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The Right Way and The Wrong Way to Combat “The Great Resignation”

The Great Resignation is Crippling Businesses

The Talent Problem, now deemed “The Great Resignation”, has escalated to the point where it is beginning to cripple businesses. 51% percent of employees are actively looking for a new job.  As certain skillsets become in shorter and shorter supply, companies are looking to use money; bonuses, salary adjustments, to attract talent. We see fast food operations offering $21.00 as a starting pay rate!

Money may help you attract talent, but it doesn’t solve what is at the root of “The Great Resignation”.

Money has never been a motivator. The initial idea and receipt of cash is exciting, but over time it does not keep people satisfied with their work experience. Coupled with the fact that there is always another firm that can afford to pay more than your firm can, money alone is a short term solution to a problem that is already decades old. To combat “The Great Resignation”, we must look at the employee’s experience after you attract them into your organization, and it goes well beyond onboarding where most employers stop.

There are key areas that career transition history shows us underlie most resignations. Respect for values is the #1 reason for employee dissatisfaction. How employees are managed is a close second with 50% of exiting employees citing their manager as the key reason for leaving.  Other areas that are high on the list of reasons why employees leave are lack of a career path, organizational fairness, culture, communication, lack of flexibility, and inability to contribute in a meaningful way.

The labor pool is shrinking, permanently. Baby boomers are retiring, The Gig economy is growing giving employees a solid way to create a side hustle or two that can easily become a full time hustle. Many employees are going the entrepreneurial route. That means they are leaving the traditional labor pool. As companies compete for fewer and fewer resources, it becomes critical to cultivate and keep the resources you already have. Carefully crafting the employee experience beyond onboarding and cultivating existing talent are key.

I have seen recent articles about this problem that suggest that creating avatars around your ideal employee or job descriptions to help craft the employee experience is what is needed.  People are individuals not avatars and their needs and desires are as individual they are. Let’s admit that cookie cutter solutions don’t work. We have watched companies implement across the board solutions to retain talent for the last decade and it has not moved the needle. If we are to solve the retention problem, we need to go deeper. We need to look inside our organizations, shed outdated paradigms and traditions and offer what employees they need and want. And to do that, we need to get clear about what that is.

To solve this problem, we have developed The Employee Exodus Assessment, a tool to help businesses with up to 500 employees get clarity around their retention vulnerabilities.  With this anonymous assessment, we can look at the company, the culture, management and hear the voice of the employee on the key issues that underlie most resignations.

“The value here,“ says OKeefe, “is the ability to get a read before the fact rather than depending on an employee/manager discussion or an exit interview where employees hold back the truth, so they don’t burn a bridge.”

Using a carefully crafted assessment which includes an anonymous survey, a hot line, management interviews, company data and benchmark data, administered by an objective third party, over the course of a few short weeks, we can bring a businesses clarity around how this issue plays out in their organization, develop insights, give short term action steps, and make longer term recommendations.

To learn more about The Employee Exodus Assessment, visit our website at NancyOKeefeConsulting.com or to talk about whether this assessment sounds right for your organization, click This Link  https://bit.ly/CombatTheGreatResignation


Nancy OKeefe

Nancy OKeefe, MBA, MS, is a Strategic Business Consultant, Thought Leader, Author and Talent Cultivator who helps CEOs create innovative, productive and culture rich workplaces where the best talent wants to work. Nancy believes that people are at their best when they are free to be themselves. She is on a personal mission to inspire individuals to fulfill their potential and to change business leaders’ thinking to shed Industrial Era ideas around management and culture. Nancy helps CEO’s build sustainable organizations that break old patterns and re-calibrate the work experience to make work an equitable business deal that attracts the talent CEO’s need to successfully implement their vision. Author of the book, Unlimited Talent, Nancy has spent the bulk of her career cultivating people.

Nancy is a Certified Quantum Human Design Specialist, a Certified Executive Coach from the College of Executive Coaching, holds an MBA from Babson College in Entrepreneurship and a MS in Quality Systems Management from Anna Maria College. She is Certified in Conversational Intelligence® and a Fascination Advantage®Advisor.

Nancy lives in the Hilton Head area of South Carolina and enjoys the pace, the people, and painting the scenery of the Low Country.

What You Know About Motivating Employees Is Critical Now

What do you really know about motivating others?  This has fast become a critical skill for managers.  Why?  Because employees have a lot on their minds today. There are a lot of distractions and a lot of worries.  Things are changing at a rapid pace.  Everyone is worried about their safety and struggling to make sense of our new reality.

Many employees are now working from home and for those that are not accustomed to this, it can be difficult to stay motivated and get things done.  At-home employees run the risk of feeling overwhelmed without anyone to go through the changes with.  They can feel confused about how their roles might be different working at home.  They can feel unsure of how to accomplish tasks that they were experts in before these changes.  So it is important for managers to understand motivation in general and what they can do to motivate their teams.

Take this quiz to discover how well you motivate others.  Answer True or False, to see how you’re doing in lighting and kindling the fire of enthusiasm in your employees.      

1. I know things about the personal lives of those who work with me, such as how many children they have or their special hobbies or musical taste.

2. I try to ask questions rather than give direct orders.

3. When making a request, I match the benefits of the task to the goals and values of the person I am asking.

4. I give specific and sincere praise for improvements in performance, so as to let people know that I have noticed. I celebrate successes.

5. When I give criticism, I begin with honest appreciation for what is being done well and right. I follow that with an “and” rather than a “but” before delivering criticism.

6. Put simply, I treat others the way I would like to be treated.

7. I set goals that are reasonable but that require stretching. Whenever possible, I work with individuals to set goals together.

8. I respect the professionalism and expertise of those I supervise. I ask for their input in planning, and I give them autonomy and authority to complete projects.

9. I share my own thinking and values around the goals and projects set.

10. Rather than worry too much about others’ weaknesses, I focus on building their strengths.

11. If those I supervise are not motivated, I look first to myself and what I need to change about myself or my approach.

12. I give constant feedback, both verbal and statistical, so that my direct-reports always know how they’re doing.

13. I am motivated, enthusiastic, transparent and energetic. I have good balance in my work/personal life, and I love what I do. In effect, I am modeling the traits I want to see in others.

14. I am always on the lookout for challenging tasks for those I supervise.

15. Everyone I work with understands what the company’s mission and vision mean to them as individuals.

If you answered false more often than true, you might want to consider giving the topic more attention. Motivating others isn’t always easy. But because it doesn’t really come from you (it comes from within your employees), it may be easier and more fun than you think. It’s not about what you have to control, but about what you can help unleash!   (Quiz content used under license, © 2010 Claire Communications)

To help you help employees unleash their motivation, there are 2 key pieces to understand. One is understanding motivation in general and the other is understanding values and how they play a key role in job satisfaction.

So let’s talk about motivation.  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has long been a tool used to talk about motivation.  It is important to understand where each person on your team falls in the pyramid.  Many of your employees were probably in the Esteem and Self-Actualization areas of the pyramid, achieving, accomplishing, learning and mastering.  But during a time of crisis, added stress and worry, many of us have shifted our focus to Physiological needs, like getting enough food when we see bare grocery shelves or Safety needs around our employment and the health of ourselves and our families.  This can cause a shift in our motivation to be productive, creative or accomplished because we are forced to focus elsewhere.  What can you do as a manager or in your company to help people satisfy their Physiological and Safety needs so they will be motivated to move back up the pyramid? 

The next part of the pyramid is the Love and Belonging needs.  They must be satisfied in order to reach the next level.  How we satisfy those needs at work has changed for remote employees.  We can no longer talk around the coffee pot or have hallway conversations.  How can you help employees replace that need to connect personally?  Are they able to connect with their co-workers from home to have a friendly, personal conversation?  The “social” aspect of work is a big bonus employees get for commuting to the office every day.  It is an important part of building good working relationships.  The more you can help them stay connected, the better morale and motivation will be.

Now let’s talk about Core Values.  In career coaching, Core Values are the number one factor in job satisfaction.  If values are not honored or respected, people become dissatisfied enough to want to change their situation and leave. Core Values most definitely contribute to motivation.  How are your employees’ core values being affected?  It would be a helpful exercise to ask your staff about their core values and ask them to list their top three.  Then check in with them individually about how they are feeling around their values and examine what you can do as their manager to help them satisfy those values.  For a list of core values, visit our website at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com/core-values

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Strategist, Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs and senior executives to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at http://www.NancyOKeefeConsulting.com

5 Work At Home Vulnerabilities Every CEO Must Consider Now

Top 5 Work At Home Vulnerabilities

Over the coming weeks, as we learn more about the spread of the coronavirus in the US, as CEOs and business leaders, we may be forced to have more work at home employees than ever before.  Working at home can present some challenges.  Some companies who tried it have abandoned the model claiming it didn’t work.  It works but you have to understand some of the vulnerabilities and you have to change the way you manage your employees.

In 2001, I founded and ran a totally virtual organization long before most other companies were doing it.  We had 50 employees in 4 states working from home giving 110% every day.  We built an infrastructure and software to support it because nothing existed at that time.  Today, there are many tools to facilitate working from home and most organizations have some number of employees working remotely.  But there are still many vulnerabilities. I encourage all CEO’s and business leaders to identify and think about your organizations work at home vulnerabilities and plan for them now in case you have the need to move to this work model.  Here is a list of what I believe to be the top 5 to consider.

1.     SECURITY and IT

You may have a few employees working at home on a given day but when you have the majority of your employees working from home for an extended period of time, it is a whole new ballgame.  The infrastructure needed to support this may be more robust than what exists today.  There will also be technical support issues as people have to learn new ways to access information and may not have access to some of the information they need.  It is imperative that your IT department performs an assessment of your vulnerabilities, what additional capabilities and staff may be needed and put plans in place to facilitate a 100% virtual environment?  Something as basic as providing a list of important telephone numbers may be overlooked.  Assumptions are the enemy.  Try to uncover the baseline information everyone needs on a day to day basis and make it available over a shared online resource.  Look at the bandwidth you have for remote work.  Look at the IT staff you have.  Can they support all the connectivity questions and other issues that come with supporting remote employees?

Security concerns are of the utmost importance when you introduce so many remote connections.  Hackers, viruses, and access to sensitive information is always a concern, but that concern becomes compounded with each additional remote connection.  Should there be a standard work at home set up with certain virus software or firewall software?  Will the company provide it to all employees?  What will the cost be?  What is the cost of not providing it?

2.    COMMUNICATION

There is a lot of fear that swirls around change.  Are you equipped to keep your employees informed?  How will you facilitate communication with a staff that is remote?  There are a number of considerations around communication that need to be discussed and laid out in a communication plan.  This is a key step in keeping everyone productive as fear is an enemy of productivity.  Frequent, honest and clear communication is the best way to quell the fear.

Be mindful of how your employees communicate up, down and through the organization today.  How much of it is face to face?  How will you facilitate that?  What processes and communication standards do you need to put in place to be sure nothing falls through the cracks?  At a minimum, every meeting should have a note-taker and a set of minutes should be produced to record all discussions.  This is as or even more true for informal groups of two or three as it is for a formal meeting.

3.    GETTING THE WORK DONE

It will be challenging to get the work done when the people you are accustomed to working with are no longer sitting around you.  Things that are done routinely will become a bigger chore with different and perhaps more steps.  Employees may feel isolated or confused about how their duties need to change.  Some may feel overwhelmed by the change alone.  This is a time for managers to assess the goals and tasks in their department and how they will facilitate getting the work done with the least amount of disruption.  This is the time for managers to take an objective look at each employee’s strengths and weaknesses.  What will an employee need to thrive in a new and unknown environment?  Hold discussions with employees to gauge their comfort working at home.  Do they have a suitable environment? Or will they be sharing their space with a crying baby or a group of roommates?

4.    HOW MANAGEMENT MUST CHANGE

A different level of management will be required to deal with a remote workforce.  The tendency will be to overact and put more controls and safeguards in place.  This will further upset an already uncomfortable workforce.  Professionals don’t need to be controlled.  They need clear expectations, support and they need to be allowed to do their jobs.  How management reacts and treats employees during any disruption will be under the microscope.  Companies have the chance to score a lot of points with their employees by how they handle this.  Handled badly and your best employees will leave as soon as the crisis is over.

Managers must move to a supportive role.  Their new job is to remove roadblocks and obstacles to productivity and to support the physical and emotional needs of their employees. They need to think leadership, not management.   Some employees will handle the changes well.  Others will need more hand-holding and managers need to provide it.  This is not the time to have a sink or swim attitude.  The result of a sink or swim mindset in this situation could sink a project or the department.  If ever there was a time to reinforce the team concept and get everyone on board, this is it.  Leaders should be asking themselves which teams are gelled and which teams are not.  They should be taking a hard look at their staff, talking to them to see how they feel about everything and reinforcing that we as a company are all in this together.

5.    LEVEL OF TRUST IN YOUR ORGANIZATION

Trust is key in any situation where we need to depend on each other for success, even survival.  If your organization has an “every man for him/herself” mindset, it will implode under the tension and strain.  This is a time to extend trust and bring people together with a common goal, a common cause.  Senior-level leadership needs to assess the level of trust that exists all over the organization and immediately do what they can to build that trust.  Trust can be built by saying what you are going to do and then doing what you say you will do.  Honesty, transparency, and caring will go a long way toward building trust.  Communication is key.  What should you be saying to your employees right now?  How can you share your plans with them around this so they know what is coming and that you have a plan to keep everyone safe and employed?  Employees are worried about their safety and their ability to continue to earn a living. This is not the time to have a knee jerk reaction and slash jobs.  It is a time for level heads and a plan that keeps everyone, customers, employees, stakeholders as safe and as whole as possible.   None of us have ever been through this type of crisis in the U.S.  Your employees will be looking for strong and wise leadership. This is a prime opportunity for senior leadership to regain loyalty and rebuild credibility.  If your organization has an employee retention problem or an engagement problem, how you handle this situation, how much you demonstrate you care about your employees and not just the bottom line will have long-lasting effects in your organization.  How do we keep people working and productive?  What else can be cut to save jobs and keep the economy going?  How can we hold the line until this crisis passes? What can you do today to take the lead?

 

We have created a webinar that dives deeper into each of these areas.  We will be presenting it on Friday, March 13th at noon Eastern DST.  This is a free informational webinar.  We are not selling anything.  No pitch of any kind will be made.  We are offering a free summary sheet to anyone that attends.  I’m offering this because I founded and ran a totally virtual organization beginning in 2001 and grew it to a multi 7 figure business with a virtual staff of 50 people in 4 states.  We didn’t have the technology then, we had to build it.  Today the tech is available but there are so many other things we encountered learning to do this and I would like to share what we learned to help companies bridge the disruption that may be caused by the coronavirus.

To Register For the Webinar  Click this link.  If you can’t attend, register to get the handout and replay.

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WNdOlwfEQ4GfOBgvsuUpnQ

 

NancyOKeefeConsulting.comNancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Expert, Executive Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs and senior executives to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

Do Your Employees Feel Like Management CARES?

Traditional management is about control and accountability and some of the ways we handle accountability breeds fear and kills employee engagement.   70% of our employees are disengaged and 44% of exciting employees cite their manager as their primary reason for leaving.  We need to retool our managers to leave command and control, fear-based management ideas behind.  Managers should be leaders in creating environments based on collaboration and support for doing the best work.  They should be the champions of projects and communicators of clear expectations.  They should play a supportive role, helping the people they manage by making sure all of the roadblocks to success are removed.  They should work to build solid, positive work relationships with employees that create, energize and support a highly motivated workforce. Managers need a new mindset and new skills around their approach to managing people. A manager’s focus should be on moving people to get things done not just moving to get tasks done.  Management must demonstrate it C.A.R.E.S™

Traditional Management Structures and Theories Aren’t Keeping Pace

When you think of traditional organizational hierarchies, managers are typically positioned above their direct reports.  I once worked on an organization chart with a client who insisted that he be at the bottom of the organization chart as his role was to help and support his staff to get their work done easily and effectively.  He felt depicting it any other way sent the wrong message.   There is something to that.  There is or should be a supportive component to management, yet many managers don’t see it that way.  Many organizations don’t see it that way either.  The manager’s key responsibility should be to create work experiences that satisfy, inspire getting the work done, motivate to meet the goals, boost productivity and increase the bottom line.  You don’t create experiences that inspire and satisfy through fear and control.

People have evolved.  They don’t want to be told what to do. They want to be involved in creating the solutions for what needs to get done.  Making this shift in thinking makes a huge difference in employee motivation and engagement and we need to better prepare our managers to think differently about their roles in the organization.  This is a key strategy for engagement and retention.  Flattening the hierarchies and involving employees as partners in solving problems and creating innovative solutions can increase productivity, profit, job satisfaction, results, loyalty and employee retention.

We all know that numbers are the language of business.  Are we collecting numbers that measure how well managers are performing their roles as motivators, relationship builders, coaches, communicators, innovate problem solvers and how well they carry the torch of a people culture?

Do Your Employees Feel Like Management CARES?

We have developed the C.A.R.E.S.™ Method of Management and Leadership Development to help retool managers and tie their success to employee satisfaction, productivity, building trust and collaboration to achieve results rather than just completing tasks and assignments.  This can go a long way toward reducing fear and bias by improving transparency, communication, acceptance, and appreciation.  C.A.R.E.S.™ stands for Coach, Align, Appreciate, Relationship, Relationship Bias, Expectations & Supportive Leadership.

People want to be understood, have a deeper level of connection especially in this detached world where much of our communication is masked in social media and handled on devices.  People are starved for human connection, respect, caring, appreciation and being listened to and heard.  It is simply human nature.  People have evolved and management has not kept pace.  Most people want to do a good job and they don’t need to be managed in the same way we have thought about it for decades.  They want to have input into your success.  They want to be a part of something.  They want to belong.  The talent you seek has progressed beyond the basic work for survival.  Organizations need to level up their management game so they are supporting the talent they want with the needs and desires the talent is pursuing.  Show your employees management C.A.R.E.S.™

I would like to invite you to learn more about the C.A.R.E.S.™ Method of Management.  We have developed a class that offers valuable information about how to manage differently, How To Develop Productive Employees That Stay.  Follow this link to register for and get immediate access to the class with our compliments.  REGISTER FOR THE CLASS HERE   Enjoy.

 

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Strategist, Leadership Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs, senior executives and business owners to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s Your Management Style?

Is your management style preventing you from getting the results you need from your team? Some styles can actually hurt your team.  Take this quiz to discover your management style and what you can do to be a better manager.

 

 

Answer each statement with “T” for True or “F” for False.

  1. _____  I prefer to make all decisions myself.  The buck stops here.
  2. _____  I am a strategic thinker.  I always have a clear vision for the future.
  3. _____  I encourage my staff to learn and grow even if it means they grow out of their current position.
  4. _____  I create a competitive environment to help motivate employees.
  5. _____  When it comes to work decisions, two heads (or more) are better than one.
  6. _____  My staff should handle their own jobs.  I only get involved if something goes wrong.
  7. _____  When I make a decision it’s final.  I don’t want further discussion or questioning.
  8. _____  I am not heavily involved in the day to day with my staff.
  9. _____  I have strong people skills and high Emotional Intelligence.
  10. _____  If you set lofty goals and a brisk work pace, employees will be motivated to step up.
  11. _____  I ask for and seriously consider others ideas before making a decision.
  12. _____  Employees should have the freedom to experiment with their work assignments.
  13. _____  I need to be involved in all projects to be sure nothing gets off track.
  14. _____  I am a risk taker.
  15. _____  I believe collaboration is key to getting things done.
  16. _____  It is important to push people to meet goals.
  17. _____  I value employees that challenge ideas and the status quo.
  18. _____  I would describe my management style as “hands-off”.  My staff knows what to do.
  19. _____  It is important for a manager to assert their authority.
  20. _____  I am a natural leader.  Please follow me even if I don’t have the title.
  21. _____  I hold myself out as a mentor to help my employees get to the next level.
  22. _____  It is the manager’s duty to set the work pace for their group.
  23. _____  I routinely encourage all employees to share their ideas.  Everyone has a contribution to make.
  24. _____  I create the time and space to encourage creativity and innovation.

 

Record the Questions You Marked “T” True in the Management Style Grid Below

 

MANAGEMENT STYLE QUESTION NUMBER MARKED “T” TRUE?
AUTHORITATIVE 1
7
13
19
TOTAL TRUE
VISIONARY 2
8
14
20
TOTAL TRUE
SERVANT LEADERSHIP 3
9
15
21
TOTAL TRUE
CONSULTATIVE 5
11
17
23
TOTAL TRUE
PACESETTER 4
10
16
22
TOTAL TRUE
LASSEZ-FAIRE 6
12
18
24
TOTAL TRUE

 

There is no one Management Style that is best.  The best managers can use many styles and are able to match the style needed to the situation or to the employee’s needs.  New or inexperienced employees may benefit from more direction and instruction typical of the Authoritative style.  Styles like Lasses-Faire and Consultative may frustrate the new hire but be welcomed by the accomplished professional with many years of experience.  Below you will find a brief description of each style.  Try to develop some of the characteristics of the styles you are missing or are weak in on the quiz.

 

AUTHORITATIVE – A strong authority and decisive leader who takes control.  They naturally expect people to follow them and abide by their decisions.  They can be powerful and may tend to micromanage.  They don’t usually need the input of others to make their decisions.  This style of management is good in a crisis situation or with new or inexperienced employees.  Experienced professionals may not respond well to this style of management.

VISIONARY – The visionary manager is strategic, inspirational and charismatic.  They have an uncanny ability to think on their feet and may formulate plans, ideas and decisions while talking.  They are emotionally intelligent, natural leaders that people seem to follow because of their charisma and vision.  This style of management is especially good with experienced professionals.

SERVANT LEADERSHIP – This style has strong people skills and high emotional intelligence.  They cultivate high trust with their supportive style and encourage collaboration.  They create a learning environment and often serve as mentors or coaches to employees.  This style of management encourages and helps to improve performance.

PACESETTER – The pacesetter sets lofty goals they expect people to follow.  They push people to achieve by fostering competition and setting the pace in the workplace.  Those that are new or inexperienced may find it difficult to work under a pacesetter.  Although some workplace competition can be healthy, too much can create a cut throat environment and resentment among team members.  This style can be effective in a sprint to complete a project but is not often a good day to day, long term style.

CONSULTATIVE – This management style encourages idea sharing because they believe that two heads, or more, are always better than one.  They naturally consider the ideas of others in their decision making process.  They value independent thinking and those that challenge ideas.  This style is very effective in getting people to contribute.

LASSEZ-FAIRE – This is a hands off style of management.  This style only gets involved when something goes wrong.  They believe in the freedom to experiment.  They easily create the space and environment for creativity and innovation.  This style works well will experienced employees where a boost to innovation is needed.

 

Click here to register

Click the image above to learn more about how Motivational Management can help you improve your leadership style.

 

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Strategist, Leadership Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs, senior executives and business owners to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

Is Management Driving Talent Out of Your Organization?

Is Management Driving Talent Out of Your Organization?

Many companies suffer from high attrition rates. They have trouble holding on to top talent, but do senior leaders understand the reasons why?  The typical length of stay in a job has been steadily decreasing.  The average length of stay is currently hovering just under 3 years and predicted to fall in the future.  It’s hard to get a solid return on your hiring investment when employees don’t stick around.  Senior leaders are left asking themselves why the organization can’t keep good people.

High attrition rates can mean many things including poorly motivated employees, unsatisfying work, poor communication, fear, tension, conflict in the workplace and outdated management styles and philosophies.  In the Gallop Organizations Report, State of the American Manager, Gallop found that “one in two employees have left their job to get away from their manager at some point in their career”.  Are your managers driving your top talent away?

It is difficult to get the answer to that question.  Even if a company does exit interviews, employees are typically not forthcoming and often omit important information because they have already moved on from the problem mentally now that they are on the way out the door.  If a problem does come to light, the problem is most often seen as related to that staff member.   On rare occasions, an individual manager may be cited but typically there is little or no effort to get to the root cause.

Consider this example.  A leading design firm had difficulty retaining highly creative people in its sales and design areas.  Talented, highly proficient people who were producing good work, seemed to be enjoying it and were well qualified for their position would leave suddenly surprising the organization by their departure.  Exit interviews produced reasons that were not insightful as people cited “a better commute”, “opportunity for advancement” or “more money” as their reason for leaving.  When one talented employee leaves or departures are separated by time, those cited reasons might make sense; but when it happens more than once, or around a specific time period or department, there is often something else going on.  This situation came to a head in this organization when a manager had a loud exchange with a staff member that resulted in the staff member quitting.  It seemed the manager was “correcting” the employees work with a red pen like a teacher might correct a test.  Not a behavior that encourages creativity and innovation especially given the creative and subjective nature of the work.  This bad boss behavior not only drove talent away, but it kept staff members from having the freedom to create their best work.

Bad Boss Behaviors That Contribute To The Problem

There are a lot of bad boss behaviors out there and they are major reasons employees leave, According to a study done by BambooHR in March of 2017, the number one bad boss behavior cited is the boss taking credit for employees work.  That behavior is followed by other low and no trust-related behaviors such as the failure to advocate for raises for employees, not backing employees up in a dispute, micromanaging them rather than trusting them to do their job, setting employees up to fail knowingly or unknowingly with a lack of clear expectations, failure to give adequate direction, training and dwelling on an employee’s weaknesses rather than recognizing and using their strengths.

Houston, We Have A Management Problem

Leadership needs to recognize the signs of a systemic problem in management and that these problems can be a major reason talent leaves an organization.   Most managers are promoted to management because they excelled in whatever area they worked in, not because they are skilled managers or even have the potential to be skilled managers.  Add to that the fact that most managers get very little training in the skills needed to manage and it becomes clear why the problem is so pervasive.

Managing people is more than just getting tasks done.  Managing people requires skills that support creativity, innovation and motivate people to be inspired contributors to your organization regardless of their position.  In order to be successful, a manager needs to enjoy working with people, have emotional intelligence and be skilled at building relationships.  A relationship of trust between employees and their manager is key to creating productive, engaged employees who stay.

In an organizational chart, a manager’s role is depicted as superior to their staff.  But in reality, good managers support their staff by understanding their strengths, setting clear expectations, aligning strengths with what needs to be achieved, co-creating results through coaching and supporting, then appreciating and celebrating the results achieved. We call it C.A.R.E.S™ – Coach, Align, Appreciate, Relationship, Expectations, and Support.  Unfortunately, these skills are rarely taught and even more rarely measured and rewarded in organizations today.

If we want productive and profitable employees who stay, we must make an investment to develop managers who C.A.R.E. and eliminate the fear, uncertainty, and lack of skills in many managers that can lead to bad boss behaviors.

 

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Expert, Leadership Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs and senior executives to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

The Relationship Between Motivation, Mistakes and Money

Think Motivation Doesn’t Matter?  The Relationship between Motivation, Mistakes and Money

We know we have a problem with employee engagement and productivity.  We all experience it and we find in statistics published by the Gallup organization year after year that only 30% of employees are really engaged in the jobs they have.  That leaves the other 70% of American workers disengaged in their work.  Disengaged employees can be careless.  They make mistakes.  They develop complacency resulting in lower productivity, creates the need for extra time and effort troubleshooting errors and correcting mistakes that result in rework costs.  They often suffer from lack of creativity and innovation.  They can cost you money not only in lost opportunity costs, they can damage to your quality, your reputation, and even cause you to lose customers.  All these hidden costs directly impact profit because they are costs that are not anticipated and not factored into pricing.  Disengaged employees are responsible for a majority of the hidden amounts of money that seep out of your business and eat up your profit.

The Disengaged Employee

Gallup defines the disengaged employee in two ways.  One is the people who have mentally checked out.   They’re putting in their time, they’re doing an okay job, but the energy level, the passion, and the caring isn’t there. They’re just going through the motions. They aren’t paying enough attention, to catch mistakes.  I call those people the walking dead in organizations.

The second type Gallup refers to as the actively disengaged. These employees are very unhappy and it’s not enough just to be unhappy, they’re actually acting out their unhappiness.  I call them the actively enraged.  Every day they’re actively undermining all of the good things that are going on in your organization by consciously or subconsciously expressing their unhappiness in ways that spread to other employees and that hurt the company.

When we look at the Gallup study, we see that there are eight aspects of the engagement problem.  Gallup studies productivity, turnover, safety issues, shrinkage, absenteeism, quality, and even safety of your customers.   All of these issues are related to your people.  Any glitch in any of these areas can come back to chew up your profit because People Power Your Profit™.

The study goes on to say that a 22% profit improvement, and 21% productivity improvement can be gained when people are more engaged in what they’re doing.   Motivating people can also create as much as 37% less absenteeism and 41% fewer mistakes.  The relationship between motivation, mistakes and money is clear.

Unfortunately, much of what has been done to increase employee engagement and motivation over the last few years has not moved the needle.  Benefit based, cookie cutter solutions are easy to implement but have a short term impact.  Employees care more about their work experience, their colleagues, their future, the company culture, the companies social and environment footprint and how they are managed than additional perks and benefits.

What are Employees Looking For?

Employees are looking for purposeful, meaningful work and a work experience that fits them.  We advocate viewing employees as individuals with unique needs and creating a custom work experience for an employee based on those needs.  It requires that leadership think differently about employees and how we manage them. We have created a system we call the M.A.T.C.H.™ System that makes it possible, in reasonably short order, to position a company to implement a customized work experience for employees that helps align an employee’s work related needs and desires with the organizations.  This system provides a longer term solution that can help increase engagement, motivation, and productivity and that will have a positive impact on the bottom line.

It is time as leaders to rethink the outdated paradigms around employees and management.

 

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Expert, Leadership Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs and senior executives to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

 

 

People Power Your Profits

People Power Your Profits, Engaged People.

According to the Gallup organization and their studies on engagement done over the last few years, only about 30% of American workers are engaged in their work.   The engaged employee is the person that has a passion for what they’re doing. They have a profound connection with their company and they believe in their work. They’re the people in your organization that drive innovation, that care, that really move your organization forward.  Unfortunately, you only have about 30% of your workforce that falls into that category.

It’s a known fact based on this study that customer ratings can be improved through engagement.   A 10% improvement can be made if you have more engaged employees.  A 22% profit improvement, and 21% improvement in productivity, can be gained all because people are more engaged in what they’re doing.   You will also experience as much as 37% less absenteeism and 41% fewer mistakes equating to better quality, better profit margin, better safety which translates directly to the cost of your insurance.

People are responsible for a majority of the hidden amounts of money that seep out of your business.  Businesses need to acknowledge that their success is tied directly to their ability to attract, motivate and retain good people, NOT to their ability to sell and move products and services.  People bring the creativity, the ideas behind all of the innovation needed to stay viable in the marketplace. People design the products and services that your customers need and want. People build the relationships with other people, your suppliers, bankers, customers and other employees. Those people nurture and care for all of your business relationships through the dealings they have every day.  The actions they take or do not take turn into the money that you are in business to earn.  People deliver your products and services. And if something goes wrong, they are the face of your company, the first line of defense for customer care.  How they interact with the customer or the supplier or the vendor directly impacts your company’s bottom line and its reputation.

Everything can be traced back to people.  Your people should be treated like gold. And yet, companies typically view people as a commodity they can always get more of, as an expense they have to keep in check.  People are actually an asset, an investment and your job as an employer is to attract and retain highly engaged people, people who care and are actively invested in what they do.  Then your job is to provide them with a workplace and a work life where they can excel, be successful and bring success to your organization.  People Power Your Profits™ and the right mix of people in the right roles, in an environment created for all to thrive can be a business strategy that gives a business a competitive edge.

 

Nancy O’Keefe, MBA, MS, is a Workplace Expert, Leadership Coach, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author of the Book Unlimited Talent:  What Every CEO Needs to Know to Win the Workforce War.   She works with CEOs and senior executives to create profitable and productive workplaces that attract, motivate and retain great people. She is a thought leader in strategy, management and cultivating talent.  She can be found at https://nancyokeefeconsulting.com

 

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