Improving Employee Retention Through Engagement

Many experts believe that within a few years the U.S. will face a shortfall of 10 million workers, mostly in the frontline service sector. As a result, it is predicted that it will be increasingly more difficult to find employees willing to work for minimum wage or slightly more. There is good news though. More and more part-time workers will be available, thanks to changing beliefs, values, work and job preferences, social needs and retirees who don’t want to retire.

The biggest problem faced by this increasingly important group of workers, is the attitudes of their bosses, managers and full-time co-workers, who too often regard the part-timers contributions to the work-place as insignificant. Yes, part-timers are made to feel insignificant when in fact, the opposite is true. Our research reveals that part-timers’ performance scores are approximately 30% higher than full-timers’. Part-timers also show a higher energy level, do not get bored as easily, and are less likely to get caught up in work-place politics. After all, they simply have less time to develop these less desirable habits.

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As customers, we have been “served” by people who quit but never left. As employees, we have been managed by bosses who stopped managing, but managed to stay. As managers, we have managed people who physically attend, but mentally pretend. We call them—disengaged workers—a deadly virus that’s spreading throughout American business.

Survey after survey reveals that the number one issue facing business today is finding and retaining talented employees. Nationally, employee turnover averages 12 percent each year, a challenge that is costing millions. Yet retention is not a cure for turnover. Retaining a disengaged employee is actually far worse than letting him go—regardless of how valuable he once was.
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Given the ever-changing factors in today’s pool of available engaged talent, managing human inventory is every bit as important – if not more – than managing product inventory. Why? Because in reality, people are companies and companies are its people.

Today, businesses have more difficulty finding and retaining productive workers than they do finding and building loyal customers. Even the best employees can become disillusioned and disengaged when they’re not treated as individual adults who are striving to become more than interchangeable cogs in the corporate machinery. In fact, your very best employees will be the first to leave if their needs and desires are not met.

Pay attention to your best employees. These are the people managers inadvertently ignore because they’re busy focusing on problem employees. Consider the advantages of improving a top-performer’s productivity by just 10%, rather than improving the performance of a mediocre worker by 10%. Keep in mind that the best employees are always the first to leave.

React to poor performers quickly. Your employees know before you do who is slacking off on the job and not contributing. Make it easy for caring workers to come to you with concerns about a fellow employee’s work habits. Emphasize that these conversations are confidential, but also indicate that you want specific examples – not random observations. Then, act on this information!

Disengagement occurs in stages. By the time an employee becomes “actively disengaged” it’s usually too late for intervention. By now the employee has become disruptive, unproductive, and has infected others in negative ways. It would be an impossible feat for him or her to retract everything she’s complained about and now adopt a positive attitude.

Important Note: Your good people are always the first to leave. They’re the ones with the most confidence and a proven track record. They know they’re talented and that their odds of getting a new job are very good. They also will not put up with someone else taking the joy out of their workday. In today’s world, people follow the natural leader, regardless of official job title.

Are you trying to deal with disengaged co-workers or employees?

I’m noticing a perilous situation in businesses. Employers are apprehensive of calling people to task and holding them accountable, even fearful of reprimanding poor performance. Managers are frequently ignoring behaviors, which in the past would be deemed unacceptable. As a result, employees are sensing they can “get away with things”. This is a result of the growing problem of talent shortage.

Here are some interesting discoveries from our recent research on employee engagement:

• 92% say their company does not deal with poor performers
• 44% leave their jobs due to co-workers disengagement

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The CEO of one of our largest clients took me aside for a conversation that not only changed my
life, but also my business focus. “Terri, I’m tired of spending all this money on training . . . only to have people leave and take your great training elsewhere. We need to change what we’re doing,” he confessed. His comments ignited a revolutionary moment for me. I realized he was right — dead right. No amount of training would ever change an employee who did not believe in the concept of service and serving others. That insight fueled my resolve to change our business approach from merely training people to selecting and retaining the right people to then train and develop.

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Ask yourself, “How much expense and aggravation could I save by matching people with jobs that fit naturally? How much job satisfaction, productivity and customer satisfaction could we gain?” Every prospective employee is unique, and every company’s culture is distinct and unique as well. Therefore, it just makes sense that every organization should have a template of the latter, a profile of the former, and a method for matching the two.

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Take what I call “A” players. These employees are hungry for results, impatient for promotions, willing to sacrifice life for work and it’s meaning in helping them identify who they are as individuals.

Then there are the “B” players – loyal, dedicated, focused on helping others succeed – preferring to shed the spotlight on someone other than themselves.

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If I had to condense my employee engagement philosophy into a few simple principles, these are the ones I would highlight.
Think of them as “The Five Commandments for Achieving Employee Engagement”:

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Behaviors tell us how a person will go about doing her work, while values and attitudes help us pinpoint the reasons why she will perform well and remain engaged. However, if we do not know what the job requires, how can we match a person to the position? This is precisely where most businesses make their first mistake. They focus on the type of person they want in the job rather than the type of work the job requires. They shouldn’t be focusing on the type of person they wanted, but on what the job required in terms of skills, behaviors, values and attributes.

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The damage that an unproductive and disengaged worker can cause is impossible to tally. In
my research on organizational behavior patterns, I have found that co-workers recognize disengagement much sooner than management. As a result, the impact on employee morale, as well as its effect on customers and productivity, is often devastating. Dissatisfaction, frustration
and constant griping create a vortex that sucks the enthusiasm out of even the most productive and engaged workers.

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