Retaining talent: Never assume everything is fine!
"Jane, one of our most talented employees has just left the company and it’s a great loss", says the Managing Director.We asked that senior executive whether Jane could have been retained, and the reply was: “Well, we did everything we could to retain her, but we were unsuccessful”.
Then we asked Jane what made her decide to leave the company and she said that although she had informed her management months ago that she was unhappy and didn’t feel respected, she had not noticed any change or even extra attention to her situation. She acknowledges that the management style in the organization has now changed but it is too little too late.
Why such gaps?
We all intellectually know that managers ought to take employees feedback seriously, but the reality is that our “busyness” and tend to forget or avoid dealing with situations of chronic unhappiness like Jane’s. We prefer to believe that everything’s OK and that problems of that nature will solve by themselves: the infamous head in the sand syndrome!
But how can we track and measure management styles, company culture or employee happiness?
As you all know there is the traditional anonymous (and costly) yearly or bi-annual employee satisfaction survey. And most companies are happy with response rates between 80 and 85% and with satisfaction rates between 56% and 70%!
One of the solutions to positively address the above is to train employees to speak up when it matters and measure the impact of action plans by “taking the pulse” of your people’s engagement and happiness individually, on an ongoing and frequent basis and act on the feedback without delay.
Do you know how much it costs when talented people leave the company?
Don’t let things happen and situations deteriorate: be in control and take steps in the right direction.
Support your management and employees with solutions that will facilitate talent retention.
What do you think?
Contact us, we would be glad to answer your questions.
About Inspiring Culture
At Inspiring Culture, we believe that sustainable performance comes from combining business and people management excellence.
