I recently attended an HR event on the topic of sourcing and retaining talent. They had a diverse group of speakers from different industries discussing how they attract and retain good staff, with some sharing some solid insights. The common theme was that people who are engaged in their work are far easier to retain, as you would expect, as well as offering career paths and support to employees being a factor in why good people stay with an organization. One of the challenges organizations face is that doing these things well is hard; it takes a long-term commitment from the top to invest in staff engagement and development.
The alternative to all this ‘difficult people and career stuff’ is to offer the superficial perks and bells & whistles. These are easy to implement and manage; think of all the reward and recognition programs around, whether in-house or outsourced.
I suspect if you ask most people what they value most in an organization and what keeps and attracts them, their answers (in no particular order) will be a mixture of good management; open communication and feedback (positive & negative); and the organization offering them some form of career support and development.
Most of us want to work for an organization doing work where we are engaged, learning, developing and being acknowledged when we have excelled. Being acknowledged does not necessarily mean monetary rewards, particularly if employees are being fairly paid and doing what they enjoy. So while companies spend thousands on fancy employee reward and recognition programs, holidays, gifts, and so on, I have always wondered if this is the best use of money. Perhaps employees would be more engaged if this money was spent on career support for employees, training and development opportunities and better-skilled management.
We hear it time and time again that people want to work for great managers and leave when they’re not so great. The statistics on the effect that poor management has on retention of good staff are high. A recent post by Michael Specht titled ‘54 Per Cent of Companies Have Bad Management’ explores this same subject of poor management and the fact that there are so many un-engaged people at work; in fact he quotes 63% of Australian employees are not fully engaged at work. Specht’s angle is that social media cannot be blamed for this lack of engagement, which I concur with. If you get the basics right as highlighted above, i.e. good management and communication where people are in jobs where they are engaged and can progress, then all these other distractions are minimized. Combined with this, companies can invest their money in their employees rather than all these ancillary (yet easy to implement and manage), superficial programs.
What are your views on how organizations can better engage and retain staff? What keeps you engaged at your organization?
4 Comments
Interesting article and you are correct, money won’t buy loyalty from good people. You might enjoy this short talk by Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
It is very interesting.
I attended the same HR event, and one of the points made by one
of the speakers is the need to “personalise” the employee. We
are all motivated by different things at work, and hence engaged
by different challenges and reinforcement. Our own market research shows that some are motivated most by monetary incentives, some are not.
Perhaps the key to employers being able to engage employees is to be flexible in their offerings – offer both monetary and non monetary incentives and let the employee choose.
Hi Jenni
Thanks for the comment and link. I have had a listen to the TED presentation by Daniel Pink which is right on the money. As he says “we need to bring the notion of motivations into 21st Century”. Many businesses are still operating as if it were the 20th century, chain and command style.
Regards,
Kelly
To retain staff I think Managers need to establish a healthy, positive supportive culture in the workplace before they look for new employees, then when new employees start the healthy workplace habits are already in place, good beginnings can be critical to future behavioural patterns.
I think creating an work environment where people feel like they belong and their contributions are important can be critical in retaining staff. Valuing what employees bring can inspire employees to bring more next time.
Also employees have a history of life experience/education which could be a wealth of knowledge completely untapped if managers do not look or ask of their employee what they would like to bring or share in the workplace. Also I think employees are looking for Managers who have integrity and ensure that respect underpins all interactions. There is nothing that discourages me more than when a manager uses their power as an excuse to be disrespectful.