not to Radical Retention Reminders

“In a good to great transformation, people are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

Jim Collins

I’ve Been Thinking. . . a lot about how to keep the right people on your team.

A successful nurse, tragically hit by a bus and killed, arrives at the pearly gates and is welcomed by St. Peter, who says that she will need to spend one day in Heaven and one day in Hell before she decides where she would like to spend eternity.

With great trepidation she enters Hell and is amazed to find a beautiful golf course, friends and colleagues who welcome her, terrific food, a great pool party and even a nice-guy devil. At the end of her day, she regretfully leaves Hell in order to experience her day in Heaven. That experience is delightful as well, with clouds, angels, harps and singing that she expected.

St. Peter pushes her to make the decision of a lifetime (and beyond). In which place would she spend eternity – Heaven or Hell? You guessed it, she chooses Hell.

When she returns to Hell she finds a desolate wasteland, intense heat and her friends dressed in rags and picking up garbage. There are no parties – only misery and despair. She says to the Devil, “I don’t understand, yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a country club, and we fabulous food and we danced and had the time of our lives. Now I see desolation, the heat is overwhelming and all my friends look miserable and despondent.”

The Devil looks at her and smiles. “Yesterday we were recruiting you; today you’re a resident.”

Yesterday we were recruiting you; today you are an employee. Does the reality of employment match the aura of our recruitment?

Here’s the challenge . . . there’s a vicious cycle that naturally occurs requiring us to maintain continual attention to “recruiting” potential and current star performers.

It looks something like this: Recruit. . . Hire. . . Re-recruit. . . then Re-Re-Recruit staff. Otherwise, they feel less noticed. . . less appreciated. . .taken for granted. . .leave. . . we Re-Start Recruiting.

Most leaders need their cages rattled at some stage of the vicious circle just to shake the dust off stagnant practices. Consider these random challenges to determine where you might unlock the chains of the “way we’ve always done it” and inject fresh possibilities.

The first step to retention is who we hire. Hiring Recklessly or Randomly Results in Repetitious Remorse. It’s like planning for misery on the installment plan.

People decide in the first three days if they are going to leave or stay. They may not leave right away but the decision is made.

Repeat the new employee welcome “daily” - forever.

Poor Orientation = 36% of all turnover

What are we doing in orientation to make staff feel good about their decision and convince them that this is the place to be?

EXCUSE: We don’t have time for orientation – don’t have time not to have orientation. Without orientation, people aren’t convinced of the reasons to stay. Outcome: Organization becomes a revolving door.

You NEVER get a SECOND chance to make a good FIRST IMPRESSION. Capitalize on it.

Passionate leaders ensure people are indoctrinated with the driving philosophy of the company. Impassionate leaders constipate potential excitement.

Dynamite Recruiting without Fabulous Retention is a Waste of Energy.

Make a list of the top 25% of your team members – How Can You Keep Them?

Conclusion at Sprint: Employees want a leader who knows them, understands them, treats them fairly, and is someone who they can trust. Pay and benefits are expectations in this day and age. The most important element in retention is the leaders.

Turnover is not an event – it is really a process of disengagement that can take days, week, months and even years until the actual physical separation occurs.

Organizational complacency escalates employee discontent. Create new, fresh, compelling reasons for people to feel passionate about what they do.

89% of managers believe employees leave for money. 12% of employees leave for more money.

#1 reason people leave a job is supervisor/staff relations. Reality: People leave people not jobs.

Healthy Job Market: Unhappy employee will make a mad dash for a 5% pay increase.

Healthy Job Market: Happy employee will need at lest a 20% increase to jump ship.

According to research published by the late Susan Eaton, in What a Difference Management Makes, retention is all about relationships, and relationships are at the heart of a good working environment. This includes relationship with co-workers; across departments; with supervisors; with the organization; and, most importantly with the customers they serve.

Employers quote “unavoidable reason” for 90% of turnover.

Employees who left revealed only 11% had left for “unavoidable reasons”.

Saratoga found “unavoidable reasons” to be 5%.

Leaders can do something about 95% of the reasons people leave. . .

Remember Field of Dreams? Costner played a man obsessed by a vision to turn his cornfield into a baseball diamond in order to attract star players from the past. A voice persisted in telling him, “Build it and they will come.” Well, he built it and they came. If you want to attract and retain star players, you must make your workplace one of your compelling recruiting and retention tools.

People need to go home feeling Useful –- Relevant –- Significant!

Get serious about creating a place that is fun to work!

How much time, energy and money are you investing in retention (re-recruiting) versus turnover and replacement?

Reboot, Reset, Refresh your re-recruiting radar ---

Be a place where people love to come (and stay) to work. . .

“The problem is not motivation. It is the ways in which we unintentionally demotivate employees.”

Quint Studer