Just recently I was speaking with the employee of a client company. She has been there for more than 20 years and she told me that she almost left the company. In fact, she had handed in her resignation and the boss convinced her to stay.
It seemed that she had become dissatisfied with her pay structure and vacation time that were both frozen because she had reached the maximum for her job function. She felt she was not progressing, and the job had become less interesting.
She was head hunted and offered a better position with superior pay. The boss convinced her to stay but it cost the company more than it should have if they had practiced the preventative approach I recommend.
Practice Prevention
The best way to prevent this happening to you and your company is to meet regularly with your employees and have a conversation about their job experience and satisfaction. Now of course you do this with people that report directly to you.
I call this a coaching conversation as you want to get the pulse of your employees and find out how they are feeling about the job. So, it’s not a time to really talk about what they’re working on or how they’re doing even though that might enter into the conversation. But you want to talk about them as a person and ask how they are feeling about their job.
I usually start these conversations with questions like; tell me about what is going well in the job and then what’s going not so well? It is really about their experience at work. What are they happy with, what are they not so happy with so I can get a feeling of how they see their work, how they feel about their satisfaction with the company, with the job, their engagement and work relationships. Then if there are issues that come up that I feel need to be addressed, we can discuss them. This way, the employee feels that you care about them, that you are taking interest in their career and in their job satisfaction.
Coaching Conversations versus Surveys
Many companies use surveys to get the pulse of people’s perception of their job satisfaction but taking the time to have a face-to-face conversation is a much richer and human approach.
Having that one-on-one conversation will make people feel that they are valued that you care about them, that you’re treating them as a human. It will create a bond and build trust with them.
This way if they get approached by a recruiter, they will have more of a tendency to come and see you and let you know that they are being offered something better.
When an employee values their relationships at work both with their boss and coworkers, that is something they would be reluctant to leave. There is a risk that they may lose that when moving to another firm where they do not know what things are like.
In the example I gave the company decided to offer a promotion to a team leader role that provides more pay and benefits. But this was done more as a reaction than a planned approach.
Giving a promotion just to retain a good performing employee is not always feasible and suggested. There are other ways to increase an employee’s engagement such as providing more interesting work and paying a bonus based on performance.
Cost of Hiring
After speaking with this employee, I also spoke to a HR manager of another company about the cost of turnover. She said finding qualified skilled people is exceedingly difficult these days and it takes a lot of time and money to go through the process. Furthermore, training new staff to adapt to your way of functioning also can be awfully expensive.
The Bottom Line
You can either put out fires or practice prevention, meaning start having regular conversations with employees about their work experience. Keep these conversations focused on them and look for signs that might tell you their satisfaction and engagement with the job is faltering. Speak to them about it and find ways to help them stay engaged.