Employee Retention - How Do You Keep Your Best Employees?

Do you really know what your employees are thinking? Many managers incorrectly think they know what's going on with their employees and others just don't care. Is it important for you to know? The answer to that is pretty simple. It's important if you want to retain your best employees. Let's face it, in this challenging economy, it is more critical than ever to retain employees who are willing and able to do more. Even large companies that historically had room for less than highly productive employees have to try and get more out of everyone. If you don't know how your employees feel about their jobs, the work environment, or their supervisor, how can you expect to know what you need to do in order to keep them?

One of the things you can do is conduct a climate assessment. There are three steps you can take to gather this valuable intelligence. The first is conducting an employee survey. You want to find out their likes, dislikes and "deal breakers". It's especially important to identify those things that are getting in their way of be more productive. This could be something as simple as a disruptive co-worker or as complex as a process that doesn't work. The trick is to identify these things and do something about them. It's also important to find out what's working well. You don't want to inadvertently change something that was a positive for employees into a negative.

The second step is to take the results of the survey and share them with employees in group meetings. These meetings serve two purposes. They give you a chance to provide feedback to your employees and they give you the opportunity to get more details and clarity about the input they provided. It's the perfect time to say "I see that many of you rated your work environment as only average. Can you tell me a little more about that?" Of course, having a neutral party facilitate these meetings significantly increases the chances that employees will open up and really tell you what they were thinking. You'll find that employees not only appreciate the feedback, but also the opportunity to be heard. I've facilitated dozens of these kinds of meetings and they are a very powerful tool.

The last step is a critical one. Once you have your employees' input, you have to do something with it! If you don't, not only will you lose the goodwill that you've built up during this process, but you will actually damage your relationship with them. If you're not sincere about taking their feedback and using it, you'd be better off not attempting this process at all. Ideally, you will get some of the employees involved in determining how the changes should be made. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you create ownership by having your employees participate in determining what the changes will be and how they will be implemented. If your employees "own" their jobs, they will take much better care of them than if they are "renters".

Today, it is more critical than it has ever been to understand your employees. The climate assessment described above is one of the ways you can do this. With this information you have the opportunity to enlist your employees in creating an environment that is not only a satisfying place to work, but a highly productive one. That sounds like a win-win situation to me!

Prior to forming The Performance Partners, Sterling spent the last 30 years broadening his HR experience by assuming roles of increasing responsibility in the healthcare and aerospace industries. This experience has included heading EEO for McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and holding the positions of Vice President and Director of HR for two Fortune 500 healthcare companies. The Performance Partners is a Human Resource consulting company the focuses on Employee Relations, Organizational Development, Leadership Development, Union Management and HR Outsourcing. More information about the services he provides can be found at http://theperformancepartners.net

Sterling holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. He can be reached at (636) 699-6641 or at SPrice@ThePerformancePartners.net

By Sterling F. Price

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