Tired of Hiring Question Marks? Learn How to Keep Your Stars!
Regardless of your calculus, it's better to keep a star than to hire a question mark.
Gallup suggests that it costs U.S. businesses about a trillion dollars a year in employee replacement costs. It costs anywhere from half to two times a person's salary to replace them.
Disengagement is the main reason why people move on. Don’t let your people disengage!
Here are some ideas to keep people committed to your organization and focused on bringing their best selves to the work each day:
Give them something to believe in: People want to be inspired. Give it to them. Create a compelling vision for your business and be sure to show them how they fit and will benefit through the achievement of that dream. Do this and staff engagement will follow.
Place focus on the outside: Whether real or imagined, a sense of that an "enemy" wants to destroy the company, will inspire your people to work together to defeat their adversary. In turn, this will engage your team in the work at hand.
Work at a recent Fortune 150 client amplifies this point. Confronted with new entrants to their market, I helped the leadership team to reconstitute its vision roll-out initiative, with new messaging that placed special emphasis on the idea that the competition exists outside of the organization and that leaders needed to put aside their pursuit of parochial interests and redirect that energy to doing the work needed to overcome the new competition. The firm’s latest product release is doing gangbusters and many among the top leadership team believe that it is due, in part, to the renewed emphasis on the competition.
Promote "Give and Take:" Ditch the command and control behavior as soon as you can. People know who the boss is – you don't need to drive home that pecking order with every interaction. Instead, promote open and honest two-way communication and your people will gain trust in you and become more engaged with their work.
Enable success: Do all that you can to energize and knock-out the roadblocks that can impede your team's success. Once people see that you're about making them successful, they'll become more committed to themselves to getting the job done for you.
For example, a recent client was struggling with motivating staff to do that little extra to get a critical strategic initiative over the finish line. The leadership team invited me to review the project and offer some ideas to improve the situation. Upon talking with the project team, it quickly became apparent that some of its lackluster performance was due to the fact that staffers yearned for more executive involvement – they needed to believe that their executive sponsor actually cared about the project. Once we identified the root cause, the sponsor was briefed and coached on how to breathe new life into the team. She took it upon herself to institute regular daily stand-ups with her team and the project was successfully completed.
Indeed, active project sponsorship can deliver immeasurable staff engagement outcomes. But, the key word is active!
Ask: People like it when you show them enough respect to ask them for their opinion. So, ask your team what else can be done to improve the company culture and make the work-setting more compelling and satisfying.
Having this type of ongoing dialogue, not only helps gain staff commitment, it also harvests some good ideas for advancing the business environment.
To close, I hope that you give these modest staff engagement ideas a whirl. They can set the stage for needed cultural improvements, while helping you to extend your leadership repertoire. I'm sure staff engagement will be enhanced, if you do…And, of course, I’m here if you need some advice or assistance with your staff engagement efforts.