To Attract and Retain Talent, Your Company Must Be a Great Place To Work
Gallup studies reveal that 51% of employees are actively looking for a new job. Did you know half of your workforce is looking for greener pastures? Is your organization a revolving door? If you are always searching for new people is it because you are growing or is it because you are losing the retention battle and you have as many or more employees leaving out of the back door as you are trying to hire and welcome into your organization at the front door?
It is our job as business owners and senior executives to create an environment that beckons people to come to work. Not only do we want them to show up, but we want them to show up with a level of enthusiasm, dedication, and engagement that will produce their best work. It takes more than getting on a list of top places to work. It requires that we create high performing workplaces, places where high performing employees enjoy working.
We have identified a number of characteristics we believe it is important to think about as we build our businesses into high performing workplaces. This is by no means an exhaustive list but we have seen each of these characteristics impact the employee motivation and engagement success of the companies we have visited and have had the chance to do work in. Some of these characteristics are physical in nature, some cultural. Some of the characteristics are procedural but all have an impact on how your employees feel about working for you, what it says about how you value them and the work they do for you on a daily basis. We need to pay more attention to these factors bringing them into our conscious view and continue improving them to create the high-performance workplace.
Basic things that might get taken for granted such as location, aesthetics, cleanliness to deeper intrinsic things such as relationships, attitudes, values, habits and processes can all impact how an employee feels about working for you. Leadership openness and availability play a big part as well as how management manages. Something as simple as the seating chart can send a message and upset the delicate balance of a great place to work. We have created an assessment tool to help you determine if your organization is a High Performance Workplace, one where the top talent is attracted to work and stay. To take the assessments click this link: High Performance Workplace Assessment
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
