A survey from the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) reveals that one fifth of employees plan to quit their job this year. Replacing employees is an expensive and risky business. And with unemployment rates continuing to fall the future belongs to the best employers. What to do…
Here are some thoughts on retaining employees, and especially the key workers:
Leadership
Unsurprisingly, given the source on which this blog is based, leadership is high on the agenda. It is crucially important and not easily summarised in a few sentences. But a clear sense of direction and the ability to communicate and engage employees in that mission from senior managers to the shop floor is a crucial leadership skill. And leader’s listening skills are raised as vitally important to the Sunday Times in evaluating its Best Companies to work for list. Employer Solutions can provide workshop on Leadership, based on working out what will work for you, in your environment, in conjunction with other workshop members.
Value employees
It is trite to state that employees are an organisation’s greatest asset but it is also true. Creating a sense of feeling valued is achieved by careful management of the psychological contract. Earnings, though important, are actually secondary to a sense of being valued. Primary is a positive and enjoyable workplace as Samantha Zupan of Glassdoor emphasises.
Transparency
When I started work in the “us and them” culture of the 1960’s there was a popular adage: “knowledge is power”. Political power within organisations was achieved by acquiring, holding on to and judiciously using knowledge. But organisations succeeding today are turning that around. The evidence is that employees seek, respect and respond to transparency. Indeed with Twitter, facebook and Glassdoor poor management practices will become harder and harder to hide.
Development opportunities
Personal growth is a great motivator and training and developing employees will work well for your business. There are so many skills out there to be learned and with the pace of change ever faster new skills can be vital to the future. Training and qualifications feature highly in employees desires. Many employees definitely want to be “more productive at work”.
Work life balance
Like it or not , few employees now want to work long hours and, indeed the ILM survey suggested a third want to improve their work-live balance. Recent research has shown that employees who feel they have good work-life balance work 21% harder than those who don’t.