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Employee retention is crucial for the success and stability of a business. Here are five effective employee retention strategies that business owners can implement:
Remember that these strategies are not one-size-fits-all, and it’s essential to tailor them to the specific needs and culture of your organization. Regularly assess employee satisfaction and adjust your retention strategies based on feedback and changing circumstances within the company.
I found this thoughtful article by Josh Felber a Forbes council member. I have been thinking a great deal about what appears to be a herd mentality lately and how it might impact the lack of creative thinking.
Successful entrepreneurs act as the perfect amalgamation of creativity and business. Effective entrepreneurs can spot an unaddressed problem and then build a company to solve it. They have learned to combine the big picture, or the problem, and the daily picture, or specifics of the business operations. As a serial entrepreneur, I will be the first to say that it takes a lot of work and practice to be able to marry these skills. Often, projects fail. But sometimes they take off. While entrepreneurs are praised for their initial innovation, we sometimes overlook the ability to sustain that creativity. Whether you are a young entrepreneur or someone who has owned a small company for decades, Covid-19 has amplified the need to assume a creative mindset. You proved inventive when you started a company to solve a problem or provide a service, so why neglect your imagination now?
If we can learn to tap into our ingenuity, I believe we can learn to pivot quickly. While this pandemic has especially been harmful to small businesses, these companies may have a certain advantage. I believe the size of a company can influence its ability to change. Smaller companies have fewer people shouldering the work, but they also have fewer people to organize and educate. This means that if you want to implement a new process or follow through on new ideas, you can push the change through faster. Just as it is with ships, the larger the boat, the longer and harder it is to turn.
Perhaps you transitioned to virtual work relatively quickly, or maybe you found the unknown technology difficult to navigate. Yet in order to survive this downturn, you may need to shift your mentality. Instead of viewing yourself as scraping by during this pandemic, perhaps you can start to think about how to push your business to be better than before. While there are certainly harsh realities, maybe this time can facilitate you to grow as an owner and a company, and incorporate optimism and the willingness to think creativity into your approach. Maybe you can find a new way to still deliver your service or begin providing a new one. You could seek to better your online presence, marketing or products. Whatever it may be, I believe that if we sit down and brainstorm, we can come up with new ways to expand our organizations. In fact, you may be surprised by what you discover.
How does creativity impact your business once the pandemic is under control? After all, these really are exceptional circumstances. But these times also act as an extreme example of change. Once we return to “normal,” whenever that may be, we will still experience challenges. As someone who has started many businesses, I have had my fair share of ups and downs. Successful companies are not those that haven’t encountered obstacles, but rather those that can overcome them. The future always holds a certain level of unknown. I believe that creativity is the No. 1 tool that can allow you to adjust and conquer hardships. If you can find a way to value creativity in your business model, you may just find yourself excelling, even in difficult times.
Believe it or not, over half of employees admit that they don’t actually know what’s expected of them at work. It’s important that you outline clear expectations for employees — whether you’re working remotely or in-person.
Equip your employees with tangible and quantifiable directions. They’ll be far more motivated to get to work when they feel like they have a good handle on what they should actually be doing.
Buffer’s 2020 State of Remote Work Report found that flexibility — both in terms of schedule and work environment — is the biggest benefit of working remotely.
So, when you’re figuring out how to manage a remote team, you need to remember that team members should be able to enjoy that perk. You need to avoid micromanaging by establishing clear expectations and then getting out of their way. Unfortunately, one in five employees do not feel they have enough freedom to decide how they do their work.
There’s little that motivates employees more than a sense of purpose. In fact, one survey found that nine out of 10 professionals said they would sacrifice 23% of their future earnings for “work that is always meaningful.”
One of the best ways to give your remote team members a greater sense of meaning is by allowing them to see how their daily tasks connect to the bigger picture. How does their work impact your entire team or organization?
Maybe filling in that spreadsheet feels like busy work to your employee. But, if they’re given the opportunity to understand that it helps your organization secure a huge amount of revenue every year, suddenly that seemingly mundane task feels a lot more important and meaningful.
When there’s transparency and employees see how their work fits in, accountability naturally gets a boost. They see the domino effect that can happen if their tasks aren’t completed correctly or on time.
That inherent accountability is a major benefit, especially when a good chunk of leaders say they struggle to emphasize this on their own teams. One report found that 18% of CEOs say holding people accountable is their biggest weakness.
You can increase accountability even more with a project management platform and regular status updates from team members.
People want to feel recognized and appreciated for a job well done. And, this appreciation doesn’t need to be anything complex. Three-quarters of people say they’re satisfied with a simple “thank you.”
While constructive criticism and feedback is important, don’t forget to offer recognition when an employee completes a project or achieves another win.
It’s also helpful to ask your employees how they prefer to receive praise. Some people might feel more appreciated if they’re applauded in a team meeting, while others respond better to one-on-one positive feedback.
Hybrid work is here to stay in many organizations. Employees value the flexibility of remote work so much that many have resisted mandates to spend more time in the office. But managers face special challenges leading teams whose members mix time in the office with remote work. Leaders of distributed teams need to pay attention to an often-overlooked dimension of work: network ties. Research suggests that the move to hybrid work has diminished some of employees’ connections to their networks of contacts at work.
Studies indicate these network ties play a huge role in innovation, work-life balance, job satisfaction, and productivity. Here’s why these working relationships are so important—and what teams can do to strengthen them.
THE IMPORTANCE OF “WEAK” NETWORK TIES
In a work setting, “weak ties” are contacts who do not work closely together (for example, people in different departments) and have relatively infrequent interactions—maybe only several times a year. Research has shown that weak ties are key for innovation because in an employee’s network, they often offer access to a variety of information that can spark new ideas and insights.
Distributed work can jeopardize those weak ties. A study of 61,000 Microsoft employees from before and after they switched to remote working during the pandemic found that remote workers spent 25% less time collaborating across groups. A natural consequence of the less-full office associated with hybrid work is that the chances for spontaneous interactions among employees—in hallways or the company cafeteria, for instance—are reduced. In response, many companies are trying to facilitate more opportunities for these types of interactions by coordinating employees’ in-office days. But simply getting employees in a room together may not be enough to generate the kind of innovation that flows through valuable connections with weak ties.
Fortunately, there are many ways managers can encourage such connections. One is to orchestrate short bursts of innovation activity involving people from faraway corners of the organization through activities like hackathons, for example. The key is making sure employees have a clear shared goal (such as finding ways to reduce client wait time) and a structured process to follow.
Managers can also set up short in–person rotations of employees across sites. Research finds that physical proximity promotes idea generation and the exchange of valuable knowledge. For example, at Eleos Health, a behavioral health technology company that provides clinicians with augmented intelligence tools, product managers travel to do one-week rotations with customer-success managers who have clinical backgrounds. During one of those rotations, the teams generated ideas that led to the development of a new clinical documentation product for therapists.
HOW TEAM TIES HELP FIGHT BURNOUT
Team ties are also extremely important. Coordination can be more difficult in distributed teams, particularly on new teams that lack established routines. On a hybrid team, it can be hard to know who is handling what, or how to communicate when questions arise. Managers and employees alike fear uncertainty, and their default response is often to shift to being “always on” by monitoring work communications at all hours. That, in turn, increases the risks of burnout and exhaustion.
Strong team ties are built on a robust pipeline of information and well-developed norms for communicating and coordinating. Employees can then spend less time and energy defensively checking in or promoting their contributions, because they trust that the rest of the team sees the value of each person’s work and will do their part, too.
When employees are not physically together as often, team ties must be deliberately cultivated. Managers can help strengthen team ties by conveying their interest in and support for their team members, including interest in their personal lives. Managers also can foster team discussions about processes, expectations, and how to work more effectively as a group, while conveying that the team can solve these challenges together.
BUILDING FRIENDSHIPS AT WORK
Studies have shown that having close friends at work can increase job satisfaction and productivity. Unfortunately, rates of workplace friendships have declined as remote work has increased. A 2022 survey by JobSage found that fully remote employees had 33% fewer friends at work.
To mitigate the loneliness that can accompany hybrid work, managers need to help employees build deep ties characterized by trust, respect, and empathy. Studies have found that a workplace culture characterized by affection, caring, and compassion is critical to forming authentic and supportive workplace relationships. Those sentiments are more difficult to cultivate under the logistical strains of hybrid work.
Managers can help create the conditions for strong friendship ties by creating opportunities for employees to spend regular time together and providing structures and tools to help them grow closer. One approach is to modify team designs to supplement or replace agile teams focused on short-term projects with longer-lasting “home teams” in which people can repeatedly interact with one another. Another option is to carve out blocks of calendar time for facilitated discussions among small groups of employees. One experiment found that setting aside two hours a month for physicians across a hospital to talk to each other provided greater benefit to their well-being and work than simply giving them two hours to catch up on work independently.
By giving more attention to cultivating employee relationships and network ties at work, leaders can help create a hybrid workplace that offers the best of both worlds.
“I’m logging about 70 hours per week,” my newly-formed acquaintance, Craig, proudly confessed upon meeting at a business conference. He wore a smart suit and had an intense, confident quality about him I wanted to replicate. This was years ago, when I was still in the midst of building my startup.
While I was impressed by his dedication, his words also unnerved me. On the one hand, I still equated clocking in more hours with productivity—but on the other hand, I felt downhearted thinking if this was what my life would become now? One without balance: little time for family, for downtime, for pursuing other passions. I thought to myself: Is working this hard really the only way to succeed?
Fast-forward to 2022 and going into year three of a worldwide pandemic, we see a new trend emerge: the clamor for a shorter workweek.
In their story for BBC, authors Bryan Lufkin and Jessica Mudditt write that “more than ever, workers want to work fewer hours, saying they can be just as effective in less time—and happier, too.”
This is what I’ve discovered in the past 15 years of building my business: they are right. More balance leads to greater efficiency and a culture focused on wellbeing is what leads to successful outcomes.
Companies around the world are adopting different models that advocate for less working hours with emphasis on the 32-hour week. This year, companies like New York-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter are piloting a 32-hour workweek. Relatedly, Uncharted, a “social impact accelerator” is taking a similar approach in testing out this same kind of model.
What the above companies have in common is a shared vision: moving away from traditional ways of working and creating a happier and healthier environment. But this doesn’t necessarily mean a four-day model will work for every business. For example at my company, we haven’t established shorter days. But we do have a policy of flexible hours.
This means we measure productivity over hours clocked. To me, this what that looks like: Being super productive for five hours on a Tuesday morning and then calling it quits at noon to take my kids out for ice cream or to our local park.
Of course, this isn’t every single day. There are times when deeper-focused work may be necessary and I’ll spend 14 hours at the office. You have to see which model works best for you. It’s my belief that shorter workweeks should be done when feasible, but more importantly, we should focus on productivity and stop measuring hours.
I’ve long considered deadlines as a way of undermining team efficiency, creativity, and morale. Instead, I advocate for granting people more autonomy. It decreases pressure and helps them produce their top work.
Hard deadlines—or extreme time pressure—can be detrimental to one’s mental health, especially when you’re sacrificing other important aspects of your life in the name of finishing a project on time.
Moreover, deadline anxiety can also lead to sloppy work and mediocre results. These days, my company can over 200 employees. And since launching in 2006, I’ve never asked how much time a team member has spent at the office. I care more about results and what they bring to the table.
Just because we scrap hard deadlines doesn’t mean we institute a hands-off approach either. We make sure to establish systems to ensure employees can maximize their productivity, by having them coordinate with team members and emphasizing clear, internal communication among your team.
At my organization, a flexible work environment means setting measurable goals to keep our teams on task. We also employ regular check-ins to help everyone stay on track—giving people the freedom to work at their peak hours when they’re at their most creative.
To give you an example: all our teams have designated leads, and twice a month, each team member sits down with their lead to discuss any issues. Then, depending on the project, I’ll sit down with team leads on a weekly or monthly basis to go over their goals and oversee the team’s progress.
While this pandemic has forced us to imagine new ways of working, one thing has remained the same: a fixation with “busyness.” As Fast Company contributors Jacqueline Carter and Rasmus Hougaard explain: a constant state of busyness isn’t just mentally distressing, it also takes a toll on our health.
In today’s workplace, we often judge each other based on how many hours we clock in at the office. This belief system is NOT the kind of culture I want to foster in my company.
Everyone knows that monitoring and recording hours is a headache.
I’d like to say this: managers and leaders who clock-watch don’t achieve increased productivity. If anything, they give employees the impression that they can’t be trusted. And since they’re trying to meet an arbitrary number of hours, you may even get the opposite result—lower performance and a decrease in quality.
At the end of the day, whether you opt for a shorter workweek or adopt a more flexible work model as we’ve done, this is what we’ve ultimately come to value most: engagement, our team’s overall well-being, and focusing on more important measures of success that doesn’t involve grinding people to the bone.
by Lolly Daskal
When we think of great qualities of leaders, the first things that come to mind are traits like charisma, bravado and vision.
You wouldn’t expect to see humility on that list—but you should.
Research shows the effectiveness of humble leadership: Humble leaders have more influence, they attract better people, and they earn more confidence, respect and loyalty than those who rely upon ego and power.
In my work as a coach, I emphasize not just the importance of humility but also the fact that it’s a skill.
Here are some key skills of humble leaders. Look through and see which you already have and which you need to develop:
They lead to serve. Humble leaders shift attention away from themselves and focus on the contributions and needs of those around them.
They have reserves of inner strength. Being a humble leader isn’t a sign of meekness or powerlessness but of great inner strength. The best leaders are humble on the outside and confident on the inside.
They admit to their mistakes. All leaders are human, which means they all make mistakes from time to time. When you are willing to share your own missteps and mistakes, it allows others to connect to you in a deeper way. Humility is a quality that lets others see your humanity.
They seek input from others. The first step of turning to others for input is being vulnerable enough to admit that you need the help and insight of others—which is a sign of great character on its own.
They know themselves. Humble leaders know who they are and behave in a way that’s consistent with that knowledge. They also recognize where there’s room for improvement.
They are genuine. Humble leaders know the importance of being authentic. They are the same person in private, in public, and in personal life, in every situation and with every kind of people.
They invite trust. Humble leaders know that trust—earning it, giving it and building it—is the foundation of great leadership.
They treat others with respect. Humble leaders are consistent and disciplined in their treatment of others. They treat everyone with respect regardless of their position, role or title.
They understand their limitations. Humble leaders have the confidence to recognize their own weaknesses. Rather than viewing their limits as a threat or a sign of frailty, they surround themselves with others who have complementary skills.
They model the way. Humble leaders lead by example. Their leadership isn’t expressed as “because I’m the boss” authority but in every one of their actions and words.
Lead From Within: There is always room to be a better person and leader. If you can cultivate humility as a skill, you will be strong when you are weak and brave when you are scared.
The modern economy is highly uncertain, with inflation and rising interest rates cutting into bottom lines everywhere.
Employers are nervous as the cost of capital and the cost of their inputs seems to rise every day. But employees are nervous, too. And since no one knows when inflation will end, it’s difficult for anyone to make a long-term plan.
In an inflationary environment, this can be challenging. A survey published by Mercer in April 2022 found well-being benefits costs ranked eighth on the top risks facing organizations today. But employees may be struggling to pay their own bills, make mortgage payments or even save for retirement when financial markets are so uncertain.
Even if employees are fortunate enough to be able to continue to save, they’ll still be worried about the uncertainty that now clouds their financial future. Employers are in a position to help — in ways that are financially savvy and don’t overly impact the bottom line.
Communicate early and often
Employees are fully aware inflation is hitting their pocketbooks. For employers, this is both an opportunity to demonstrate action and to demonstrate empathy. Companies can show workers they understand the issue and that the organization faces similar challenges, as well as commit to transparency to employees at every level to find a mutually beneficial solution.
Empower employees with knowledge
Employees with defined contribution pension plans may be concerned to see their account balances fall — and those close to retirement, who may be conservatively invested, may be more exposed to inflation risk. Employers will need to consider the impact of inflation on employee retirement plans and how this impacts talent strategy.
Employers can prove to employees they care about their well-being by empowering workers with knowledge and looking to improve their financial literacy. Companies should demonstrate that markets correct from time to time while educating employees about the different investment options available in their DC plan, along with the different risk and reward profiles that suit their specific life stage.
While defined benefit pension plans are presently well funded with negative returns offset by a steep rise in bond yields, the funded position of these plans is expected to be very volatile in the coming months.
Individual employees with DB plans, however, will be exposed to the degree that payments are linked to inflation. Employers should be fully transparent and inform DB plan members and retirees of the options available to them to deal with the present economic environment.
In the April 2022 survey, Mercer found Canadian organizations ranked talent attraction, retention and engagement as their No. 2 risk. Inflation is happening at the same time as a labour shortage, which means employees may be more motivated to weigh their options.
While increases in compensation may be off the table for financial reasons, there are other ways to improve employee retention. One example might be implementing a comprehensive well-being program that aims at supporting employees’ overall wellness through benefits like virtual mental-health coaching, sleep assessments and access to discounted voluntary benefits like car or pet insurance.
Focus on value
The survey also found increasing benefits costs — due not just to inflation, but also the rising number of claims — are a key risk. Claims related to mental health in particular have increased markedly since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and are expected to accelerate. However, only 31 per cent of organizations said they have an effective cost containment strategy.
Employers can manage this risk through periodic audits to eliminate costs, ensuring they’re abreast of legislative changes and creating a plan to redesign programs for value by spending dollars on what their employees value most.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. A 2021 survey by Mercer confirmed the more benefits offered to employees, the greater their loyalty to their employer. As inflation continues to weigh on employees, adding the right well-being and financial support will improve the resilience of workers and employers’ bottom lines.
Now that workforce is likely some combination of remote and hybrid, with online meetings the norm and in-person lunches a hit-or-miss affair. In fact, only 9% of offices anticipate being fully on-site for the future, versus 60% in 2020, while the number of hybrid workplaces has grown from 32% to 59%.1
All people have some level of EQ, IQ, and social intelligence. You probably know that people with higher IQ tend to demonstrate ability with topics such as spatial reasoning and mathematics.
But “people often confuse EQ and social intelligence,” says Ina Purvanova, Ph.D, professor of leadership and management and department chair at Drake University’s College of Business and Public Administration. “Think of EQ as knowing yourself—being in touch with your values, emotions, and reactions, and being able to control them. Social intelligence is being able to read others, which helps you build relationships.”
So why the focus on EQ and social intelligence while managing a workforce? Well, the pandemic of course.”We’ve always known good leadership is important, but in this shift to virtual and hybrid, it’s now leadership on steroids: You have to be an even greater leader in this new work culture,” she says. “Effective leadership is about bringing people together and making them feel like they are working together and contributing to a common cause, and that can be more difficult in hybrid or remote. It requires much more purposefulness and intentionality.”
The role of social and emotional intelligence in managing a hybrid or remote workforce
How you lead and foster your own social and emotional intelligence may change from year to year; after all, the new hybrid work culture is just that—new. “Connecting only comes through ongoing, intentional connection and conversations,” Hunold-Van Gundy says. “And that takes time, something leaders and owners never have enough of. But prioritizing the relationships with employees and teams so they’re set up to do their best work brings the highest level of engagement and performance.”
If humility is so important, why are so many leaders today, especially our most famous leaders, so arrogant? Or, to flip the question around: In the face of so much evidence that humble leaders do, in fact, outperform arrogant leaders, why is it so hard for leaders at every level to check their egos at the office door?
For one thing, too many leaders think they can’t be humble and ambitious at the same time. One of the great benefits of becoming CEO of a company, head of a business unit, or leader of a team, the prevailing logic goes, is that you’re finally in charge of making things happen and delivering results.Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management, and an expert on leadership and culture, once asked a group of his students what it means to be promoted to the rank of manager. “They said without hesitation, ‘It means I can now tell others what to do.’” Those are the roots of the know-it-all style of leadership.“Deep down, many of us believe that if you are not winning, you are losing,” Schein warns. The “tacit assumption” among executives “is that life is fundamentally and always a competition” — between companies, but also between individuals within companies. That’s not exactly a mindset that recognizes the virtues of humility.
In reality, of course, humility and ambition need not be at odds. Indeed, humility in the service of ambition is the most effective and sustainable mindset for leaders who aspire to do big things in a world filled with huge unknowns. We “notice that by far the lion’s share of world-changing luminaries are humble people,” they wrote. “They focus on the work, not themselves. They seek success — they are ambitious — but they are humbled when it arrives…They feel lucky, not all-powerful.”There’s another big reason why it’s so hard for leaders to be humble, and it’s related to the first. Humility can feel soft at a time when problems are hard; it can make leaders appear vulnerable when people are looking for answers and reassurances.
We live in a world where ego gets attention but modesty gets results. Where arrogance makes headlines but humility makes a difference. Which means that all of us, as leaders or aspiring leaders, face questions of our own: Are we confident enough to stay humble? Are we strong enough to admit we don’t have all the answers? Here’s hoping we reach the right answers.
A good friend of mine has recently been posting a series of articles about the art of critical thinking and based on the current social and political climate I started to consider whether in world of business this important skill has been forgotten or overlooked? For the sake of brevity let’s assume that many individuals have lost this ability I will share a few attributes over the next blog posts to get you thinking about the elements you need to start thinking critically again. “The sole purpose and objective of critical thinking is to get at the truth no matter how unpleasant or unexpected it might turn out to be.”
Perception (the five senses) must always be tested against the available evidence to validate or dismiss the truth claim behind the appearance. This is the first step in critical thinking.
Reasoning is the well-spring of critical thinking. It is the the process of thinking the thing through, logically and precisely, beginning with it’s animating assumptions, while drawing well-founded inferences and conclusions.
Trite as it may sound critical thinking is aimed at real-world problems with real-world tools of reasoned analysis to reach sound, concrete and productive outcomes.
I will continue this discussion in an upcoming blog.
David's Discourse 