Chapter 10
Engaging and Retaining Talented People in Any Economy
Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans
In This Chapter
- Why engaging and retaining talented people should be a perennial effort, no matter what the economy.
- How leaders can best initiate an engagement and retention process.
- Tried-and-true strategies for engaging and retaining talent.
Whether the economy is good or bad, a leader’s most talented people always have choices about where they work. Will they choose to stay with your organization? Effective efforts to engage and retain talent shouldn’t be turned on and off, syncing to the latest economic blip and the corresponding concern about keeping talent. They work best when they are authentic and perennial, when you clearly believe in them and demonstrate it daily in your actions toward the people you want on your team.
As a leader at any level, you have phenomenal clout and responsibility in the ongoing race for engaged, productive talent. To help you win this race, we’ve identified 26 strategies for creating and maintaining an effective talent engagement and retention process (please note that because this chapter is an excerpt, not all strategies will appear here). In this chapter, we give an overview of all these strategies and then provide the details for just a few to further illustrate how this process really works. And best yet, we provide hands-on tips that you can start using immediately.
Hot Economy or Not
“It’s a recession. My employees aren’t going anywhere.” Have you ever heard complacent leaders say something like this? Have you said it? Don’t be so sure it’s true. And when the economy’s lights come back on (as they always do), many talented, overworked, demoralized employees seek—and find—greener pastures. Dr. Phil, television’s popular psychologist, would say to those complacent leaders, “So how did that work for you?” Not so well.
Talent is everything. You’ve heard it before. Do you believe it? Is it true in your field? Your workplace? One executive said this about a recent acquisition: “We all have access to technology. We all have access to money. The only differentiator is the people. We paid $7 billion for the people [in the firm we acquired] and what we hope they’ll be able to create for and with us in the future.”
Talent loss also costs a lot. Experts agree that the cost of replacing a talented employee can easily run one to two times his or her annual salary. And the cost is even greater (four to five times an annual salary) to replace platinum workers, those with specialized, hardto-find skills.
What’s your experience? Have you ever lost a key employee—a solid contributor, someone you really could not afford to lose, but who left anyway? How many times have you said:
- “If I’d only known.”
- “Why didn’t I see that coming?”
- “The answer was easy. I could have fixed that.”
- “Why didn’t I ask?”
And what about employees’ engagement? Some talented employees could do worse than leave you. They might mentally and emotionally “quit” while they physically stay. Thus, they might withdraw their discretionary effort—the effort beyond the call of duty that you need for your team to succeed. Gallup, Towers Perrin, and other pollsters concur that more than 50 percent of employees are not engaged and that 20 percent are so disengaged that they poison the workplace (Gallup 2010; Towers Watson 2010). With a disengaged employee, you’re better off when he or she calls in sick. The cost of disengagement to organizations in the United States alone has been estimated at $350 billion a year. What is it costing you?
The Buck Stops with Leaders
The good news is that employee engagement and retention are strongly correlated. The work that engages talented employees likewise encourages them to stay—at least a little while longer. And many of these “stay factors” can be strongly influenced by leaders. Successful leaders—those who engage and retain good people—thus have a talent-focused mindset. And they maintain this mindset through economic highs and lows.
Have you ever wondered what will actually keep the most talented people on your team and keep them engaged while they’re on it? We’ve wondered, and we’ve asked. In fact, we’ve asked more than 17,000 people why they stayed with their organizations for a while. In descending order of frequency of response, here is what they said (note: 91 percent of respondents listed at least one of the first two items among their top reasons for staying):
- exciting work and challenge
- career growth, learning, and development
- working with great people
- fair pay
- supportive management/good boss
- being recognized, valued, and respected
- benefits
- meaningful work and making a difference
- pride in the organization, its mission, and its product
- great work environment and culture
- autonomy, creativity, and sense of control
- flexibility: work hours, dress, and so on
- location
- job security and stability
- diverse, changing work assignments
- fun on the job
- being part of a team
- responsibility
- loyalty, commitment to the organization or co-workers
- inspiring leadership.
How many of these “stay factors” can you, as a leader, influence? Probably quite a few.
Where Should You Start?
Although we do see commonality of response regarding the stay factors listed above, we also see great diversity of responses. Thus, while one person wants career growth, another will not be engaged if the mission or product of the organization isn’t in sync with his or her values. Yet another person insists on fun and flexibility at work. You won’t know what your treasured employees really want unless you ask. Conduct a “stay interview” with every employee you hope to keep.
Imagine this. Your boss calls you in and says:
I probably haven’t told you this often enough, but you are important to this team and to me. I can’t imagine losing you. I know we’ve been through a rough time lately, and I want you to know how much I appreciate all you’ve done and how you’ve done it. I’d like you to know that I want you to hang in here. I’d like to know what you want next. What do you want to learn? What career goals are you thinking about? What can I do to help you reach those goals? I’d like to know what will keep you here. And I’d like to know what could entice you away.
Has a manager ever held this kind of interview with you? In the seminars we conduct, when we ask this question, very few hands go up. When we ask those few people how it felt, we hear, “Good, Great, I felt important and valued.” One person said, “It felt a little late—it was in the exit interview.” Everyone laughed at the irony—leaders often find out what their most treasured talented people really wanted as they exit the organization.
Why don’t leaders (including you) conduct stay interviews? Usually they don’t ask because of fear.
What If You Can’t Give Talented Employees What They Want?
Some leaders don’t hold stay interviews because they fear they won’t be able to deliver on the request. That is particularly true during economic downturns and associated belt-tightening. If you think you can’t deliver on employees’ requests, follow these four steps:
- Tell them (again) how much you value them—for example, “You’re worth that to me and more.”
- Tell the truth about the obstacles you face—for example, pay freeze, project closing down.
- Show you care enough about them to look into it—for example, “I hear your request. Let me look into it, and let’s meet again next Friday to talk about possibilities.” (If not now, then when? If not this, then what?)
- Ask “What else?” Research shows clearly that people want more from work than just a paycheck. When you ask the question “What else?” we guarantee you’ll be told about at least one thing your talented employees want that you can supply.
When you’re bold enough to hold stay interviews with the talented employees you hope will remain on your team and produce for you, two things will happen. First, these employees will feel great that you cared enough to ask. And second, you’ll collect the information you need to take action—to customize your employee engagement and retention efforts for each unique individual.
And remember: You don’t have to have all the answers. Ask your employee to think about how they could make their request work—for you, teammates, the organization, and for him or her. Brainstorm possibilities and create a plan together. Try it out, then fine-tune it until it works.
A manager said to us, “If I tried this ‘stay interview’ thing, my employees would fall over in a dead faint. I don’t even say ‘hi’ in the hallway.” We said, “You might want to ease into this then. Start with ‘hi’ in the hallway.” So if you need to ease into it, that’s OK, but don’t wait too long.
Engagement and Retention: As Easy as A-B-C—and A to Z
After the stay interview, you’ll know more about what will keep your talented people engaged and on your team. Then it’s time to act and to customize your efforts for each employee, based on his or her unique wants and needs. Our stay factor research led to 26 strategies—coded to the alphabet (in the following figures, note the large letters to the left of each item; because this is an excerpt, not all 26 strategies appear)—that will help you. These strategies are clustered in three areas: development and growth, management style, and work environment. The figures and summaries that follow will give you a good idea of the strategies that fall in a particular cluster. Then, for each cluster, we provide sidebars giving an example of one strategy and the engagement actions you could take, starting tomorrow.
The Development and Growth Cluster
Successful leaders start off by doing a great job of selecting people who fit well into the organization (figure 10-1). Then they continuously look for ways to enrich and enliven their employees’ work and to support their growth. They uncover possibilities to do more of what people love to do. They link their talent to other people—to mentors, feedback providers, leaders up the ladder, and colleagues in other departments. They help their employees see multiple options for career growth, and they serve as mentors in the strongest sense of the word. Employees who are learning and growing are less likely to search for greener grass. For an example, see the sidebar, “Enriching and Energizing the Job.”
If you help employees enrich their jobs, you can benefit them, their teams, and the entire organization. Stay alert to enrichment opportunities for all your employees. Encourage them to suggest ways to enrich their own jobs. And watch their “job EKGs” spike.
The Management Style Cluster
Talent-focused leaders have a management style that breeds loyalty (figure 10-2). They are truth tellers and feedback providers. Preserving the dignity of others greatly matters to them. They respect differences and value diversity. These leaders also tend to be great listeners. They think outside the box and question the rules in support of talented people and their needs. They give power and the spotlight to others without a second thought, and they look for creative ways to reward and recognize talent. These leaders watch their own behaviors when under stress. They don’t take out their bad moods on their team. Employees have been known to leave money on the table to stay with a leader they admire. For an example, see the sidebar, “Jerk—Don’t Be One.”
If you believe (or find out) that you often exhibit the jerk-like behaviors described in the sidebar, decide to change. Get feedback, some coaching, and then more feedback to ensure
Enriching and Energizing the Job
What if you learned in the stay interview with a key employee that he’s feeling a bit bored? That his “job EKG” has gone flat? Did you know that your most valued employees are the most likely to suffer this sense of job discontent? By definition, they are savvy, creative, self-propelled, and energetic. They need stimulating work, opportunities for personal challenge and growth, and a contributing stake in the organizational action.
Plenty of job enrichment possibilities are in your control. And most will cost you little or nothing to implement. This means you can use them to engage and retain your talent during both good times and bad. Here are some techniques that work if you’re careful to match them with individual wants and needs:
- Form teams: Self-directed work groups can make a lot of their own decisions. They can redistribute work, so that team members learn more, have more variety, and follow more projects through to completion.
- Touch the client: For example, a computer systems troubleshooter might be more effective knowing the needs of real people and units rather than responding only to problems as they occur. Assign one troubleshooter to one department, and make him or her accountable for the computer system. Give him or her a client, which can be inside or outside the organization. It’s amazing how many employees never see their clients.
- Rotate assignments: New responsibilities can help an employee feel challenged and valued. Employees can acquire important new skills that add depth to the workforce. Do rotational assignments sound like chaos? Suggest the idea, and let your employees propose the “who” and “how” part; you’ll be surprised at their expertise in making it happen smoothly.
- Increase feedback: Do more than annual reviews. Find ways to develop peer review and client review opportunities. Employees want to know about their performance, and continual feedback allows them to be their own quality control agents.
- Establish participation opportunities: Employees are empowered and motivated when they take part in decisions that have an impact on their work, such as budget and hiring decisions, or ways to organize work and schedules. Involvement allows employees to see the big picture and make a contribution they find meaningful.
- Nurture creativity: Untapped creativity dwindles. If employees rarely think for themselves, they simply go through the paces, undermotivated and disengaged. You can help by asking employees for creative ideas and rewarding them, by giving them the freedom and resources to create, and by challenging them with new assignments, tasks, and learning.
- Teach someone: Teaching another person is motivational for many. If an employee has a particular niche or specialty and enjoys passing this knowledge on, you have a perfect win–win.
you’re heading in the right direction. Talented employees today simply will not work for a jerk—at least not for long. They’ll disengage or depart. Changing jerk-like behaviors may be the most important action you can take to keep talented people on your team.
The Work Environment Cluster
Great leaders create a work environment that people love (figure 10-4). They support fun in the workplace, encourage wellness, and create a guilt-free departure at the end of the day or for a well-deserved vacation. They assign work according to employees’ passions, and they show they care about their employees’ private lives (without prying). These leaders communicate often and honestly with their people, and they strive to align their values with their work. They give employees the freedom to work in their own creative ways, the space to be self-directed, and the support to think in new ways. Employees find it difficult to leave a work environment they love. For an example, see the sidebar, “How to Give Space.”
“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”
—Management expert Peter Drucker, quoted by Marshall Goldsmith in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, 2007
Jerk—Don’t Be One
Do you know anyone who should be wearing the shirt shown in figure 10-3? You know, the person who occasionally exhibits jerk-like behaviors? People cautioned us not to write about this topic, or at least not to use this title. But to avoid this topic is to avoid discussing a primary reason why people leave their jobs. If employees don’t like their bosses, they will leave even when they are well paid, receive recognition, and have a chance to learn and grow. In fact, disliking the boss is one of the top causes of talent loss.
We asked dozens of people, “What do jerks act like or look like?” (The book and movie The Devil Wears Prada certainly portrayed some of the worst of these behaviors, but our research found many more.) Here is a subset of the 50 jerk-like behaviors we’ve uncovered:
| • Being intimidating. | • Not listening. | • Motivating by fear. |
| • Slamming doors, yelling. | • Demanding perfection. | • Setting impossible deadlines. |
| • Withholding praise. | • Acting sexist or racist. | • Not caring. |
| • Belittling. | • Acting above the rules. | • Breaking promises. |
| • Acting superior, smarter. | • Humiliating or embarrassing. | • Distrusting. |
| • Withholding information. | • Blaming. | • Micromanaging |
| • Acting arrogant. | • Betraying trust. | |
| • Stealing credit for the spotlight. | • Having “sloppy” moods. |
Do you know anyone who exhibited any of those behaviors? And what about you? Do you ever accidentally exhibit any? How would you know if you were the jerk at work?
Show the jerk checklist to a good friend at work. Ask if you ever exhibit any of these behaviors. (If you don’t have any friends at work, there’s a clue for your clue bag.) Ask family members to give you insight as well. If others agree that you often exhibit more than one or two of those behaviors, you are at high risk for losing talent. Jerk-like behaviors are so damaging that even one or two can negate all your other strengths as a boss.
Last Thoughts
Allowing job sharing, flextime, telecommuting, or someone to work on the lawn on a laptop is not pampering. As the example described in the last sidebar shows, there are ways to meet your business goals. This means listening to what people want, going to bat for their needs, and ultimately giving them options and opportunities to do things differently. And these same kinds of considerations for your employees apply to all the other strategies we’ve suggested in this chapter.
How to Give Space
Anyone who has raised a teenager (or remembers being one) knows the phrase “give me some space.” Someone who feels fenced in, overcontrolled, or frustrated by his or her lack of power over his or her own situation usually says it.
Think about the last boss you had who dictated your every move, held stringently to the policy manual, or was never open to new ways of doing anything. How long did you stay in that job? (We hope you are not there now.) That boss didn’t understand that he or she needed to give you some space.
How space friendly are you as a leader? Imagine that your talented people come to you with this array of strange requests:
- I want to come in and leave a half hour earlier three days a week.
- I want to complete this task in a brand new way.
- I want to wear casual clothes to work.
- I want to put a team together to complete this task.
- I want to take six weeks off (without pay) to build my home.
- I want to put my vacation pictures on my wall.
- I want to bring my baby to work for a while.
- I want to bring my dog when I work Saturdays.
- I want to complete the first five steps of this project before you review it with me.
- I want to learn that skill from a mentor instead of the class you recommended.
To which of these would you say, “Sure, no problem?” To which would you say, “Hmmm, let me look into that and see what we can do?” And to which might you say, “No way. We’ve never done that—or—the policy manual forbids that, or if I give it to you I’ll have to give it to everyone?”
There’s a story behind every one of these requests—a story about the managers who collaborated with the requesters, got creative, and found a way to make it work (sometimes against all odds). And there’s a happy ending to the stories. The managers’ openness and support for employees’ needs created work environments that people loved. Employees worked harder and stayed longer in those workplaces. Today’s workers expect space— flexibility, balance, autonomy, and so on—in fact, many Generation X and Generation Y workers will select or leave a workplace based on this factor alone.
Some leaders worry about fairness. We hear, “How do I give one employee time off on Friday afternoon and not give it to everyone?” But being fair does not mean treating everyone identically. (Do you have more than one child? If so, do you give them all identical holiday gifts? Probably not.)
The answer is “mass customization”—sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?—which offers a new kind of institutional fairness. The workforce is more differentiated, and one policy simply does not fit all. (Who said management was easy?) Listen to your talented employees’ requests, and brainstorm with them to create innovative solutions that are fair, both to them and to their hard-working, talented teammates—whom you also want to keep.
Other leaders worry that being flexible means they’ll lose control or employees will goof off, take advantage, not deliver. If you manage by objectives, you’ll have much more room to give your talent some space.
One leader said, “I feel like you’re suggesting I give, give, give. What do I get, get, get?” We said, “You’ll get engaged, productive employees who’ll stick around and do their best work for you.” That’s the quid pro quo.
“Of course, there’s a catch. Sure, you can take Friday off to train for the Ironman Triathlon or to attend your kid’s soccer match. Just make sure you do your job—and figure out how to do it better than anyone else. With freedom and flexibility come responsibility and accountability—lots of it.”
—Paula Lawlor, MediHealth Outsourcing
In exploring the example of giving space, you can learn about doing several things: to truly listen to the unique requests your employees bring you, to ask them to provide ideas for how a particular change might work—for you, the team, and the organization—and to make an honest attempt to win flexibility and improved working conditions for your people. And again, these same kinds of approaches apply to the other strategies discussed above.
Space to play, have a good time, take breaks, celebrate successes, creatively attack problems—all these make for a retention culture in today’s organizations. Likewise, for the other strategies, if you pay attention to your most talented employees’ development and growth, style of being managed, and work environment by following the strategies outlined here, your reward will be loyalty and commitment from your best people.
Further Reading
Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, Love It, Don’t Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.
J. M. Bardwick, One Foot Out the Door: How to Combat the Psychological Recession That’s Alienating Employees and Hurting American Business. New York: AMACOM, 2008.
C. Benko and A. Weisberg, Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007
P. Cappelli, Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008.
F. K. Klein, Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass, 2008.
E. E. Lawler, III, Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage. San Francisco. Jossey-Bass, 2008.
J. Phillips and L. Edwards, Managing Talent Retention: An ROI Approach. San Francisco. Pfeiffer, 2009.
References
Gallup. 2010. Employee Engagement: A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance. http://www.gallup.com/ consulting/ 52/ Employee-Engagement.aspx.
Kaye, B., and S. Jordan-Evans. 2008. Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Towers Watson. 2010. The New Employment Deal: How Far, How Fast, and How Enduring. Insights from Towers Watson’s 2010 Global Workforce Study. http://www.towerswatson.com/ global-workforce-study.
About the Authors
Beverly Kaye is an internationally recognized authority on career issues and retention and engagement in the workplace. She was named a “Legend” by ASTD. She has also been named by Leadership Excellence as one of North America ‘s 100 top thought leaders. As founder and CEO of Career Systems International and a best-selling author on workplace performance, she has worked with a host of organizations to establish cutting-edge, award-winning talent development solutions. Her first book, Up Is Not the Only Way (Davies Black) became a classic, and although it was published in the early 1980s it is still very relevant today. In it, she foresaw the effects that leaner, flatter organizations would have on individual careers and the subsequent need for workers to take charge of their own careers. She also developed systems for leaders and employees to work together to help employees achieve their developmental goals.
Sharon Jordan-Evans, president of the Jordan Evans Group, is a pioneer in the field of employee retention and engagement. She has a master’s degree in organization development and is a professionally certified coach. She serves as a speaker for numerous conferences and works with Fortune 500 companies such as American Express, Boeing, Disney, Lockheed, Cheesecake Factory, Monster, MTV, PBS, Sony, and Universal Studios. She also serves as a resource for a number of national media, including Business 2.0, Chief Executive, CIO, Harvard Management Update, Working Woman, Investor’s Business Daily, BusinessWeek, and the Los Angeles Times.
Kaye and Jordan-Evans have coauthored two Wall Street Journal bestsellers. The first, Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay, is the world’s best-selling employee retention book and has been translated into 20 languages. The second, Love It, Don’t Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work, offers easy-to-implement strategies for increasing job satisfaction and has been translated into 15 languages.
This chapter is adapted from Love ’Em or Lose ’Em: Getting Good People to Stay, 4th edition, by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. Copyright © Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. All rights reserved. Used with permission.