The Employee Dilemma
One of the most pressing issues of our current time is the difficulty to retain talented employees. What are the factors involved in employees leaving a company? This list is not all inclusive.
Challenging working conditions
Perceived lack of understanding from leadership
Lack of sense of purpose
Pay not meeting expectations
Inequality in the workforce
Tension between employees
Better opportunities elsewhere
I have heard and seen many actions that companies have taken to keep and retain employees. The most common step or action that is commonly used to keep or retain employees is to raise wages for overachieving employees. This may be a very good tactic in keeping your very important and critical employees if you can afford the payroll. However, many times there are other effective ways to help retain employees.
Importance of Fairness and Equality
Fairness and equality is one of the most important factors for employees in a high production . Why would this be important? Think about it this way: What if you had an employee that was constantly working extremely hard and doing a tremendous amount of work and their counterpart in a similar role was “loafing”? How would this employee feel? If this behavior was consistent, the hardworking employee very likely will start to feel abandoned and get tired of “doing all of the work”. They would most likely like the other employee to step up and there might be bitter feelings between these employees and management if the “loafing was not addressed”. After a while of an inequitable workload, “burnout” very well could be a likely scenario for the hardworking employee. A resignation from a top performer could be devastating to the company.
For any business, it is important to understand and measure the work that is being done by employees and how to recognize top producers and help equalizing workload from top performers so they don’t eventually “burnout”. Start by looking at technology and actual work that is being done by employees, taking into consideration the customer service aspect and customer satisfaction. Technology may give you accurate and measurable data but, it may be necessary to look at a sample of the employees work. Giving both recognition and financial rewards to top performers and top performing teams can increase loyalty to the company and build a sense of pride. Recognition can also boost the desires to excel from both new and lower performing employees.
A key area of emphasis is to help those that are not producing either quantity or quality of work to increase their efforts in order to keep teams experiencing fairness, equity and accountability from the company. This balance of workload can really pay dividends so that employees are able to see work being done by others and create healthy competition.
At times it can be difficult to create a realistic and accurate approach to measuring performance. Take time to understand the roles within the organization and look for ways to measure performance without micromanaging. Make sure to develop key performance indicators (KPI’s) for those within your organization that make sense. Be adaptable and be willing to adjust and modify your KPI’s as the business and operations adapt with either technology or with different organizational structures.
Set realistic expectations for those that are under performing and follow up with them on their progress. Be firm and most importantly be encouraging, believing that the employee can succeed. Make sure to be very specific with the employees on what your expectations are for them and give specifics on how they can succeed and calendar your follow up. At times, employees don’t understand the goals that the company has and needs help to break bad habits through expectations and may need to understand how and what he or she should focus on. Focus on specific behaviors that if mastered can contribute to success.
Lastly and most importantly, develop teamwork and foster the belonging in well functioning team. Ownership and management of companies should set the framework of expectations of the teams and allow the teams within the organizations come up with their own way of excelling within their roles. Empower employees to be creative and help each other be accountable to each other. Ownership and management should not not just command their employees but, should teach and encourage all to be united in the goals of the organization.
