News

Colin Thompson - 03 April 2008

I must say what interesting views from your top people.

Can I share with you my views on `our` people!

INSPIRE AND DEVELOP YOUR PEOPLE OR YOU WILL LOSE THEM!

The Retention of Employees

A Changing Work Force and Workplace - this is a global challenge

Fundamental changes are taking place in the work force and the workplace that promise to radically alter the way companies relate to their employees. Hiring and retaining good employees have become the `chief` concerns of nearly every company in every industry. Companies that understand what their employees want and need in the workplace and make a strategic decision to proactively fulfil those needs will become the dominant players in their respective markets.

The fierce competition for qualified workers results from a number of workplace trends, including:

A robust economy

Shift in how people view their careers

Changes in the unspoken "contract" between employer and employee

Corporate cocooning

A new generation of workers

Baby boomers striking out on their own after hitting corporate ceilings

Changes in social mores

Life balance

Concurrent with these trends, the emerging work force is developing very different attitudes about their role in the workplace. Today's employees place a high priority on the following:

Family orientation

Sense of community

Quality of life issues

Volunteerism

Autonomy

Flexibility and nonconformity

To hold onto your people, you have to work counter to prevailing trends causing the job churning. Smart employers make it a strategic initiative to understand what their people want and need, then give it to them. If you want an excellent work force you will need to look after them, otherwise they will leave to pastures new!

Five Strategies for Retaining Employees

Retaining employees and developing a stable work force involves a two-step process, understanding why employees leave in the first place, and developing and implementing strategies to get them to stay.

Employees leave jobs for five main reasons:

Poor working conditions

Lack of appreciation

Lack of support

Lack of opportunity for advancement

Inadequate compensation

Overcoming these reasons requires the implementation of five distinct categories of retention strategies:

Environmental strategies create and maintain a workplace that attracts, retains and nourishes good people.

Relationship strategies focus on how you treat your people and how they treat each other.

Support strategies involve giving people the tools, equipment and information to get the job done.

Growth strategies deal with personal and professional growth.

Compensation strategies cover the broad spectrum of total compensation, not just base pay and salary.

Top Tips for Retaining Employees

To retain their employees, companies should implement the following best practices:

Hire `right` to begin with.

Engage in longer orientations with new employees.

Live the values.

Use creative rewards and recognition.

Create annual personal growth plans for each employee.

Consider non-compete agreements.

Recruiter-proof your company.

Make it easy for people to get their jobs done.

Do corporate succession planning.

Conduct exit interviews with employees who resign.

Retaining Key Employees

By focusing on key players who truly make or break your business, you can get the most leverage from your employee retention efforts. Retaining key employees requires a five-step process:

Identify key employees and positions.

Know what motivates your key employees on an individual level.

Provide a deferred compensation plan.

Monitor and manage key employee performance.

Review key employees annually.

Using Benefits as an Employee Retention Tool

Employee benefits provide a powerful tool for attracting and retaining top-notch employees. To design a retention-oriented benefits programme, use the following steps:

Create a benefits mission statement.

Identify your audience and their specific benefit wants and needs.

Define a benefits budget that fits within the financial constraints of the company.

Give employees as much control as possible over their benefits.

Communicate the plan.

Creative Rewards and Recognition

Reward people for specific behaviours/results.

Make your rewards programme simple and easy to understand.

Get employees involved in designing and running the programme?

Make it fun!

And it will be very rewarding for employees and the company!

How to inspire your people

Poor performance in the workplace is a big issue in organisations

Inspiring people is not easy – for most of us it takes time, effort and persistence. Few of us have the outstanding qualities of inspirational figures such as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela. Nevertheless, we all have the ability to inspire employees in small yet meaningful ways. And when people are inspired, they become more enthusiastic, motivated and engaged, which invariably improves their performance.

This is a key issue for most organisations – recent research conducted by Chiumento found that poor performance in the workplace was a problem for 96 per cent of UK organisations.

But inspiration is not a management tool that can be readily manipulated. It results from the creation of a positive psychological and emotional connection with an individual – it is about winning hearts as well as minds.

Managers therefore need to act in an authentic manner that earns them the trust and respect of employees. Of course, people have different personalities, needs and aspirations and what will inspire and engage one person may have the opposite effect on someone else. So what practical steps can you take to become an inspirational manager?

1 Learn to let go

Good management means learning to let go. It might be hard to do so initially, but you need to trust people to use their own judgment. Demonstrate that you have confidence in their abilities by empowering them and giving them a level of autonomy that is appropriate for their role, motivation and level of expertise.

Most people respond positively to being given responsibility as long as they feel supported and not dumped on, but ensure that you do it consistently – delegating responsibility and then removing it without good reason can be incredibly demotivating.

2 Help staff see where they fit in

Create a sense of meaning that helps people feel they are making a contribution to something that is important and purposeful. Most people feel good about themselves when they are able to understand how their contribution helps the overall success of the organisation.

Employees who are emotionally committed to an organisation's purpose invariably exhibit greater loyalty and deliver superior levels of performance, so help people to feel that they are part of a community that is collectively engaged in something worthwhile.

3 Say thank you

It can be easy to forget to say thank you in the middle of a busy day, but it is important to try to provide regular praise and recognition where it is merited.

A thank you that is heartfelt and spontaneous reinforces the fact that each employee matters and that the organisation recognises and values their contribution. For most people, genuine praise is more valuable and appreciated than financial rewards.

4 Recognise people's strengths

Strive to play to employees' strengths and seek to make the most of individual capabilities and talents wherever possible. Most organisations have a wealth of potential talent that remains untapped, and it often resides in highly capable individuals who want to give more but are frustrated by unimaginative leadership and constraining organisational practices. Seek to unlock this latent potential, even if it means challenging organisational protocol.

5 Practise what you preach

Act with integrity, honesty and humility at all times – people respect managers and leaders who act in line with their values, who behave consistently, who don't avoid confronting difficult issues and who provide open and honest explanations – even when it comes to admitting their own mistakes.

Exemplify the behaviours that you wish to see in others and don't underestimate the power of your words and actions on your team and on your peers. Remember that you cannot build an inspired workforce if you are not inspired yourself, so make sure that the conditions you seek to create for others exist for you as well.

6 Give constructive feedback

This will help employees to understand how they are doing and how they could improve. Most people seek clarity about the progress they are making, but few welcome criticism. So make sure that feedback is balanced, that employees take ownership of the resulting actions, and that appropriate coaching and support is put in place to help individuals learn and develop.

7 Discuss career paths

Take development and personal growth seriously and spend time understanding your employees' needs and aspirations. Not everyone is seeking a structured career development path, but taking time to discuss a person's future and helping them to take the steps necessary to realise their dreams and ambitions is an important consideration for many employees.

8 Promote work-life balance

Remember that employees are individuals and have lives outside the workplace – you employ the whole person. So, as far as possible, shape an employment deal that balances the needs of the organisation with those of the individual. Take time to understand what an engaging employment deal would look like for different employees, and strive to achieve a meaningful and realistic work-life balance proposition for each person. Your employees will appreciate this demonstration of flexibility and the fact they are not taken for granted.

9 Communicate honestly

Practise open and honest communication and involve people in decision-making wherever possible. Openness and transparency help to reinforce trust and serve to stimulate creativity, ideas and a sense of connectivity. Cultivating a sense of inclusion and participation shows that you genuinely value people's input and opinions and helps to release the latent potential within the workforce.

10 Have fun

People work best when they do not feel under constant pressure and when they can engage in social interaction. So create the time and space for relaxation and enjoyment, and don't underestimate the benefits of humour in containing stress and anxiety – higher levels of performance and productivity will inevitably result.

Getting Managers to Develop their Staff

Why managerial involvement in development programmes is crucial and outlines how to achieve this.

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Losing good people? People losing their 'edge'?

You lost a very competent and high potential manager recently. At the exit interview you asked why she was leaving – the reply "I was told when I joined that there were opportunities to develop and progress – it just hasn't happened and the work is getting boring – I need a change" You remember that you had been reminding managers of the need to develop their talented people, but to no avail. Pity about that!

Whose job is it to develop staff?

You have been talking to a group of managers about their duties, responsibilities and tasks, and they have, collectively, produced some pretty good answers. You ask in all innocence whose job it is to develop staff. They all say, with minor variations, that it is the manager's job. You ask them to give examples of what they themselves do to develop staff, and the replies are not very satisfactory.

They agree that, as managers, they expect staff to come to them in a fit state to start work, and be reasonably trained or competent. If their work is special they expect this to have been arranged by the training department, though this is generally for skilled or technical work. From there on they know that it is their job and that, however good the staff looked when they arrived, there is much more to be done to fit them to their new work.

You then ask "Who develops you, how much development do you get". The managers show that they are a fairly self-reliant bunch and, if they like their own manager, will say that he does try but he is generally too busy. Pity about that!

Why this difference between theory and practice?

What have we, whether as specialists in learning and development, or in HR done to help? What did we tell managers about developing their staff? We probably told them that it:

is an important regular part of the manager's job; - can improve their people’s performance and should be considered and formalised at the annual performance review

is a sensitive area because it affects an individual's career and their future progress needs time; it must be properly thought out and that the discussion on performance and development needed should be well prepared and not rushed

and that managers must identify and prioritise development for their people, make good plans, and ensure that the development or promised training happens and the results assessed.

This is probably done at annual review time when managers have a number of people to deal with. Since managers are generally behindhand on these things and have other priorities, and HR is also chasing them for the return of the review forms, it is not surprising that development issues to do not get the attention they deserve. In short we have made the job of planning and ensuring the development of staff seem big and daunting. Should we have applied more pressure to make development happen? Perhaps – but would it have worked? Unlikely. Pity about that!

Culture is fundamental and notoriously difficult to change, especially in a long established organisation. It is essential to develop an attitude to learning throughout an organisation so that learning is seen to be an essential part of the business. Continuing personal and organisational development must be seen as normal – so much so that people would think it absurd if personal development was not clear to all. But let's look at the issues.

So what are the big issues in getting managers to develop their people?

I believe that the big issues are more concerned with how to do it, rather than what to do. They are:

how to get managers to see the value to themselves of developing others

how to make it easy to start, and start getting clear benefits

how to monitor the outcomes as well as their activity

how to link the individual’s improvement or extra skill to the individual’s subsequent progress

how to give the individual the opportunities to realise their potential within the organisation

how to get people to believe that continuing learning is essential.

Get managers to see the value of developing their people

Many managers see themselves as being over-burdened. If they are responsible they are working long hours and leave at the end of the day feeling that they have not achieved all that they should have. Many of them could have achieved more had they been prepared to delegate more. As usual, they may also have thought that they could have delegated more, but that it was quicker to do it themselves.

Most managerial jobs include substantial tasks which could be delegated if only the manager were to sit with one of the more responsible members of the team, discuss the task, the things which are involved and explain it to the member and then hand that task over while retaining an element of supervision. It can be the gradual process in which the scope of a task is gradually extended, or a new task added or new learning opportunities found, and as the individual becomes more skilled at doing it the manager can add further tasks.

It is important that the tasks are done correctly of course, but it is also important that it is not only the manager who understands how it is done. It gives the manager more time to do other things and the benefits are soon apparent once the initial investment of time has been made. Fine so far, but this is unlikely to happen regularly until the manager starts seeing the personal benefit of having better staff.

And what personal benefits can there be: off-loading a task to one or several subordinates so that the manager can tackle other things; freeing up the manager's diary; perhaps even to get the job done better because it is new to that individual, while to the manager it is a chore.

It doesn't have to be a major job either; the simple act of training a subordinate in the way material should be presented still produces a saving. Part of the manager's job is to teach how things should be done – the saving to the manager is the reduction of 're-work'. This is where L&D or HR really can help, by advising the manager on ways of getting these savings, by providing guidance, by identifying opportunities, encouraging. All 'carrot stuff', but with the 'stick' ready as well.

Make it easier to start

Many managers know they should delegate more but are unsure where to start as well as how to start. In many organisations there are sufficient similarities in the tasks required by managers for it to be worthwhile to produce a guide to the task and notes for the manager on learning opportunities. We have produced several such guides for managers. One identified a range of common tasks in retailing, of which stock-take is one example – usually unwelcome but necessary task.

It is relatively simple to produce a guidance note which suggests to a manager how to delegate that task, how to identify aspects which may cause problems and guidelines on how to brief an individual whom the manager will task for organising and running it. Such guides do not take long to produce and sometimes just preparing them identifies system weaknesses – a double benefit to the manager.

Develop a Learning culture

An organisation does not become a 'learning organisation' unless there is a positive culture led from the top. The example can be set so easily by the Chief Executive, and I have seen it done, and seen how that chief executive's example has quickly penetrated the whole organisation. It is, of course, easier when the chief executive is a 'new broom'.It was a long fraught top team meeting which discussed a range of difficult problems, and had come to a close. All the members were gathering their papers, anxious to get away before any more problems were brought out into the open. The chief executive said "Just before you go" – members' hearts sank noisily – "I want no more than one minute from each of you in turn on what you have learnt from this meeting, or what you will do differently in the future". After a pause, one of the members stated what he had learnt, and was going on beyond his allotted 60 seconds when the chief executive said "Fine I don't want any more – next!" And the others responded in turn. Within two months each of those senior executives was adopting the same approach at their meetings. It did not take long for that approach to make a big improvement to the learning culture. Try it out.

What can we do to formalise the development?

There are a range of options. If you have a reasonably simple and useable set of management competencies – not all of them are simple – you can organise the development guide around those competencies and find examples which managers can consider when discussing an individual's development and where the improvements can be identified subsequently at annual review.

You can link the staff development to career progression or to assessment of potential for promotion: Design the processes so that individuals can consider their own progress and raise their sights higher; many of them will then put extra effort into self-development. You can link the development process to qualification or suitability to undertake special projects or an extension of job role; you can also link it to with such things as eligibility to represent the organisation at winter conferences held in sunny places.

One major IT company made two conditions for their sales people to attend the annual 'binge'. One was that they had achieved their year’s sales targets – the other was that they had attended all the training which they had agreed on at the start of the year. "Too busy working on a big project" was not accepted as an excuse. It did show that the business took development very seriously. They did not apply it to the production staff though, knowing that if they let them go on binges they might never come back. Pity about that!

Monitor and record the outcomes

Many organisations keep a record of the formal training of each individual, fewer keep notes on informal training on development experiences. Even fewer record the outcomes and benefits, pity about that! But it's not that difficult to arrange a quick review after the event – a check up which goes further than the end of course 'happy sheet'. It is fairly easy to check three months afterwards by asking about the application of the new knowledge or skills and the benefits. Of course, the manager should respond, but the busy manager will find it another chore – so why not ask the individual who may well be more interested in his progress and career?

Some organisations encourage their people to keep an active CV on file and some – especially construction companies quoting for work – make it mandatory. Of course, it could be dangerous and encourage people to review their progress and might stimulate them to look around – pity about that, but then if you are not making good use of their talents it might stimulate you to make better use.

To close

Of course, managers should look after their people, they should be concerned about their people's performance, progress and careers. HR and L&D could do more to help managers, and many would respond to that help to the benefit to themselves, their people and the organisation. It would make life easier all round. Of course, there will always be some managers who won't, and they deserve to lose their best people. Pity about that!

Treat your employees as `gold nuggets`if you wish to have a successful organisation.

Fresh thinking requires a vision to see beyond the conventional. When you combine excellent quality with outstanding value for money you will begin to realise the full potential of creative and well presented business solutions. Together, the sky`s the limit. Have passion to learn and let the knowledge help you to be successful in life.

Colin Thompson

Cavendish

www.cavendish-mr.org.uk