Managers Are the Secret Ingredient in Retention
When new jobs are easy to find, good pay, perks, and benefits might not be sufficient to keep employees from looking afield.
There is nothing more exciting to me than talking with folks about the wonderful work of The Council Foundation.
These discussions usually focus on The Foundation’s mission to bring new talent into our industry—from interns to experienced hires. But attracting talent is only half of the equation. Once we get the new employees in the door, how do we keep them there? I decided to learn more about the best practices for retaining the talent that we are working so hard to get. As I read up on the topic a definite theme emerged: the most important tool for retaining employees is good managers.
Many of us believe people stay in jobs primarily for money, perks, and benefits. While these are important, “People stay in jobs because of circumstances that are, for the most part, within the control of their manager,” Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans write in their book Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay.
Surveys say managers have a huge effect on how engaged their employees are in their work.
Surveys say managers have a huge effect on how engaged their employees are in their work. People need their managers to treat them with respect and warmth, to listen, and to give them interesting and challenging work. Kaye and Jordan-Evans say that the best way to know how to keep your employee happy is simply to ask what’s important to them.
Another important component to retention is providing employees with opportunities to develop and grow. The authors remind us that career progression doesn’t always have to be upward—lateral moves to different positions or departments can be equally motivating. True, you may lose someone from your department, but you are retaining them for the firm.
Richard Finnegan offers interesting ideas on holding on to valued employees in his book Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad. He concurs that the quality of a company’s managers and supervisors is the No. 1 factor in retaining top talent.
But Finnegan doesn’t stop there. He believes that sales managers should pay as much attention to retention as they do to sales and service. He goes as far as to say that one way to reduce turnover is to set meaningful retention goals for managers.
Research from the Finnegan Institute (founded by the author) shows that only 11-14% of firms set retention goals. Setting simple, achievable targets and reviewing retention accountability in team meetings help managers understand the importance of these goals in terms of their own career development.
Finnegan identifies three principles to reduce turnover and enhance engagement.
His first principal is “Employees Quit Jobs Because They Can.” Finding a new job today is remarkably easy. Managers must do what they can to avoid pushing their staffers toward the exit—be part of the solution, not the problem. One way to do this is to have managers see the results of exit interviews with former team members in order to help them make any necessary adjustments to their leadership approach.
The second principle is “Employees Stay for Things They Get Uniquely From You.” This could include flexible schedules, great benefits, and most importantly defined career opportunities. He suggests building an employee value proposition that showcases a business’s most attractive qualities for its employees. As an example he offers Publix, the largest employee-owned supermarket chain in the United States. Once an employee becomes eligible, Publix will contribute a portion of their earnings into a stock account. As employees grow with the company, they receive more stock.
The third principle reinforces the importance of good management: “Supervisors Build Unique Relationships that Drive Retention.” Good managers are in the best position to create the “glue” an organization needs to hold on to great employees.
It’s important to develop your managers so that they can build trust with their teams. Respondents to a survey by the firm TalentKeepers of over 100,000 employees reported that a manager’s most important skill is the ability to build trust. So, building trust should become a core management skill of any retention strategy. Workplace trust requires three things: competence, ethics, and good listening skills. Regarding competence, employees trust leaders who know what they are doing. For ethics, employees look for fairness and transparency. Finally, employees must know their managers are listening to their concerns and genuinely care about addressing them. As talent management expert Josh Bersin puts it, “Competency, ethics and listening skills have to take priority in every conversation, every decision, every project and every relationship we have at work.”
Finnegan believes that the C-suite must also be fully engaged in retention programs and strategies. Some firms consider retention rates in CEO compensation rates. When you calculate the cost of turnover it should certainly be considered a business imperative worthy of top-level executive attention. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not enough for The Council Foundation to attract new talent into our industry. We need to expand this mission to include assisting with retaining that talent as well. Attracting and hiring is fruitless if we can’t hold on to ’em.
