“Half the time, what they want is impossible and it’s a nonstarter,” said a manager in an agricultural sciences company. “But the other half - what they want - is easy. You want to leave early this afternoon to visit your grandmother in the hospital? What manager would say no to that? I’ve got managers who say no to small one-time accommodations and then, guess what? The next day that person is gone.” Small one-time accommodations are easy to grant and usually a matter of kindness. Failure to grant them usually costs much more than granting them. But of course, you can’t let employees take advantage.
This manager continued: “If you want to leave early every afternoon to visit your grandmother in the hospital, then that’s not a one-time accommodation. That’s a special schedule. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got chemistry technicians who are really good at their jobs and they are hard to replace. As far as I’m concerned, they can work in the middle of the night if they want to. I’ll do just about anything I can do to keep them happy because they are so valuable to me. I tell them off the bat when they come to work here, ‘Tell me what you need. I’m here to facilitate your work. If you are not happy, you need to come tell me. If you need something, you need to come tell me.’ Of course, some of them do, and some of them don’t. It’s the ones who don’t come tell me that I really have to worry about. I have to go ask them once in a while.”
Said the manager: “I’ve lost some really good technicians lately just because they were exhausted, burned out. They didn’t want to be working so hard. They’re young. They want to have some fun. After that happened a few times, I realized that I had to find a way to give these guys a break. They didn’t have any vacation to speak of and our work load wasn’t getting any lighter. In one case I was going to HR to try to get one guy on a part-time status for a few months at his request. Finally I told him to just quit and reapply whenever he was ready. It was a risk for both of us. But after about four months, he was in my office. Talk about loyalty. This guy would walk the plank for me.”
Is this manager going too far? I don’t think so. Once the organization has invested in recruiting and training an employee, management has a huge stake in retaining that person - even if not as a full-time on-site, uninterrupted, exclusive employee. If you can’t keep the whole employee, why not keep as much as you can? Instead of losing them, offer valued employees the chance to take an unpaid sabbatical, to work part-time or flextime or as telecommuters or consultants. When valued people leave, stay in touch with them and on good terms. Try re-recruiting them after they’ve had a chance to rest or after they’ve had a chance to see that the grass isn’t so much greener on the other side.
“I have to do whatever it takes to retain key technical talent. I get slammed if one of my good chemistry technicians leaves the company,” the same manager explained. “Actually we have all kinds of incentives in place to make sure we don’t hoard good talent on our teams, to make sure we export good people around to different opportunities within the company. We are given pretty strong incentives to give our best people opportunities to take on new challenges within the company - whether that means moving to a new geographical area or to a different kind of role or a whole different business within the company.” As a result, the manager explained, “people can reinvent themselves and their careers without leaving the organization. If one of your best people really wants a new challenge, a new set of tasks, new learning opportunities, new work relationships, or even just a change of scenery, maybe you can help that person find what she is looking for without ever leaving the company. As hard as it might be for you as a manager to lose a talented employee on your team, that is a giant service to the company and the individual. They definitely remember that you helped them at a key point in their career.”
Stay strong!
Bruce
