Great employees don't leave companies, they leave managers.
TUNE IN TO any cable business show, and you'll almost certainly see a feature about the latest perks companies are using to try to retain employees. While in the past, management tended to rely on pedestrian benefits like tuition reimbursement and health insurance, now they've gotten creative. Onsite daycare, a company concierge to pick up employees' dry cleaning or send that last-minute gift, and even dogwalkers are only a few of the innovative goodies businesses offer employees to keep them from leaving. But do these benefits work?
Keeping good employees
By interviewing more than 80,000 managers in more than 400 companies, the Gallup organization intended to find out if employee benefits retain good staff members. It documents the results in the book First, Break All the Rules: What the world's greatest managers do differently. Gallup's goal was to find a way to measure employee satisfaction, demonstrate the connection between employee attitudes and productivity, and compare the strength of one workplace versus another.
* Stores in the top group retained 12 more employees per year than stores in the bottom group. This means that stores in the top 25 percent retained 1,000 more employees per year than the bottom group. In dollars and cents, assuming an average salary of $18,000, and the cost of finding, hiring and training a new employee at 1.5 times their salary, that translates to $27,000,000 -- which was the cost to the company in turnover in stores in the bottom group.
The Power Questions
The following Power Questions are grouped in the order that they need to be addressed. As you read them, ask yourself how your staff would answer these questions. Note that they all involve interaction with front-line managers. Great employees don't leave companies, they leave managers.
"What do I get?" These are the basic questions any employee will ask:
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
"What do I give?" Once employees are in a job for a while, they want to know how they're doing, and whether they are valued at work.
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
"Do I belong here?" At this stage, employees are reasonably comfortable in their roles and, it is hoped, have received some positive feedback for their performance. Once those issues are resolved, they wonder whether they fit in.
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
"How can we all grow?" Once employees are confident in their performance and value to the organization, and feel that they fit in, their attention turns to learning more and making things better, not only for themselves, but for everyone else.
