume primary responsibility for his or her development by setting priorities, accepting new challenges, testing new behaviors, reflecting and extracting learning, and seeking feedback and support.” From my own business experience within Bank of America I can’t stress the importance of career development in my decision to stay with the Bank over the past five years. Starting with the bank as a teller over five years ago, I didn’t see right off the bat a career with Bank of America. This was a part time job as I tried to put myself through collage. My managers took an interest in my talent as a great sales associate. They shared the benefits the bank would provide me including tuition reimbursement of up to $4000 a year to help me with collage. They drew up a path that fit my part time work schedule and in less then a year I was working for customer service where I had great sales opportunities. Not only was I now making more money, selling more products, earning higher bonuses. Now I was exposed to the corporate side of Bank of America, working in a large building with multiple opportunities for growth. They turned a part time employee who was planning on working for maybe a year or two with the bank feel like he was part of something bigger. I felt as though I could accomplish anything I wanted in this company if I worked hard and got the job done. The clear bath painted before me was easy to follow and I am still on track to reach future growth opportunities. After you have created a great manager/employee relationship and solidified that relationship with managers being your company career developers, your ready for the next step. Of course being competitive with your wages is important, but something else is becoming even more crucial in light of our ageing workforce in the United States. Benefits, all kinds and every kind your company offers should be tailored to attract the type of employees you are searching for. Health B...