Can I Offer You Some Feedback? - Episode #91

Show Notes:

This week, Sara shares some research on the challenge of employee turnover and provides three steps that leaders can take to address it. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the reasons behind turnover and tailoring strategies to address them. Learn to measure the effectiveness of these strategies and focus on tactics that make a difference. The goal is to create a more committed workforce and retain valuable talent. Subscribe to the podcast for new episodes weekly! Subscribe today so you never miss an episode!

Below we are offering a transcript of the podcast for accessibility and reference.

Episode #91: Research revealed: how many of your staff are ready to quit?

Do you know what you don't know? Well, unless you're like me, you're probably not steeped in the latest research on team effectiveness, leadership development, and organizational behavior. In this Research Revealed, I'd like to share with you a recent piece of research and reveal what it means for you.

A recent employee retention report from The Great Places To Work organization found that 53% of employees are open to quitting their organization and exploring new opportunities. This statistic is huge and reveals a significant challenge that a lot of leaders face in highlighting what is the challenge with employee turnover. Understanding the different perspectives of this can help leaders take proactive measures to try and retain their talent and foster a committed workforce. 

So let's start talking about it. The fact that over half of employees are contemplating leaving their current roles should be a wake-up call for you. If you haven't already thought of it, high turnover rates disrupt operations, impact morale, incur significant costs with the loss of institutional knowledge with the data that folks do and training and recruiting new staff. These employees who are exploring these opportunities typically indicate underlying issues, whether it be with work conditions, lack of career opportunities, inadequate recognition, moral concerns, and if you're going to address this, you need to take it seriously. 

So what are three steps that you could take? First, think about employee engagement. When we're talking about employee engagement, I recognize it's hard to always make everyone happy, but leaders should focus on trying to understand what is it that people want and the best way to do that is by getting feedback. When we're talking about regular feedback sessions, it means actively involving employees in the conversation and sharing with them how can they participate in decision-making that impacts their career. Engaged employees are much more likely to feel connected to their roles in the organization, which in turn would reduce their likelihood to seek a new opportunity. 

Secondly, offer career development opportunities. A common reason that a lot of folks look for a new opportunity is because there's a lack of growth. Now, not every organization can just create more positions or add opportunities and that's a reality. But if you think about the employees in your organization, what are some of the training or development programs that might allow them to enhance their skills or deepen their expertise in ways that also support the company? You can make a win-win with training and development, providing these clear pathways can help support professional growth and can help retain those folks that you don't want to turn over. We talk about the difference between voluntary turnover as folks who are leaving the organization and then regrettable turnover. Folks who you wish wouldn't leave the organization, but leave for other reasons. 

The third thing that you can consider in your organization is how can you improve either the work-life balance and or the well-being. Now it's hard to navigate both managing work-life balance and understanding the need for productivity and results in an organization, but your employees want to have that balance. They want to be in an organization typically that supports flexibility, mental health, and integration. Whenever possible have discussions about what flexibility can be offered. Do you have ability to look at your working hours? Do you have ability to look at remote work options? Are there wellness programs that folks are interested in and are the ones that you're offering actually what people want? I talked to a lot of leaders when they talk about their total rewards plan, they're thinking about all the benefits that they offer, but it gets really low utilization if it's not getting used I'm not sure it's valuable. And so looking at that data is an important thing to consider. 

Now if you're thinking about this in your organization, I'd encourage you to think about a couple of questions. What is the first thing that you need to think about, or what are the primary reasons that folks are considering leaving in the first place, and are these things that you can actually address? Perhaps folks are leaving because there's an industry problem? That's not something you can necessarily control, but if it is something that's within the organization, and if it's in your area of control, helping by understanding those root causes will make a difference. If it is something you can do about it, you can tailor strategies around it and mitigate their concerns before it becomes an issue they want to leave for. 

The second question, you can think about is how do I measure the effectiveness of the strategies I am using to reduce turnover and think about increasing engagement. A lot of times when I see strategies, folks are trying a bunch of stuff all at the same time, and then when you try a lot of things all at once, you don't know what actually works. And so if you don't know whether it was the survey or the feedback mechanism or the pizza party, you're just gonna default to the easiest thing, which is the pizza party. And that may not be it. That may not be the thing that actually makes a difference. Now, there's plenty of organizations where getting around the table once a month is a meaningful activity, but it's not true everywhere. To understand the specifics of your tactics is looking at some metrics and understand which ones make a difference. 

Retaining talent is hard. Everyone's trying to work on it, and it takes a lot of effort and adaptation. But it will save you time in the long run if you do dedicate the energy towards that initiative. 

This has been Sara with Research Revealed. You can reach me at podcast@mod.network. We would love to hear from you on what other research you'd like to explore and as always, give us a quick rating on your platform of choice and share this podcast with a friend. Research revealed is a production of Evergreen Podcasts hosted by me, Sara Ismail-Beigi Bartlett. Our production team includes Nijah Golliday and Gray Longfellow. We'll see you next time.