Unexpectedly losing a great employee is one of the most costly events that can happen to an organization. Whatâs worse, the departure of even one or two top-performers or a charismatic leader can trigger a spiral of additional turnover.
Unlike other major disasters, a turnover spiral is often avoidable, and protecting against it might be easier than you think.
The key to avoiding a turnover event is getting ahead of it before itâs triggered.
How do you do that?
Start with the lowest hanging fruit: common turnover contributors.
Communication and Dialogue
This isnât secret knowledge. Itâs one of the most basic fundamentals of good leadership and management, but that doesnât mean everyoneâs good at it.
If there was one area that is crucial to get right, itâs communication and dialogue â yet both are so frequently broken. Technically, theyâre two separate issues, but theyâre so interrelated you canât really get one right without the other.
Communication is what youâre discussing; dialogue is how you go about discussing it.
Think about it this way â if youâre communicating regularly, but the dialogue within that communication is toxic, itâs not going to benefit anyone. Youâre drawing nearer to a turnover event with every word.
Alternatively, your dialogue is good â the discussions you have are amiable and enjoyable for both parties â but youâre never covering the crucial issues.
It takes effort to cultivate an environment that supports frequent, effective, and productive communication, but that investment pays big dividends.
Entrepreneur published a resource âHow to Create a Winning Employee Retention Strategyâ that describes the impact effective communication can have on employees:
âProperly done, communication with your staff will provide you with the insights you need in order to know how your employees feel about working for your business.â
Itâs not just about knowing the tactical details of whatâs going on. Good communication is your opportunity to gain the additional insight you need to stay ahead of turnover.
So how do you build that environment?
Forget âMy door is always openâ policies if you truly want to support effective communication. Although it may work for some employees, thereâs a much larger contingent whoâll simply refuse to cross that threshold.
Itâs not out of meekness, or because of anti-social tendencies that theyâre not going to step in. There are a number of reasons open-door policies fail.
Your team may simply be busy, or consider you too busy to approach. Even if an outgoing employee does join you in the office for a chat, itâs not a guarantee youâre going to hear the things you need to hear.
When I Workâs Chad Halvorson explained this phenomenon in his article on their blog:
âOften time people feel they canât really express themselves for fear of embarrassment or reprisalâeven with open door policies in place. Instead, managers and employers need to actively create an open rapport with employees.â
The key to sparking these crucial conversations is to bake them into everyday life in your organization. Carve out time for open communication at a regular cadence, and prioritize it, so that youâre not constantly rescheduling over it.
One on one meetings are a great format for productive communication between managers and the people they lead. If youâre interested in implementing them, we recently published a great guide to getting the most out of one on one meetings.
Wellness
Employees who are healthy in mind and body have the necessary bandwidth to produce more and better work. Itâs really that simple.
Think about it from a psychological perspective. Maslowâs hierarchy of needs is a great way to illustrate the importance of both physical and mental well being, not just as human beings, but specifically in a work context.
As leaders, itâs our job to help employees achieve self-actualization â that highest level in the hierarchy where a person fully realizes their potential, and operates in a manner that fulfills it.
Itâs beneficial for everyone involved.
When an employeeâs basic physiological needs arenât being fulfilled, itâs not possible for them to reach higher levels of performance because their attention will always be at least to some degree focused on fulfilling their most basic needs.
Think about it this way: if an employee is sick at work, but should be in the doctorâs office, theyâre not going to be operating at their full potential. Itâs also putting the fulfillment of physiological needs (and as a result, higher-level needs) for other employees at risk.
Wellness goes beyond a basic health care plan or sick leave.
If an employee pulled an all-nighter to get a project done by its deadline, their failure to fulfill that basic physiological need of sleep will impact the quality and output of their work until itâs taken care of. That impact is felt by everyone they work with.
Stress is another huge factor impacting employee wellness, and organizational performance. According to the World Health Organization, stress cost US enterprises over 300 billion dollars.
That might sound like a lot, but if youâre not convinced of the cost yet, our friends at Officevibe shared some more staggering statistics on corporate wellness.
It may feel as though you work in a high-stress industry, where stress is natural â the problem is that the kind of stress we see in professional settings often isnât natural.
Enduring constant stress can be incredibly punishing, not only mentally, but physically as well. When weâre stressed, it causes our body to elicit a fight-or-flight response.
Our bodyâs natural stress response is a compromise, and itâs kind of a big one.
The functionality of other important life support systems are impacted by this response â sometimes irreversibly â with the assumed short-term benefit of outrunning a predator, or finding a meal.
Although you may work in what is considered a âstressfulâ industry, and stress is never entirely avoidable, there are always tools to provide relief from that stress and soften the impact it has.
So what are some easy ways to support well being within your team?
Start by banishing overwork â whether itâs happening through managerial pressure, or individual pressure to succeed. Avoiding overwork is one of the core competencies of a good manager, and it can have a huge effect on several areas of employee wellness.
If theyâre thinking âI canât take a sick day because Itâll cut into my vacation,â or âI have to come in because if I donât, nothing will get done and everything will fall apart,â itâs time to re-think your approach to employee wellness.
Help employees manage stress through thoughtful project management, and give them the tools they need when stress is unavoidable. Jon Kabat-Zinn gave a great talk at the Google campus on the benefits of mindfulness and stress reduction at work:
Growth
Want an easy way to keep employees from leaving? Make sure they donât outgrow your organization. If a top performer hits the ceiling in one year, theyâre going to find another place to contribute their time and skills.
Nobody wants to stay in a dead-end job.
Learning opportunities are a great way to help your team grow and thrive. As an added benefit, the results of that learning will benefit the organization.
Donât get caught up in the mentality of âIf I pay for my employees to attend courses and seminars, Iâm just subsidizing training costs for their next employer.â
Think of it as an investment in human capital. And the best part? You actually have the power to directly influence your returns on this investment.
Advancement opportunities can make or break retention. If an employee is genuinely ready to take the next step in their career path, find ways you can help them advance internally.
If thereâs no room for a top performer to move forward, theyâre liable to find another path. Itâs not fair to expect them not to.
If your organizationâs environment gives them enough room to grow and evolve, while providing the tools they need to do that as effectively as possible, theyâll be much less likely to leave.
Purpose
Purposeful work is a major factor in retention â especially in the highly competitive modern talent landscape.
How important could it really be?
A study of graduating university students showed that 2/3 felt making a difference through their next job was a priority. 45 percent of those students reported theyâd even take a pay cut to do so.
Hereâs the key factor many people miss: there are no âpurpose professions.â
There are some careers whose purpose is clearer and more present, but itâs possible to find purpose in any career. Sometimes all it takes is someone else highlighting the importance in what you do.
Whether youâre the executive director of a non-profit organization, or a sushi master like Jiro Ono who has been perfecting his craft over decades, your work is purposeful, and itâs meaningful to others.
Being able to help employees to see the purpose in their work, is a massive competitive advantage, and itâs an advantage available to everyone.
In a recent interview we did together, Imperativeâs Arthur Woods went into more detail on the importance of purposeful work.
How do you instil a sense of purpose?
Show an employee exactly how their work impacts their team, and why their contributions matter. Take a step further and illustrate the importance of that same work, as its effects reverberate across the organization.
Take another step back and illustrate the purpose behind organizational goals, and why it matters that an employeeâs contributions are pushing the team further towards achieving those goals.
Finally, take a step back and illustrate how through their efforts, theyâre positively impacting the world around them.
Camaraderie
The people you work with, and the relationships you build among them can be an incredibly strong employee retention factor.
Why is that?
According to The TINYpulse 2015 Employee Engagement & Organizational Culture Report, colleagues were cited as the #1 reason respondents love their job.
When they asked all these respondents what it was that made them want to give their all, the answer wasnât money, or prestige. It was peers.
The deep sense of camaraderie you get from a team that is dedicated to supporting one another is extraordinarily powerful.
â70 percent of people state work friendships as the most crucial element to a happy working life.â
So how do you provide an environment that supports the founding and strengthening of those friendships?
There are a lot of ways to do it, but perhaps the most important factor is culture.
No matter how much effort you expend, or how well-designed the work environment, it all starts with culture. Start by working to develop a culture of mutual respect and appreciation, because itâs nearly impossible to build great working relationships within a toxic organizational culture.
In addition to a culture of mutual respect and appreciation, providing a physical environment conducive to relationship building can go a long way.
Make sure there are physical areas and a cultural atmosphere that support collaboration.
The emotional environment you develop is incredibly important. Each member of the team should feel a sense of psychological safety â that their ideas will be heard, considered thoughtfully, and never ridiculed.
They should feel comfortable in their environment, and not feel like theyâre âbreaking the rulesâ by interacting with their colleagues.
Recognition
Showing appreciation for an employeeâs unique contributions is a great way to keep them engaged and inspired to continue. Failing to recognize employees for the work they do often produces the opposite effect.
Frequency is a major factor in the effectiveness of employee recognition.
If recognition is given once or even a few times each year, there are doubtless many contributions that have been made, but have not been recognized.
Specificity: itâs not enough to tell someone âgood job.â The more specific the recognition, the more impactful it will be, both to the receiver, and for the organization as a whole.
Why is that?
Itâs important for employees to know exactly what they did that was commendable, and why it was such a valuable contribution.
Recognition that is given, tied within a framework of individual purpose and organizational goals has a few major advantages.
Many employees struggle to understand what success looks like in their organization. Specific recognition tied to organizational goals helps them to understand exactly what they need to do â what types of contributions they need to make to the team to be successful in their organizational role.
Itâs also an opportunity to illuminate the purpose behind that work. It may seem obvious to someone at a 30,000 foot perspective, but itâs frequently challenging to see, especially at the ground-level.
Follow-through
None of these strategies are going to be worth attempting without follow-through. In fact, poor follow-through can be worse than doing nothing at all.
The difference between lip service and action are obvious, and can be painfully obvious when it comes to something as important as a personâs daily work environment.
You donât have to succeed with every initiative â thatâs an unsustainable standard to be held to â but just like grade school math, you do need to show your work.
In Conclusion:
Employee turnover is extraordinarily costly, but there are many ways to get in front of it, and work to resolve the issues that cause it. Thoughtfully approaching these few areas weâve discussed can make the difference between an organization that is a talent magnet, and one that is suffering high employee turnover.
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