Beverly Kaye - Love 'Em or Lose 'Em. Getting Good People to Stay

We also suggest you take just a few moments to check out your beliefs about managing, engaging, and retaining others by completing a manager self-test called The Retention/Engagement Index (REI). The results will direct you to chapters you might want to read soon.

What’s Your REI?

Research shows that your perspectives and beliefs about managing others and the resulting actions you take can predict the likelihood that talented people will not only continue to work for you but will bring their discretionary effort to work each and every day. They’ll help you and your organization do what you’re trying to do!

This survey allows you to evaluate your beliefs and mindsets about engaging and retaining the people you can least afford to lose.

Use this scale to rate yourself (1–4) on the extent to which you believe or act in the ways listed here.

1 = Always/Definitely Yes

2 = Often/Frequently

3 = Sometimes/Occasionally

4 = Never/Definitely No

So, how did you do? Here is how to make sense of the test, gauge your overall strength as a love ’em manager, and decide which chapters to read first.

1. Highlight beliefs or behaviors for which you scored a 1 or 2.

2. Turn to the corresponding A–Z chapter.

3 . Pick up some hints and tips about how to increase your effectiveness in those areas.

Now, note how you’re doing overall by adding up your total score and using these interpretation guidelines:

High 80–104: Good job. You have the love ’em mindset and are probably taking many of the actions needed to engage and retain your talent.

Medium 53–79: Beware. You’re at risk for losing your best people. Some may have already left you. Take stock and take action before you lose more talent.

Low 26–52: Look out! You’re at high risk for losing talent – you might even have a “swinging door.” Your beliefs and corresponding actions (or inactions) may be standing in the way of having engaged people who want to stick around and work for you over time. You need to take immediate, focused action.

This book exists to help you increase your score – the one you just gave yourself in this self-test – and the one your employees give you every day.

When your REI goes up, so do your talented employees’ job satisfaction levels, motivation, and loyalty.

Time to dive in!

When do you think most leaders ask questions like “What can I do to keep you?”

You’re right: it’s in the exit interview. At that point it’s typically too late. The talented employee already has one foot out the door!

Have you ever wondered why we ask great questions in exit interviews but neglect to ask early enough to make a difference? Love ’em leaders do ask. They ask early and often, they listen carefully to the answers, and they link arms with their talent to help them get more of what they want, right where they are.

Conduct Stay Interviews

A crucial strategy for engaging and retaining talent is having conversations with every person you hope will stay on your team. We coined the term s tay interview to describe those chats. If you hold stay interviews, you’ll have less regrettable turnover and fewer exit interviews!

When we suggest asking employees why they stay or what would keep them, we hear, “You’ve got to be kidding,” “Isn’t that illegal?” or “What if they give me an answer I don’t want to hear?” Managers dance around this core subject usually for one of three reasons:

• Some managers fear putting people on the spot or putting ideas into their heads (as if they never thought about leaving on their own).

• Some managers are afraid they will be unable to do anything anyway, so why ask? They fear that the question will raise more dust than they can settle and may cause employees to expect answers and solutions that are out of the managers’ hands.

• Some managers say they don’t have the time to have these critical one-on-one discussions with their talented people. There is an urgency to produce, leaving little time to listen, let alone ask. (If you don’t have time for these discussions with the people who contribute to your success, where will you find the time to interview, select, orient, and train their replacements?)

Guessing Is Risky

What if you don’t ask? What if you just keep trying to guess what Tara or Mike or Akina really wants? You will guess right sometimes. The year-end bonus might please them all. Money can inspire loyalty and commitment for the near term. But if the key to retaining Tara is to give her a chance to learn something new, whereas Mike wants to telecommute, how could you ever guess that? Ask – so you don’t have to guess.

Alas

A senior manager told us of an employee who was leaving his company. On her last day, the senior manager, who was upset at the loss, expressed his disappointment that she was leaving. He wished her well but said, “I wish there were something we could have done to keep you,” assuming that her direct supervisor had asked what would make her stay. But the supervisor hadn’t asked, and something could have been done. The employee said she would have stayed if she could have been more involved in some of the new task forces, as she felt the participation was vital to her goal of growing her career. It was a request that would have been easy to fill – if only he had known!

Asking has positive side effects. The person you ask will feel cared about, valued, and important. Many times asking leads to stronger loyalty and commitment to you and the organization. In other words, just asking the question is an effective engagement and retention strategy.

How to Ask

How and when do you bring up this topic? How can you increase the odds of getting honest input from your employees? There is no single way or time to ask. It could happen during a developmental or career discussion with your employees. (You do hold those, don’t you?) Or you might schedule a meeting with your valued employees for the express purpose of finding out what will keep them. One manager sent the following invitation to give his key people some time to think and to prepare for the conversation:

Regardless of when you start this dialogue, remember to set the context by telling your employees how critical they are to you and your team and how important it is to you that they stay. Then find out what will keep them. Listen carefully to their responses.